Murphblog

A Remarkable Bug

2011-12-22T11:15:00.004-05:00

I’m sitting in the hot tub when I see the mosquito. Course, I don’t know it’s a mosquito, not yet. Just a Bug, capitalized, because unless you’re a farmer or one of those starving kids in Africa, a Bug, even one of the good ones, is always capitalized. You can’t ignore a Bug.

You really can’t ignore it when the damn thing insists on dancing in the air a foot above the water, right about where your feet are. I kick, thinking the hot water might scare it off, maybe even burn it if Bugs burn like that. And besides, I can’t do much else. My hands are busy holding the Kindle, because I can’t just soak in the tub, stare at the walls, close my eyes, relax. Blame the culture or whatever, but I’ve got to be Doing Something.

I hid it, too. Had to walk past Gwen on the way out here, her on the couch, me burying the Kindle in the folds of a bathroom towel because I’ve finally given up the paperback I’ve been slogging my way through, fifteen minutes a pop.

“You taking that in the hot tub?” she’d say if she saw, all accusation, all that’s-a-stupid-thing-to-do, all knowing-more-about-it-than-I-do, like how even if I don’t drop it, which I probably will, the moisture will worm its way into the thing’s innards and corrode the motherboard or whatever makes it work. “Seems like a big risk.” Gwen with that look.

I can see how it’ll happen, me with my tasty winter skin showing. I can see it clearly: The Bug making its move, probably coming in from a blind spot, humming in my ear like these goddam mosquitoes—because I’ve convinced myself that’s what it is—do. And me reacting: flaring up a hand to swat at it, the two of us, man versus mosquito, engaged in the ancient battle, only this time with a Kindle in my hand that will surely fall all the way to the bottom of the hot tub and be ruined forever, and my wife, even though she never saw it (She didn’t, did she?), will win the argument without saying a word, which is the worst way to lose one.

Where did it go, anyway?

Not flitting around over the water anymore. Maybe I scared it off with the splashing. I came out here to read…

But it could be on my shoulder, its light touch masked by the rivulets of water, slurping out an evening snack. Better check.

Nothing.

And just what is a mosquito doing out here anyway? It’s February, 23 degrees in this screened-in room, and cold for months now. Shouldn’t all the mosquitoes be dead? Don’t Bugs need warm weather? Don’t they only live for a few days in the first place? What’s it been feeding on? Not even the cat comes out in the winter.

No, it can’t be a mosquito. Something else then, some winter bug. They must exist.

Ah, there it is, on the bottom step that leads to the tub, not four feet away. It’s a big thing, stilts for legs, a little pale itself, and slow, like it used all its energy with its brief fly-by and now it’s gathering strength for the next lift off. Tiptoeing on those six spindles, moving closer, inch by inch.

Probably hasn’t fed in a long time. Probably smells my blood pumping under all this flabby skin and over-chlorinated water. And why not? If I were starving, wouldn’t I detect the aroma of a freshly grilled hamburger, even while standing on a mountain of trash?

The Bug shouldn’t be here. Improbable at the very least, impossible more likely. Which is why I can’t get back to reading. Definitely a mosquito. A survivor. Just two feet away and probably starving, has to be near death, while I’m sitting in a hot tub that I climbed into as soon as I took off my sweatshirt, on the off chance that the neighbors might be looking.

And now I can’t even read the Kindle I risked so much to bring out here.

Quite a mosquito, when you think about it. Remarkable, really. Defying the laws of nature and all that other stuff people say about things they don’t understand.

So I hang my arm over the side, drape it there, the beaded water on the fiberglass cold where it’s been exposed to the air. That same air this Bug has somehow survived.

Go ahead, fella, have a taste. Just this once. You deserve it. We’ll resume our war in the summer, the season for battles. We’ll continue when you make sense.

I wait, the Kindle held above the water in my other hand.

And wait some more, but it makes no move, so I lean closer, putting my hand down right next to it. But instead of diving in, instead of plunging that needle, instead of feeding, it takes off, winging up into the rafters.

It’s hard to read when your mind’s on other things, so I turn the Kindle off, and climb out of the tub. I stand there in my dripping shorts, bare skin gleaming and available, plenty to go around, giving the Bug, capitalized, one more chance that it doesn’t take.

Yes, Mom, I Have Been Writing

2011-08-28T10:39:00.003-04:00

Okay, so not writing novels or short stories or things that will further the likelihood of getting published, but I HAVE been writing. And I'm sure you want to read it. Why else would you be hanging out here other than to read my inspirational words. So, here's what I've been doing:

1. I started a new blog, but it's all secretive because it's about WORK. Well, it's really more about EDUCATION. It's a blog where I talk about all the stupid things the state of Michigan is doing to education and how most of them will lead to, if not outright failure, a host of unintended consequences, some of which aren't that terrible (maybe even needed), but most of which will do nothing to improve education. It's political and opinionated and maybe even controversial, which means I have to keep my identity a secret. The problem is it's hard to get readers when you're a secret.

2. I've been writing things for the junk I'm selling on ebay. It struck me soon after I started my buying binge of Harry Potter action figures that the descriptions people right are dead boring. So I try to make mine not. Here are a few for items I have listed. Read them. Then, go buy my stuff.

You are bidding on an awesome Nutcracker Ornament, perfect for hanging in a prominent position on your Christmas tree or displaying on a shelf with other Nutcrackers where he will probably frighten the others because this Nutcracker is fierce. In fact, I have had to store him in his original box for 50 weeks of the year because if he's not hanging from the tree he rampages throughout the house, terrifying my cat, Captain Crunch, raiding the pantry for bags of Funyans, and howling at passersby. Curiously, he has never cracked a single nut. Be warned, therefore, that should you win this bad-ass you will have to keep him locked away in his box or displayed somewhere high, as he is scared of heights. Good luck, I think.

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Love S'mores but hate breathing in the noxious fumes of a bonfire? Or perhaps you love S'mores and bonfires but don't like people and would rather just eat your S'more in peace and quiet from the comfort of your own basement couch while playing World of Warcraft on your bad-ass computer. Or maybe you suck at starting fires, like my Uncle Glen, and don't want to go through all that rigmarole and embarrassment just for a delicious treat. Whatever the reason, we all sometimes just want to be able to make a S'more in a microwave and NOW YOU CAN!

This Micro S'mores S'more-maker comes new in the box. It has literally NEVER BEEN OPENED or used in anyway whatsoever. For example, I did not take the S'more maker out and dance with it or sing it songs or pet it lovingly. Really, I didn't do those things. Box comes with a "As Seen on TV" logo for those who like that sort of thing. Also comes with a recipe book for those morons who don't know how to make a friggin' S'more.
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You are bidding on a Wells Fargo & Co. Express sign. This is a reproduction made by Ande Rooney, who is not that annoying old dude on 60 Minutes who's always whining about magazine inserts or the price of women's stockings or whatever. This sign is metal with porcelain enamel to make it look extra awesome. Yeah, there are real signs out there that you can spend too much money on (one looking just like this one recently sold for $72 bucks on ebay) and then your wife would be all this and that, or you can buy this sign, tell people it's the real thing, and have a better marriage and a few extra dollars. You choose.

This is perfect for the father who wants to add a little verisimilitude to his son's train set. Hell, you could probably even tell the little tyke that it's the real thing, straight out of whatever station at the turn of the century or whenever Wells Fargo was a big deal.
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You are bidding on an Iroquois Beer and Ale reproduced sign by Ande Rooney. The sign is good quality and in very good condition. It's metal with porcelain enamel. I've never had an Iroquois Beer but I bet it's awesome. After all, it's named after the most bad-ass Indians to ever live. The Iroquois took no shit.

And neither should you. That's why you should buy this sign and display it boldly right on the front of your house to let people know you mean business, man. Let's face it, it takes a special kind of person in these pansy-assed politically correct times to display a sign that uses the likeness of an American Indian to sell beer. The value of this sign is probably priceless because there's no way in hell a beer company is ever going to get away with this again. Their lawyers wouldn't even let them bring up the idea in a marketing brainstorming session.

Be a rebel. Buy a sign with an Indian selling beer on it. And when you hang it on your porch, go stand in the road, admire it and the balls you had to display it, and, with your arm raised high in defiance of our grovelling culture, do the Tomahawk Chop. For just a second, you may feel like you're back in the America you grew up in--the racist, exploitative one where Indians could be used to sell just about anything.

What I Am Not Looking for in an Agent

2011-08-03T12:30:00.003-04:00

Since agents are always hopping on the social networks and telling writers what not to do (follow the guidelines, even if they are ridiculous; don't start your query with a rhetorical question; remember that a no from one is a no from all), I thought I'd get on here and tell my two readers what turns me off as a writer searching for an agent.

I've started my research with Agent Query, and have quickly realized there are some things an agent can list on their short bios that immediately make me scratch them off the list.

"Does not accept email queries"--This is like agents in the 1960s saying they'll only accept telegrams. The only reason I see to do this is to turn querying writers away, and if you're doing that, then I doubt you'll have much time for me anyway.

"Special interest in multi-cultural stories"---Ack! Look, I have nothing against characters of color, but a great story is a great story. If you're going to turn down the next Harry Potter because the kids are all white, then I have to question your judgment. Also, this kind of statement says a lot about an agent. To me, it says they're more interested in being an agent for social change than they are an agent who wants to sell a lot of books. But you can't really do the former without first doing the latter.

The agent who represents every genre under the sun---I think I read a lot. And I haven't come close to reading enough in a whole lot of genres to think I could ably guide someone in one of those genres. I want a little more specialization in my agent.

"Does not accept unsolicited submissions"--In other words, "I got more than enough on my plate already." In that case, I would assume you're somewhat successful and can afford an intern.

Overly picky agents--Yeah, I'm contradicting myself slightly, but while agents shouldn't represent EVERYTHING, they also shouldn't be so narrow-minded that they shut out what might be a great opportunity. One agent said, "No stories about talking animals." I don't blame her in a way, because a lot of people just starting out writing kids' books probably write what they think are cute stories about animals learning a lesson. On the other hand, this agent would have missed out on The Tale of Despereaux and Charlotte's Web.

And lastly, dear agents, it really isn't necessary to say you're attracted to "beautiful writing and compelling characters." You don't need to say you want stories that "keep you up all night turning pages." Most writers do not need to be told that agents want "memorable characters" and "a strong voice." We're reading your bios to find out whether you'd be a good match, so tell us something helpful, not something obvious. And in the tradition of social networking agents everywhere let me just say that this last one isn't an automatic no.

Plot Problems in Barbie in a Mermaid Tale

2011-07-29T21:40:00.003-04:00

Little One loves mermaids and Barbie right now, so this is the kind of stuff she wants to read at bedtime. The Wife doesn't like it when I point out plot problems in front of her, so you're stuck with it. Lucky you.

I'll limit myself to the first few pages so as to avoid Random House's wrath. My comments are in blue:

Merliah Summers smiled as she rode the waves. Ever since she was a little girl, Merliah had been able to swim like a fish. Now she was one of the best surfers in Malibu. As Merliah surfed, she thought everything was perfect--until she noticed her hair. It was turning bright pink!

What the hell is she doing looking at her hair while she's surfing? Is this the secret to becoming "one of the best surfers in Malibu?" And wouldn't pink hair make things even more perfect?

Shocked and embarrassed, Merliah wiped out and dove below the waves. I'm guessing she wiped out because she was staring at her hair instead of the waves or the board or the horizon or whatever it is surfers look at, not because she was embarrassed. When I'm embarrassed, I don't lose my balance. To her amazement, she found that she could breathe underwater! Even more amazing than pink hair? And wouldn't the gills be embarrassing?

"Merliah?" someone said. A sparkly pink dolphin was talking to her! "My name is Zuma. I am a friend of your mother, Calissa. She is the mermaid queen of Oceana--but she needs your help!"

You'd think the queen of Oceana would have a better way of getting in touch with her daughter than turning her hair pink so that she would fall into the ocean and meet up with a pink dolphin. And what, the queen too busy to come see the daughter she abandoned in Malibu herself? Mom of the Year.

Merliah couldn't believe that her mother was a magical mermaid--and that she was half mermaid herself! I admit, such news would be surprising. Although, considering the drastic change in appearance and the ability to breathe underwater, she couldn't have been that surprised. And speaking of which, if Merliah is half mermaid, shouldn't she have always been able to breathe underwater? Given her status as one of the "best surfers in Malibu," how has she never noticed this before? Are we to believe she's never been submerged in water, despite being able to "swim like a fish" ever since she was a little girl?

Merliah learned that when she was a baby, her mother's wicked sister, Eris, had taken over Oceana. Wouldn't that make Eris the queen of Oceana then? The fortune-telling Destinies had foretold that Merliah would one day defeat Eris. So to protect her baby daughter, Calissa had sent Merliah to live with her human grandfather in Malibu.

And now she's leaving her in the flippers of a pink dolphin? No wonder she lost the throne. I might argue that Oceana is better off with Eris calling the shots. Unless the pink dolphin has supernatural powers...Wait a minute...the dolphin is sparkly...hmmm...you don't think?...

Vampire dolphin. Nevermind. I take back every criticism.

Reminding the Reader--a Technique

2011-07-01T11:08:00.005-04:00

Note: I've got a story up on The Alchemy of Writing today (Thanks, Bryan).You should read it, find something to criticize, comment, and then I'll vigorously defend whatever you criticize and we can turn it into an all-out flame war. It'll be fun.

And now a writerly post:

I've been working by way through Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar books and just finished Promise Me. He uses an interesting technique at one point in the book that I don't remember seeing before. His main character, Myron, is listening to a voicemail. The voicemail refers to an event that happened earlier in the book, early enough that the reader has most likely forgotten about it (as I had). So Coben needs to remind the reader what's going on. Here's how he does it:

Myron got into his car and checked his cell phone. One new message. He listened to it.

"Myron? Gail Berruti here. That call you asked about, the one that came to the residence of Erik Biel." There was a noise behind her. "What? Damn, hold on a second."

Myron did. This was the call Claire had received from the robotic voice telling her that Aimee "is fine." A few seconds later, Berruti was back.

"Sorry about that. Where was I? Right, okay, here it is. The call was placed from a pay phone in New York City..."

Clever, huh? Not only does the distraction allow Coben to slip in the reminder, but it also strikes me as real. I've been disrupted while leaving a message quite a few times. The downside? I couldn't help wonder whether or not the distraction was important to the story. Was Berruti in some kind of danger? It took a few more sentences for me to realize that Coben only used it so he could slip in the reminder.

Here's a Poem About Wine

2011-06-21T16:41:00.001-04:00

It's awesome. Enjoy:

Here's more:

http://billowingwords.com

Writing for the "Right" Age

2011-06-13T13:54:00.005-04:00

A few days ago Corey wrote about an exercise she was asked to do at the 2009 Rutgers conference. The panel leader asked the attendees to write their names and what age they felt inside. The point was that whatever age you feel inside should be the age you write for. It's cute and a little clever and maybe even somewhat useful, but I think mostly it's nonsense.

As writers, we traffic in the truth and this exercise strikes me as being largely untruthful.

Because the truth is, none of us feel the same age inside all the time. Or even most of the time. In two weeks, when I get together with some of my college buddies, I will feel (and probably behave) like a twenty-one year old, complete with lewd remarks I'd never make in the presence of my wife and more adult beverage consumption than I'll engage in the rest of the year.

Yesterday, when I tried to run three miles and gave up because my legs got sore around the 1.5 mile mark, I felt more like a forty-five-year old.

When I got on a bike last week for the first time since probably middle school I felt a lot like I felt when I was first learning to ride--nervous, cautious, embarrassed, and awkward. (And my butt hurt as if it had the padding of a person much younger as well)

When I learned my mom got cancer and then when she had open heart surgery I wrestled with the fears of a six-year-old.

On snow days I feel eleven.

And when I walk into a high school gym, memories of my own basketball playing days wash over me and I feel, if only for a fleeting moment, like I am seventeen again.

I think the better advice is this: for whatever age you are writing, you ought to be able to take yourself back in time and remember what it was like to be six, or eleven, or seventeen, or forty-five. And if you need to play a certain song, or recall a certain memory, or visit a certain place in order to do that, then go right ahead. It shouldn't be too hard. In fact, it's probably the most natural thing in the world.

The Baker's Assistant, A Short Story for Kids

2011-06-06T08:00:00.001-04:00

The line outside the bakery was twenty people long and the bakery hadn't even opened. Inside, Chef Sprocket, the baker, opened a cupboard to take down his ingredients. He snatched the bag of sugar. He pulled down the cinnamon. He grabbed the chocolate chips. But when Chef Sprocket went to hoist the huge sack of flour from the shelf, there was was no sack of flour to hoist.

"VHAIR IS ME FLOUR?" he hollered.

Sven, the chef's assistant, ran into the kitchen. "What is the problem, Master Sprocket?"

"ME FLOUR! IZ GONE!"

Sven glanced out the window at the growing throng. How would they ever serve all those people if they didn't have flour? "I will go get some," he told the baker, and he rushed out the back door. He jumped on his bike and rode to the supermarket. But when he got inside he was dismayed to see that they too were out of flour. "How can this be?" Sven asked, but there was no time to waste complaining to the manager. He got back on his bike.

Sven could think of only one other place where he could get flour--McCready's Bakery, Chef Sprocket's only competition in the pastry field. Sven swallowed. McCready was a hard man who made his desire to crush Chef Sprocket no secret. Still, what choice did Sven have?

McCready's was already open and busy by the time he got there. The smell of donuts, biscuits, and cakes filled his nose. In his haste, Sven had forgotten to eat breakfast. He was very hungry. And if he bought some pastries, perhaps McCready would be more willing to help.

"I'll have a raspberry filled donut and a buttermilk biscuit," he told the clerk. He ate the donut while he waited for Chef McCready. The biscuit he put in his pocket for later.

"What do you want?" McCready snapped when he saw Sven. The pastry chef was a tall, thin man with an oily mustache. He wore a pillowy white hat on his head.

Sven said, "Um...uh...see..." And then, in an unbroken string of words, "We've-run-out-of-flour-at-Sprocket's-and-the-supermarket-has-run-out-and-so-I'd-like-to-buy-some-off-you."

McCready smiled. "Why should I sell you my flour? I need it for my own pastries."

"But surely you have some to spare."

McCready's smile grew brighter. "Surely," he said. Then, "The answer is no. Now get out of my bakery."

Sven thought he might cry. He imagined what Chef Sprocket would say when he returned with no flour. He'd probably get fired.

Because tears had puddled in his eyes, he almost missed the sign by the driveway. "The Gilberts" was written in script on a wooden arrow that pointed toward a small house. The name sounded familiar...

The Gilberts! Of course! As in Helen Gilbert. Sven had seen her picture in the newspaper just last week. She'd won the annual pie baking contest at the county fair. He remembered because Chef Sprocket had seen him reading the article and shouted, "PUT ZAT DOWN! ZROW IT AVAY! IZ MY RECIPE. ZAT VOMAN STOLE IT!"

Any lady who had won the fair's pie baking contest would have to have flour in her kitchen. Sven leaned his bike against a telephone poll and approached the house. He pressed the doorbell. No one came. He rang again, but still, no one answered.

He was about to leave when he had an idea--a bad idea. He could break in. It wouldn't really be stealing. He'd take the flour and then come back in a few days and explain the whole thing. He'd give her twice what he took.

Sven tried the doorknob. Locked. But at the bottom of the door there was a square, leather flap. A doggie door. Sven was a tiny man. He got on his knees and stuck his head through. The coast was clear. He crawled inside. The house was quiet. Maybe Mrs. Gilbert had taken her dog to the vet. If that was the case, he'd better hurry.

Sven threw open the cupboard doors and immediately spotted a bag of flour. But as he reached for it, his hand froze in mid-air at the sound behind him.

GRRRRRRRRRR

Sven turned slowly. A vicious looking Rottweiler was glaring at him.

"Good doggie," Sven said. "Good doggie."

GRRRRRRRRRR. Drool dripped from the dog's muzzle.

Sven looked for a place to run or hide or something to hit the dog over the head with. He found nothing. The dog attacked. Sven through up his arm to protect himself, but the dog bit him in the pocket.

He had forgotten about the biscuit. Quickly, Sven pulled the biscuit out and threw it down a hallway. The dog scampered off. When it did, Sven bolted for the door.

It was hopeless. He'd been gone at least an hour. Dejected, he rode back to Sprocket's. Sven was so upset when he got there that he didn't notice the line had disappeared. He walked into a bakery that was buzzing with happy people eating pastries.

"VHAIR YOU ARE! bellowed Chef Sprocket.

"What has happened?" asked a very confused Sven.

"I forget. I order more flour yesterday. The truck vhas late." The Chef shook his head. So did Sven. "Here,"Chef Sprocket said, "Have a biscuit."

Jerry and His Smelly Donkey, a Short Story for Kids

2011-06-02T21:27:00.006-04:00

Jerry owned a donkey, and every couple of weeks, after he'd grown bored of a place, he would strap his bundle of stuff to the back of his donkey and head out for the open road.

"Move faster, donkey!" Jerry would yell.

"You're so lazy!" Jerry would shout.

"And you smell like rotten pickles!"

Jerry was tired of his donkey. He thought he might finally be ready to settle down, get a job, and buy a house. And if you own a house, you don't really need a donkey.

Forest Springs seemed like a nice place to live. The trees had leaves. People obeyed traffic laws. Children rode bikes. One child zipped past Jerry and his donkey. "Peeuuwww! That is one stinky mule!" he said. So maybe the schools weren't the greatest.

There was a man selling peanuts at the side of the road. "Would you like to buy my donkey?" Jerry asked him when the man had finished shouting about how his peanuts were "fresh-roasted."

The peanut vendor looked at the donkey. He wrinkled his nose. "I don't want your donkey, man. That thing smells like sweaty socks."

Jerry tried to sell his donkey to six other people, but none of them wanted it either. He came up with a new plan. Instead of selling the donkey, he would just give it away. Who wouldn't want a free donkey? He chuckled at his own cleverness. "Pretty soon," Jerry said, "I'll be rid of you, my slow, malodorous friend."

It wasn't long before he came upon a beggar huddled under a blanket in a dirty alley. "Can you spare some change, brother?" the beggar said.

"No, I cannot," Jerry answered. "I don't have two pennies to rub together, but I can give you this donkey."

The beggar scowled. "That old thing? It smells like my armpits. It's bad enough I got to live with my stinky armpits, I don't need no smelly donkey to add to it."

Jerry tried to give his donkey away to a little girl, a lonely widow, and the zoo, but none of them wanted the animal. "You see how worthless you are, donkey? Not even a lonely old woman wants you. I ought to leave you right here at the side of the road."

That was it! He didn't need to sell the donkey or give it away, he could just abandon it! Jerry climbed off the smelly donkey and grabbed his bundle of belongings. "See you later, donkey," he said, and then added, "Actually, that's not true. I plan on never seeing, or smelling, you again." As Jerry strolled off toward the center of town, the donkey stood there stupidly, not knowing what to do.

Jerry soon found what he was looking for, a person who needed a roommate. He moved in to a tiny apartment on Main Street. But Jerry was so used to the open air that he felt cramped in the small space. The apartment was tiny and his roommate was a slob.

"Pick up your stuff, you slob!" Jerry scolded the man. "What do you need so much stuff for anyway?" They had a fight and Jerry's new roommate threw him out.

"And take your stupid bundle with you!" he said.

Jerry tried other places, but no one wanted him. Some people said he smelled a little like a donkey. He decided to go back to his old life. He slung his bundle of stuff over his shoulder and started walking. It was a long way to the next town.

The night was growing dark and his legs were sore, so he stopped to sit at the side of the dusty road. And as he did he smelled something on the wind. It smelled a little like rotten pickles. The scent reminded him of sweaty socks. It was redolent of the armpits of a homeless beggar. It smelled like Jerry's donkey, and it smelled wonderful.

On Tenure, LIFO, and Paying for Years of Service

2011-05-28T08:40:00.007-04:00

WARNING: Serious teacher post ahead.

There's been a lot of talk lately about reforming (or even getting rid of) tenure in the public school system. Critics say it makes it virtually impossible for districts to fire bad teachers. Another argument is that it grants teachers more job protection than anyone else in our economy. Less talked about are the related issues of LIFO* (last in, first out) and basing teachers' salaries on their years of service. In Michigan, and in many other places across the nation, all of these under attack.

I'm not going to trot out all the usual defenses of these practices. What I will do is offer a glimpse of what would happen if they disappeared.

What critics will say is that teachers should be treated like any other employee. They should be rewarded for good performance and penalized when they're ineffective. No one wants a great teacher laid off just because she's young. Teacher pay should be based on effectiveness, not seniority. These sound like reasonable arguments. But in actual practice, tenure, LIFO, and paying teachers based on years of service provide certainty to districts and consistency to communities.

Changing the current system will lead to unintended consequences. The legislature would essentially be turning every teacher in the state into free agents. Without the job protection tenure affords (granted after four years in Michigan), teachers just starting out their careers (unmarried, mobile, embracing change) could hop from district to district looking for the right fit. Without the incentive of future tenure and the yearly pay raises, there would be no reason to stay, especially for the best teachers.

If you tie teacher pay to effectiveness rather than seniority, there is nothing to keep a great teacher from leaving and looking for a better deal. Most veteran teachers I know don't even consider leaving after seven or eight years because of the hit their salaries would take when they changed districts. And which teachers would be most likely to take advantage of this new freedom? The very best ones. If you're a great teacher, why would you stay in your school if another school is willing to pay you more? And just where do you think our very best teachers would eventually end up? In the poorest districts, where they're needed most but the work would be harder and the pay less? Or in the districts who could pay them the most but probably need them the least?

Tenure, LIFO, and paying teachers based on seniority might be unpalatable, but no one can argue that it doesn't provide districts with a high degree of certainty from year to year. Right now, as districts figure out their budgets, one thing they do not have to worry about is losing half of their veteran teachers to better paying districts. And communities can count on which teachers are going to be there for their kids in the fall.

Personal Aside: I should say that as a male teacher in elementary education, these proposed changes don't terrify me. Quite the opposite. Believe me, I'd like a little more leverage. In the system described above, good teachers would be in very high demand (especially if the state actually started awarding schools for high performance) and the school system would more closely reflect the marketplace in that those teachers in the highest demand would command the highest salaries. There are very few men teaching in today's elementary schools (9 percent of teachers, actually). Given the high number of children being raised without a father at home, I think that might work to my advantage.

Another Criticism of the Criticism: Right now, schools have a much higher incentive to cut costs than they do to provide a great education. If that remains the case, it's hard to see how getting rid of tenure is going to ensure the best teachers remain in the classroom. My suspicion is that without the impediment of tenure, school districts will simply lay off the teachers who cost them the most, regardless of their effectiveness.

*"Last in, first out" is the practice school districts use for laying off teachers. Simply stated, those teachers who were hired most recently get laid off first when cuts to staff are made. Veteran teachers have virtually no fear of losing their job due to staffing cuts.

A Fable, Retold

2011-05-24T21:20:00.008-04:00

One day the animals were bored and so they decided to stage a contest. Zebra said, "I say we have a contest to see who has the most stripes!" Cow said, "I think we should battle to see who can produce the most milk!" Flamingo said, "I think we should hold a contest to see who looks best standing on one leg." And Raccoon said, "I think we should all dress up, and whichever one of us looks most like the Hamburglar should win!"

The other animals all hissed or mooed or growled or quacked or cawed or roared or whinnied or...you get the picture.

But then Cheetah strolled into the clearing and purred, "I say we race to see who is fastest."

Now Cheetah was widely regarded as the most arrogant of the animals (except for Lion, but he was always asleep) and all the other animals talked behind his back and spoke openly about their desire to knock him from his self-appointed pedestal. However, most of the animals were clever enough to realize that they stood no chance in a race against Cheetah.

"I'll do it!" proclaimed Human, who never lacked for unwarranted confidence.
"I'll do it!" blurted Hare, who wanted to make amends for that lackluster performance against the Tortoise.
"Fine. I'll do it," snapped Tortoise, after Crocodile and Chameleon goaded him into defending his title.

And so the field was set. On the appointed day, Human, Hare, Tortoise, and Cheetah all lined up at the starting line. Human thought, "I'll use my superior intellect to win." Hare thought, "I won't make the mistake of taking a nap in the middle of this race." Tortoise hoped the others would somehow disqualify themselves. And Cheetah told himself over and over, "I'm the fastest animal in the kingdom. Nobody is as fast as me. I'm awesome. I'm unbelievable. I'm so fast, I make light jealous!"

And they were off. Cheetah raced ahead of the pack, quickly disappearing over a rise. Human had hidden a pistol in his running shorts, but by the time he pulled it out and took aim, the Cheetah was out of range. He shot Hare instead. And Tortoise plodded along, inch after inch, as Human swore and Cheetah sped farther and farther away.

By the time Tortoise finally crawled over the finish line, Cheetah had already bought twelve rounds of drinks for the other animals to celebrate his victory. The animals seemed to have forgiven Cheetah his arrogance. Everybody loves a winner, especially when they buy the booze. Human was especially happy. He tried to hug Tortoise, but fell over instead.

"Congratulations," Tortoise said to Cheetah. "You are the fastest."

"I always knew I was," Cheetah said. "Slow and steady may have worked once, but it's a poor substitute for talent and confidence."

THE END

What I Learned About Sneezing

2011-05-19T21:26:00.007-04:00

In general, I don't care for research. This is why I will probably never write historical fiction. However, there are times when, in the course of writing a scene, I doubt myself and feel the need to go googling. I was researching the act of sneezing the other day with the aim of determining how badly you can injure yourself in the act. I had heard that your heart stops when you sneeze and for years this sounded completely reasonable to me. After all, if a sneeze can force you to shut your eyes when you're blazing down the expressway at ~~85,~~ 65 then surely it can stop your ticker.

Turns out it can't. I know, I was a little bummed too.

So then I googled, "Can sneezing kill you?" because, let's face it, we're kind of fragile things, we humans.

Alas, sneezing rarely leads to death (although if you're sick and you sneeze on a really old person, there's a chance).

But don't be disheartened. Sneezing can jack you up in lots of other wonderful ways. Scientists estimate the speed of a sneeze (band name alert) at 650 mph. Not surprisingly, it's kind of stupid to try and hold this sort of force back. You can bust an eardrum, tear blood vessels, damage your sinuses, or even cause a brain hemorrhage. (Never realized stifling a sneeze and watching Joy Behar had so much in common.)

And even if you don't hold them back, sneezes can be strong enough to cause a whiplash effect, leading to pulled muscles, bitten tongues, and even broken teeth.

In short, sneezes are bad ass.

And occasionally, so is research.

Here's a video of a baby panda sneezing and scaring all hell out of its mother:

And in a "you-can't-make-this-sort-of-thing-up" blessing, here's a news article about a girl who can't stop sneezing, a condition called Paediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcus, AKA...yep...PANDAS.

Awesome.

Source

Notes From Third Graders

2011-05-12T14:19:00.000-04:00

Was given the following two notes today:

to: murphy
from: jimbo*

you are the best teacher of 3rd grade that I ever had in my life. you are so nice because you learn me great.

love: jimbo

_____________________________________________

Dear, Mr. Muphy

please don't make Cleopatra* get in trouble. She will get grounded for 5 years. Mr. Murphy please. Cleopatra is my best friend. I don't want her to get in trouble. Then she will tell everyone that you are a bad and mean teacher. Please. Then nobody will want to go to your class or they will sign their children out of this school and they will take their money back. Cleopatra means so much to me. What if you had a friend that you like and she/he meant so much to you?

From: Chrysanthemum*

_____________________________________________

Never a dull day.
*Names have been changed to keep me from losing my job.

Possibly the Best Title Ever

2011-05-05T18:35:00.003-04:00

Credit to Anita for asking the question.

My response to that question was too long for the comments, and I haven't blogged anything except that self-congratulatory thing about my mad Twitter skillz in something resembling forever, so here you go.

The best title for a kids book has got to be:

How Lamar's Bad Prank Won a Bubba-Sized Trophy

Here's why:

1. You know what the book is about, which is a good thing.

2. The name Lamar leads one to believe that the main character is black, and, let's face it, this is still fairly unique in the kidlit arena. Unique is interesting.

3. Pranks are always fun to read about.

4. Questions: What exactly is a "bad prank" and how in the world does performing such a thing garner a trophy?

5. The use of the term "bubba-sized" is a good indication of the kind of voice we're going to be exposed to in the novel and it's a voice I'd like to hang out with for a while.

6. We know the ending (or at least, we can assume the ending has to do with winning the trophy) and now the reason to read is to find out how this seemingly inexplicable thing happens. This is one of my favorite story structures. TV shows use it all the time: The victim is seen lying on top of a high-rise in a pool of blood and then the story starts some time earlier and we watch to find out how such a thing happened. Love it.

7. There also seems to be a story of redemption buried in the title. A kid who performs "bad pranks" does not typically win anything, unless withering glares can be counted as winning. My guess: Lamar is a lovable troublemaker who finally comes out on top. And who doesn't love it when that happens?

Anyway, I haven't read it yet, but I will, just because of the title.

My Tweeting Success

2011-04-28T15:59:00.001-04:00

A tweet of mine made it on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night.

See it here.

You Want Me To Teach What Now?

2011-04-24T09:59:00.003-04:00

Here are just a few things I pulled from Michigan's third grade standards:

Social Studies:

E2.0.1 - Using a Michigan example, describe how specialization leads to increased interdependence.

P3.1.3 - Give examples of how conflicts over core democratic values lead people to differ on resolutions to a public policy issue in Michigan.

Science:

S.RS.E.1 Reflecting on knowledge is the application of scientific knowledge to new and different situations. Reflecting on knowledge requires careful analysis of evidence that guides decision-making and the application of science throughout history and within society.

S.IP.E.1 Inquiry involves generating questions, conducting investigations, and developing solutions to problems through reasoning and observation.

Reading:

R.CM.03.03 compare and contrast relationships among characters, events, and key ideas within and across texts to create a deeper understanding; including a narrative to an informational text, a literature selection to a subject area text, and an historical event to a current event.

R.NT.03.04 explain how authors use literary devices including prediction, personification, and point of view to develop a story level theme, depict the setting, and reveal how thoughts and actions convey important character traits.

Food for thought: I'd say around half of my students still believe in the Easter Bunny.

Brain development--those who write state standards might want to take a course.

I Need New Blogs to Read

2011-04-20T16:58:00.003-04:00

A lot of the blogs I used to read haven't been updated in a long time, (You know, kind of like this one) so I could use some fresh voices. If there's a blog you love, could you send me a link and maybe a quick word about why you visit? Thanks.

Easter Stuff

2011-04-19T22:23:00.001-04:00

Easter Eggs With Legs

By

Paul Michael Murphy

In a pot, I boiled them,
this year’s Easter eggs.
And after I had colored them,
I went and gave them legs.

I put them in a bowl last night,
so Mom could hide them today.
She says she never saw them.
I guess they just walked away.

And here's a repeat from two Easters ago:

Happy Easter!

I'm on Twitter

2011-04-17T18:11:00.004-04:00

(Hangs head in shame)

Anyway, follow me or whatever. I'm P_M_Murphy because all the good names, like Ashton Kutcher, were taken. This link might take you there (I still don't really get Twitter.)

Why did I do it? Mostly because I have a smartphone now that I like to play with and this will give me something else to do with it. And also because summer nears and summer equals lots of free time for teachers, despite what Wisconsin teachers' union officials say.

Update: Try this link instead.

The Blog Post Otherwise Known as I Watched the Forgettin' Grammys

2011-02-14T20:29:00.004-05:00

As a general rule, I hate awards shows. This is mostly due to acceptance speeches and gag-inducing pretension. But I watched the Grammys anyway, even though I know next to nothing about music. The Wife was there to explain things to me as the show went along and by the end of the night I learned some things and I have a few thoughts:

Bob Dylan was either singing poorly or unsuccessfully trying to hork up a loogie.

Cee Lo followed in the footsteps of legendary performers Johnny Cash and Elton John and performed with Muppets, which makes him the coolest person alive, even if CBS totally uncooled his song by calling it "The Song Otherwise Known as 'Forget You.'

The nominees for Best Rock Album were a bunch of old dudes and some band named Muse. Tom Petty and Pearl Jam were nominated. I guess it's nice to know that rock music hasn't gotten any better since my sophomore year of high school. I'm surprised Lenny Kravitz didn't make an appearance...oh, wait, he did?

Eminem somehow manages to enunciate really well and still leave me totally baffled. He's like the Micro Machines guy, except angrier.

Bieber somehow lost Best New Artist to Pam Munoz Ryan's middle grade novel Esperanza Rising. I'm as confused as you are.

Barbra Streisand...I don't get it.

There's an award called "Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals." Train won. I'm glad, because Train annoys me and so does that award.

Mick Jagger is seven years older than my dad. Somehow, I can't picture my dad prancing around on stage.

CBS did a nice job of limiting Seacrest.

But mostly what I learned is that the music I grew up listening to is better than the music kids listen to today. The Best Rock Album nominees prove it. Now, what the forget did I do with my Appetite for Destruction cassette?

Chris Rylander, Author of The Fourth Stall

2011-02-06T08:00:00.005-05:00

Chris Rylander has been called many things: the voice of the next generation, the Mario Puzo of children's literature, and, every once in a while, Chris or Christopher. In between unicorn hunts, he managed to write a book for kids. The Fourth Stall, summarized here, tells the story of...ah, just read the link...and comes out February 8.

I sat down with Chris on the veranda of his seaside manor in a beautiful fiefdom he's dubbed "North Dakota." After pointing and laughing at a few of his serfs, we got down to the interview.

Murphblog: I’ve seen the book described as “The Godfather for kids,” which begs the question, “Why didn’t I think of that?” What made you think of it and did you run into any problems that might explain why less courageous writers (like Nicholas Sparks) have been reluctant to bring the world of organized crime into children’s fiction?

Rylander: I don’t really have a concrete explanation as to where the idea came from. I guess I was just sitting there eating some frosting probably or something, and then I thought to myself how fun it might be to take organized crime and put a kid-friendly spin on it. There were some challenges, sure, like trying to walk the line between the right amount of violence and having the kids use severed horse heads as pillows and everything. But in the end, I always just asked myself this question: “Is there enough blood and gratuitous violence in this scene?” And if the answer was “no,” then I simply added more. And I think it turned out pretty well. One dead body per page is usually a pretty good rule for children’s books. No, but seriously it was a challenge to get that part just right - because I didn't want to soften it to the point where it was cheesy. But I also didn't want to glorify grade-school gang wars.

Murphblog: Your main characters, Vince and Mac, love the Chicago Cubs and save money to attend a World Series game. The back of the book states that you’re also a huge Cubs fan. Psychoanalyze the Cub fan. What kind of person puts himself through such misery and disappointment year after year?

Rylander: The sort of person who is the opposite of that one guy who always loves to point out how right he is all the time while simultaneously pretending he is only feigning pride but deep down we all know what a smug jerk he is despite the fact that basically everybody likes him anyway and you just can’t figure out why. Did that make sense? I hope not.

Me: Sticking with the Cubs, which of the following emotions best describes how you feel when you read the name Steve Bartman:

a. Hatred because he screwed the Cubs
b. Pity because of how abominably he was treated
c. Jealousy because he had such great seats
d. Other—please explain.

Rylander: – b. Pity because of how abominably he was treated. Bartman, if you’re out there reading this, contact me, I’ll send you a free copy of my book. Heck, I’ll even send you two if you can somehow get the Cubs back to the NLCS.

Me: In the book, Vince is fond of repeating the befuddling wisdom of his grandmother. One example is, “The only real way to eat a pinecone is with tortoise gravy and a sense of self-worth.” What’s the worst advice you could give to someone who’s trying to write a novel?

Rylander: I’d say to write out your novel by hand using a mixture of water and your own blood for ink. That way, when you send the manuscript to editors and agents to consider, you can also include a note that says, “There’s literally a little bit of me in every single page. Enjoy.” They’ll be delighted, and you’ll have a book deal in no time. That, and I also always like to remind people about the importance of wearing a bow tie when you write.

Me: Back to the Cubs. In the book, Vince and Mac try to stump each other with Cubs trivia. I have some Cubs trivia for you. No cheating.

Rylander: This is not fair.

a. Nevertheless. In what year did the Cubs play their first night game at Wrigley Field?

Rylander: I’m pretty sure it was in the late 1980’s… I’ll say 1987. The thing is, I black out most of the Cubs games I watch because they’re just too painful to remember. So I never remember the trivia and Cubs facts they talk about on air. Mac and Vince, however, are too young to have developed that protective crust of cynicism, so they soak it all up like sponges.

[Editor's Note: The first night game was on Aug. 9, 1988.]

b. Why did Keith Moreland wear eye black when it was cloudy?

Rylander: Keith who?

[Editor's note: This is an acceptable answer.]

c. The Cubs have gone over 45 years without being no-hit. Which Hall of Famer was the last to throw a no-hitter against them?

Rylander: I want to say it was probably Koufax or Gibson, but I think this is likely a trick question. You can’t fool me that easily. It was definitely Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh. Either him or former president Teddy Roosevelt… Teddy could do just about anything. In 08/08/88, he once stopped a tornado with nothing but a yo-yo and a smile.

[Editor's Note: Koufax. Well done, Chris!]

Me: The villain of your book is a teenage gangster named Staples. What other office supplies would make good gangster names?

Rylander: I don’t know, I went through them all, and I think Staples is the best. I toyed with both Eraserhead and Tapehead, but those were both already taken. Pen15 seemed too juvenile. And Notebook Pants just didn’t have the same ring to it. But Pencil-Cup McCoy was a close second, I can’t lie.

Me: The story contains a plot twist concerning Mac and Vince. When you write, do you plan everything out first or just go where the story takes you and make the necessary changes later?

Rylander: A little of both. I don’t plan out very much at first, but then as I get further along I plan more and more. Although, I really have to give my agent and editor a lot of credit. They both really helped me to shape the final plot and make it all work. And while I’m at, I should probably thank that glass of orange juice I drank that one time for giving me the energy I needed to finish the book.

Me: The end of the book implies a sequel. Are you working on that now? What other projects do you have going?

Rylander: Yes, actually, I just finished the final draft of sequel. That should come out about a year from now. As for other projects, it’s more like what don’t I have going… So that’s how I’ll answer. Here are the only genres that I currently don’t have a project started in:

Me: Well, Chris, between hunting unicorns, avoiding sharks, upstaging Nicholas Sparks, lording over the fiefdom of "North Dakota," and writing in every genre, it sounds like you're keeping busy. Thanks for making some time for us.

Rylander: Thanks so much for all of the great questions, Murphblog! It was a lot of fun.

Fable: Robin and Bluebird

2011-02-04T22:50:00.003-05:00

Robin and Bluebird

Robin and Bluebird spent the night sleeping in Farmer Johnson’s oak tree. The next morning, while it was still dark, Robin awoke, bright and chipper and full of as much vivacity as he always was.

“Tweet! Tweet!” he said to himself. “I’m up and at ‘em and ready to seize the day! And I sure am hungry!”

As quietly as he could, so as not to wake Bluebird, Robin lifted off his perch and flitted to the ground. He pecked at the soft earth and soon found a fat, juicy worm.

“You know what they say,” Robin said, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” and he quickly gobbled up the worm.

He flew back into the tree with a full belly and an even more cheerful attitude.

“Tweet! Tweet!” he tweeted. “Wake up, Bluebird! It’s time to get up!”

Bluebird grunted and tried to ignore Robin.

“No, no,” Robin said. “It’s time to start your day. You’re a bird and you need to act like one. Birds wake up and tweet early in the morning.”

Bluebird mumbled, “Just let me sleep. I’m tired. I was out all night partying with Cockatiel.”

“Tweet! Tweet! You’d better get up. You know what they say: ‘The early bird gets the worm.’ If you don’t get up soon all the best ones will be gone!”

Bluebird cracked open an eye. “The sun’s not even out,” he grumbled.

“The earlier the better, that’s what I say,” said Robin, and he flew off to sit on a telephone wire.

Bluebird fell back to sleep, and without Robin there to pester him, didn’t wake up until almost noon. When he finally staggered off his bough, he dropped down onto Farmer Johnson’s property and soon dug up a small worm of his own. Contented, he flew back into the tree and sang a song.

The next morning, Robin was once again up before dawn.

“Tweet! Tweet!” he said to himself. “I’m up and at ‘em and ready to seize the day! And I sure am hungry!”

Robin flew down to the ground and had no trouble finding the fattest, juiciest, most succulent worm.

“Bluebird doesn’t know what he’s missing,” he said to himself.

But just before flying to his telephone wire he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

It was Farmer Johnson’s cat!

Robin tried to lift off the ground, but because he had spent his life waking up early to eat the largest worms, he was rather large himself and lacked the reflexes a leaner and more rested bird would have had.

Before he could get off the ground, the cat pounced on Robin and ate him.

By the time Bluebird finally got around to starting his day, the cat was back inside the house, asleep on Farmer Johnson’s couch, and Bluebird had no trouble finding a worm to his liking.

The moral of the story is: Getting up early is overrated.

Aesop, Revised

2011-02-01T17:49:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I give assignments for no other purpose than my own amusement. Since we're studying fables, I can sort of justify this one, but mostly I just wanted a laugh and some blog material. I gave students some well known morals with their ends chopped off and asked them to finish them. The results:

Aesop: Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

Third Graders: Don't count your chickens before _____________.

eating them
breakfast
cutting them
they lay eggs
slicing their heads off with an axe

Aesop: Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Third graders: Don't bite the hand that ______________.

helps you
smells bad
kills
is bloody
is strong
is already hurt

Aesop: He who has many friends has none.

Third graders: He who has many friends has ________________.

no money
not very good ones
lots of company
lots of help

Aesop: He who groans loudest is often the least hurt.

Third graders: He who groans loudest is often ____________.

nobody's friend
a baby
the man in the house
the boss
in trouble
in jail
ignored by others

Aesop: If you want a task done well, then do it yourself.

Third graders: If you want a task done well, then _____________.

you've got to do it right
ask questions
you have to pay someone
work harder
try again
do what you're good at
read the directions

Aesop: You can't please everybody.

Third graders: You can't please _____________.

my dad
a grumpy man
a donkey
mother nature
yourself or anyone else

Aesop: Quality is more important than quantity.

Third graders: Quality is more important than ___________.

other stuff
chicken wings
TV
Billy Ray Cyrus's hair

Aesop: Think twice before you act.

Third graders: Think twice before you _____________.

fight someone bigger than you
run in a busy road
die
do it (I don't think he meant this in the way I would probably mean it)

And some random ones:

A bird in the cage is worth two on a pogo stick.
Misery loves you and your family.
Misery loves her or his mommy.
A bird in the cage is worth two on a platter.
One good turn deserves a hug or pat on the back.

Published!

2011-01-05T17:41:00.003-05:00

My poem, "The Ride," appears on the back cover of the January/February issue of Jack and Jill Magazine. Got my cc's in the mail today, and I'd like to give credit to the editor who made the changes. The poem is better because of them. Also, the artwork is sweet. Well done, Gary LaCoste.

Third Grade Imagery

2011-01-04T14:27:00.005-05:00

No, I'm not going to describe what was left in the toilet in my class bathroom this afternoon.

You're welcome.

I am going to share some examples of imagery my students came up with. Some context: I did a lesson on imagery today in which I defined it, read a book that contained a lot of it (This one), and then gave students some things to describe--Clouds, rain, snow. I got some good stuff, some cliche* stuff, and of course there was the clueless contingent. I'm sharing the good and the bad, but leaving out the cliche. You're not eight; you already know them.

The Good

The clouds looked like giant mashed potatoes.
The snow fell like baby powder.
The clouds looked like fluffy sour cream on a blue spoon.
I watched through the window as God melted icicles.
The snow was like a feather; you couldn't hear it at all.
The clouds were like little white boats in the ocean sky.
The snow was like whipped cream.
I looked out my window as a drizzle comes down, tiny water balloons crashing and breaking apart.
The rain fell like little liquid raisins.
The clouds were like fat blobs of cream cheese spread on a bagel. (Editor's note: Yum.)

The Clueless

I love how the clouds move.
I hate snow because it storms and that's why I don't like rain. (Editor's note: Swear to god that's what it says.)
I like snow. (Same kid.)
Rain makes rainbows.
Snow can get things wet.
Rain everywhere when it rains.
I love when it snows because we have snow days (me too!)
Snow is like hail, but softer.

And the Never Gonna Be a Poet Award goes to...

Snow is a weather. It is a weather in the winter because there is snowflakes. Snow is cold. Snow is dangerous because you might slip on the ice and fall on the ice.

*If you'd like a lesson in futility (and humility) try teaching third graders what cliches are. It is, by definition, almost impossible. Nothing is overused to them--they're eight! You wouldn't believe how many kids think "He ran faster than a deer" is the height of originality.

Books Read In 2010

2011-01-04T08:34:00.001-05:00

This one's for my own records. 78 books, a little short of last year's mark. I hit a dry spell in late summer.

It Snowed in New York

2010-12-30T13:28:00.006-05:00

I'm sure you haven't heard.

I have some strong feelings on the snow, or, mainly New Yorkers' whiny response to it. First, judging by the breathless coverage on the news you'd think all of the following:

1. It had never snowed in New York before.
2. New York snow is thicker, heavier, slipperier, and generally more problematic than snow in the rest of the country.
3. There might be a rest of the country, but it's not all that important what happens there, unless what happens there somehow demonstrates that the people who live in that part of the country (which, lest you forget, is not New York) are less civilized than those who live in New York. Like that crazy pastor who wanted to burn the Korans.

Now I'm going to admit something that I shouldn't. It gratifies me that a bunch of New Yorkers are stuck in the snow. It makes me happy that these folks who so casually deride rural living are now trapped by the urban congestion they profess to love. I laugh at the folly of their narrow streets, at the fickleness of their public transportation system, at their lack of wide open parking spaces. It makes me smile to know that we hicks who live in the middle of the country, if we don't have one ourselves, know somebody who can attach a plow to the front of their gas guzzling pick-up truck and plow their own damn road. It pleases me to think that these sophisticated people, who willingly pay exorbitant taxes for the privilege of living in the "greatest city in the world" are suddenly left in the lurch when their precious government can't compete with nature. I chortle in glee as I picture the stranded car waiting to be freed by the disgruntled plow driver.

Perhaps now, more than five years after Hurricane Katrina, people will finally begin to realize that no matter how much faith we put in government, there are things for which it will be woefully overmatched. Maybe now, with self-important New Yorkers blaming their mayor for an inadequate response, we'll finally admit that no matter how often government promises to take care of us, the reality is we better, when the shit hits the fan, be prepared to take care of ourselves. Maybe now, now that their self-assured, smug, condescending attitudes have been covered in a little snow, they'll realize that the New York way isn't the only way. That there are people out here in the great middle whose ideas aren't stuck in the past and whose way of life deserves a little more than the supercilious scorn usually reserved for it by the self-appointed elite.

But probably not.

I've Been Kindled

2010-12-30T12:27:00.005-05:00

This is me reading my Kindle. I love it like whoa. I was sort of an anti-ereader person last year but the more I had to wait for a title to free up at the library, and the more my house got stuffed with books, and the more I looked at the economics, the more it made sense to ask for a Kindle. The Wife got it for me for Christmas. I'm reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest on it right now (which sucks, by the way), and that leads me to a story...

When I purchased that book (with an Amazon gift card, bang!) The Wife was jealous because she wanted to read it and there was pretty much no way I was going to just give her my Kindle for three days or whatever. But then we had another Christmas to attend--The Wife's side. And at that Christmas, my mother-in-law presented The Wife and I with one of those It's For Both of You presents. I let The Wife open it because I'm chivalrous. We were warned:

"Now, if you don't want this, I'll buy it back from you," Mother-in-law said. I was intrigued.

The Wife opened it and it was...(you already know, don't you, you anticipatory reader)...a Kindle!

Mother-in-law was apologetic because she'd found out a day or two before that The Wife had already given me one, so she felt bad that I hadn't gotten a gift. I quickly corrected her. I had been given a gift, and it was the greatest gift of all--the gift of not having to share.

Now, there are two things I'd like to share (see what I did there?), one of which wouldn't be possible (or at least very difficult to do) without a Kindle. If you've read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or any of the subsequent books, you know that the author is (was?), for some reason, obsessed with telling the reader exactly what his characters eat. If I've learned anything about Sweden it's that they eat a lot of sandwiches and drink a lot of coffee. They drink coffee so often that I was curious just how many times the word "coffee" appeared in the third installment of the series. So I used the search function and discovered that there are 103 uses of the word in the book. The book, in its paper form, is about 600 pages, which means that, on average, coffee is explicitly mentioned every sixth page. Here's an idea: how about having someone drink a Coke?

Also, you can browse the Kindle Store and search for titles and whatnot, just like on the Net. So, for research purposes, I looked up books on "psi"( paranormal ability and the like). I got a bunch of books and I clicked on a few and I found this gem, summarized thus:

Chronicles of Psi – Book I – A New Beginning

In a world that has reinvented itself from the ashes of a ruined civilization comes a child of The Foretelling who must find his way to save mankind from further destruction. Along his way the forces of his world conspire against him to destroy him or gain the power he wields for their own selfish purposes. He must learn his destiny and how to use his gift before the world is ravaged and destroyed yet again.

A young girl, trained as an assassin, is commissioned to protect the boy, yet finds herself embroiled in this war of politics and subtlety even as she leaves her guild training grounds. Her greatest challenge lie in finding him in time before the others seeking to destroy him do.
This story begins the saga of the Chronicles of Psi, where the rare gift of psionics or mind powers called “Psi” are used by human and creatures alike to the benefit or destruction of those around them. This post apocalyptic world is filled with terrible creatures and forces struggling for power over the world.

Favorite parts:

1. The whole first sentence, which almost makes a little sense. Also, what good is "The Foretelling" if it failed to stop the destruction of the world the first time? Are we just supposed to not care about the first mankind? You know, the one that was totally wiped out before this foretold child showed up after the fact?

2. I like how the "forces of his world" are unsure whether they want to kill him or steal his powers. Nothing like indecisive forces.

3. Who commissions an assassin to protect somebody? Does the commissioner value irony over success? Maybe this world should be wiped out too.

4. What does a "war of subtlety" look like? Do people raise their eyebrows cryptically at one another until someone gives up in confusion?

5. If the assassin's "greatest challenge" is in finding the kid, then what's the point of sending an assassin? Why not send someone who's really good at hide and seek?

6. Psychic powers can apparently be used for good or evil. Huh. Who knew?

And a bonus for the new year: Glamour shot!!!

Are you entranced by my beguiling gaze?

Poetry and Christmas Gifts Go Together Like Chocolate and Milk

2010-12-23T20:00:00.005-05:00

Here's the poem I attached to the Yankee Swap present that I took to today's Christmas gathering:

"Shit You Sometimes Need"

If you want a sexy gift
then this one's not for you.
It will not make your car shine
it doesn't make fondue.
There are no gift cards in this box,
no wine or Lotto tickets.
Once it's open the response we'll hear
will probably resemble crickets.
These are things you hate to buy
so please, do not get peeved.
If you're a girl or a guy
it's shit you sometimes need.
So if you hate it, pack it up
Put it right back in the box.
And just be glad you didn't get
six pairs of argyle socks.
You might regret the choice you made
it may remind you of what's in your colon.
But like Jesus's birth, miracles happen
and your gift could still get stolen.

Because even at Christmas, I'm all about fecal references.

Vonnegut's Creative Writing 101

2010-12-14T17:30:00.003-05:00

From the introduction to his book of short stories, Bagombo Snuff Box:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things--reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them--in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

He then says great writers tend to break all the rules except the first one.

The Goose and the Golden Eggs

2010-12-10T22:27:00.002-05:00

The Goose and the Golden Eggs

The farmer was poor. Grain prices had fallen precipitously. He didn’t have the heart to slaughter his cows. Cows were so peaceful. How could you kill something that lowed? It didn’t particularly bother the farmer that he was poor. He was a man of few needs. His wife, however, dreamed of fancy cars and sparkly jewelry and other things that would make her friends jealous. She had grown tired of being pitied by those in her social circle and although she respected the farmer for his honesty she told him one day, “If you don’t start making some money, I’m leaving you.”

Although she was harsh and honest to a fault, the farmer liked the idea of having a happy wife. He began to brainstorm ways he could make more money. He’d once had an idea for a game show, but he wasn’t sure how one went about having television shows made. And he’d heard on the radio in his truck a story about a man who made millions by placing tiny ads in newspapers, but he was skeptical. A solution did not immediately present itself, so the farmer went where he always went when he wanted to do some serious thinking. He went to the barn.

In addition to the cows, the farmer owned a goose. The goose was old and while it still provided the occasional egg, the farmer mostly kept it around because it seemed to be a good listener. While the farmer talked, the goose would emit an occasional honk that, to the believing ear, seemed to be pitched in way that simulated conversation.
“I’ve got a problem, goose,” the farmer said.

The goose honked plaintively, as though affirming something it already knew.

“My lady’s fixing to leave me unless I can scrap together enough money to get her something fancy. She likes fancy things, she does.”
The goose honked: “I know she does.”
“I been trying to think of something but I just can’t. Guess I’m a little outta practice. Only thing I know is farming and farming don’t make a man or his woman rich.”
Honk, once again, in agreement.
“Ah, well. I’m sure I’ll come up with something. Life tends to work out, you know,” the farmer said.
Honk: “It does indeed.”

When the farmer went to the barn the next morning to do his chores, he noticed something shiny lying on the straw next to the goose. It was the size and shape of an egg, but as the farmer came closer he knew that an egg it could not be. It was shining like the sun. He went to lift the object but was surprised at its weight. It was much heavier than any egg should be.
“What have you got here, goose?” the farmer said.
The goose only blinked at him.
The farmer, knowing nothing of fancy things, took it inside to show to his wife. “Look what I found in the barn,” he said.
The wife handled the egg. She turned it this way and that. She smelled it. She scratched it with her nail. Flakes of gold fell off. The wife looked accusingly at the farmer. “Where did you say you got this?” she asked.
“The barn. It was next to the goose.”
“That old, worthless thing?” the wife said.
“The very.”
The wife huffed. She dropped the golden egg on the table and stood up. “You take this egg right back where you got it,” she said. “I see what you’ve done. You’ll get us both thrown in the clink.”
“But…but,” the farmer stammered. He took the egg back to the goose.

Life went on in the normal manner for some time until one day the wife came home furious. “Guess where Mildred’s going next week?” she asked the farmer. “Vegas. Mildred’s going to Vegas for a vacation. Know where I’m going on vacation? That’s right. Nowhere. I’m going nowhere while Mildred’s going to Vegas. I’ve had it up to here!”

The farmer didn’t see what was so special about Vegas, but he thought it was his role to please his wife so he went to talk to the goose. “Hey, have you still got that golden egg?” he asked.
Honk. It sounded like a yes to the farmer. After some searching through the straw he found the egg. He took it into town and traded it for a plane ticket to Vegas. When he got home, he handed his wife an envelope. She looked at it dubiously.

“Go ahead, open it,” the farmer said.
She slid a nail along its back and pulled out the plane ticket. But instead of the surprise the farmer expected to see, his wife’s eyes flashed anger. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’ve done here. You never took that egg back like I said. The cops will be here any second, I reckon.”
“But the goose laid it!” the farmer said. “The next time it lays one I’ll take you out to the barn and show you.”
His wife sniffed. “As if I’m stepping foot in that filthy shack,” she said. She tore the ticket up and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.

The next day the goose laid another golden egg. “Come on,” the farmer told his wife. “You’ve got to come see. It’s laid a second golden egg.”
Reluctantly, the farmer’s wife followed him into the barn. There, shining brilliantly next to the goose, lay a golden egg, even larger than the last. The farmer’s wife lifted it and turned a baleful glance on the farmer. “Do you think I’m a fool?” she said. “You’re stealing these eggs from some nice rich family and pretending this goose here lays them. That’s the dumbest cover story I’ve ever heard and I know just how to put an end to your nonsense.”

She went to the wall where the farmer hung his tools and drew his scythe from a hook. She used it to slice the head clean off the goose. After that there were no more golden eggs, and the wife, claiming she couldn’t live with a man she couldn’t respect (“you could have at least made up a believable story,” she scolded), left him. She married a young man whose father had become wealthy by creating a popular game show. The farmer lived alone in poverty. And they both lived happily ever after.

Roosevelt's Revisions

2010-12-07T18:02:00.004-05:00

In the course of boning up (funny phrase that) on my Pearl Harbor history, I ran across President Roosevelt's revised draft of his famous infamy speech. Interesting to think about the choices he made as a writer. I share my thoughts below the document (which you can click to enlarge).

Most interesting is that Roosevelt's famous "a date which will live in infamy" line was originally "a date which will live in world history." Let this be a lesson on word choice. Other changes of note:

"suddenly" attacked instead of "simultaneously" attacked, which changed the focus of the sentence from being attacked by both Japan's navy and air force to the fact that it was a dirty sneak attack. Also, in this same sentence, FDR added "without warning" to the end of the sentence before realizing that "suddenly" essentially said the same thing and he struck it to avoid redundancy.

I also found it interesting how FDR changed "Hawaii and the Philippines" to "Oahu" as the place that was attacked. It's more specific and it removes the Philippines, which, let's face it, Americans wouldn't be nearly as willing to fight for. Later in the speech, other references to the attack on Manila were removed and "attacks" became singular. Indeed, that Japan attacked the Philippines on this date has largely been forgotten by history, thanks largely to Roosevelt's address. "Oahu" delivers a better punch, and it's obvious in the speech that Roosevelt is appealing to Americans' anger in his justification for war.

Later, Roosevelt, well ahead of Strunk and White, substitutes one word ("states") for three ("contained a statement").

Lastly, the beginning of the speech is intentionally written in the passive voice. As the Wikipedia article states

The wording was deliberately passive. Rather than taking the more usual active voice—i.e. "Japan attacked the United States"—Roosevelt chose to put in the foreground the object being acted upon, namely the United States, to emphasize America's status as a victim. The theme of "innocence violated" was further reinforced by Roosevelt's recounting of the ongoing diplomatic negotiations with Japan, which the president characterized as having been pursued cynically and dishonestly by the Japanese government while it was secretly preparing for war against the United States.

I Went to the Dentist Today

2010-11-24T15:41:00.003-05:00

Your first question is why. It's a fair question, one I asked myself about ten minutes into the ordeal. One answer is guilt. When it gets to be four years between appointments you start to worry that there might be something going on in there that you should know about. Like oral cancer. Which brings me to the real reason I went: fear. Specifically, fear of death and of spending a great deal of money all at once. Fear is a fine motivator. And the logical part of my brain said something like, "You know, Murph, the longer you put off going, the greater the possibility that whatever problems you do have in there are going to get worse. And that means it's going to cost a lot more to fix them, or it might be too late for you to fix them at all and then you'll die. So maybe you should go."

I went. Sometimes I listen to myself.

I had to have x-rays. You'd think this would be the easy part. I did too. But I have a really bad gag reflex. Whenever anyone tries to jam something down my throat that isn't designed to go down my throat, I gag. Crazy, I know. So the dental hygienist almost got barfed on. Three times.

That over and the vomit remaining in my stomach, she proceeded to show me my hard-earned x-ray results. They were surprisingly good. I was expecting the news to be something like, "You have oral cancer," or "we need to pull some teeth," or "you need a few root canals," so when she said, "See these pointy, shard-like things here and here and here and here and here? That's tartar."

Tartar? I laugh at tartar. I mock it in my dreams. I make fun of its spelling and mispronounce it on purpose. Tar-tar.

"We'll do a cleaning today and then another in a few weeks."

Say what? I have to come back? Because of tar-tar? But how can this be?

She started cleaning. I've cleaned things before (The wife may disagree , but really, I have). I've cleaned dishes (okay, not very often), and I've cleaned my car. I've cleaned our hot tub (once) and I clean myself nearly every day. The act usually involves water, some soap, and maybe some gentle scrubbing. This lady obviously had a different understanding of the term. Because never have I "cleaned" something by taking a metal prong and scraping the holy hell out of it for forty minutes. That's not cleaning, that's abuse, brother.

When she was finally done torturing me (I gave up nothing!), the dentist came in. As far as I can tell, the hygienist does all the work and the dentist counts the teeth. I think I could be a dentist. He counted, said some stuff I didn't understand (he's Asian), and then the hygienist said I was going to have to have two cavities filled.

Cavities? There had been no mention of cavities. I almost threw up three times and they couldn't tell I had cavities until the dentist counted my teeth with his bare eyes and a little pointy thing?

So I made the second appointment. It's over Christmas vacation. And I learned some lessons:

Lessons Learned:

1. It's better to be a dentist than a dental hygienist. Unless you're a sadist or can't count.
2. Don't make fun of tartar. It will have its revenge.
3. Cleaning teeth is not the same as cleaning other things. It hurts more.
4. X-rays are nothing compared to the discerning eye of a good dentist.
5. Going to the dentist sucks. Actually, I already knew that. So consider this one a lesson reaffirmed.

A Poem (Metaphor Included Free of Charge!)

2010-11-23T18:59:00.003-05:00

Anita was bored, and since she's just about the only reader left, I should probably make her happy. Here's a poem I wrote (and got published, but they didn't pay me) a couple years ago:

Tombstone

Paul Murphy

There’s a stone at the edge of the graveyard

It isn’t much to see.

There’s a taller one to the left of it

that looks more important to me.

But mom never seems to notice

that its shadow falls on her face

when she kneels on the ground

and touches the name

of the person who rests in this place.

Note: Is it really that hard for programmers to make it so Blogger will accept my cut and paste from Word? These geeks invented phones that can accept credit cards but they can't reconcile formatting differences?

What I'm Revising: Qualifiers

2010-11-16T21:32:00.004-05:00

Here's where I pretend I know what I'm doing and give writing advice. Something I've noticed about strong writing is a lack of what I'll call here "qualifiers." (If you know a better term then please supply it.)

Strong writers know what they're talking about and have confidence in their descriptions. Instead of writing, It felt a little like the short, disorienting fugue she sometimes got when sleeping over at a friend's house, the strong writer will authoritatively state, It felt like the short, disorienting fugue she got when sleeping over at a friend's.

Phrases and words like "a little," "sort of," "kind of," "about," "nearly," "sometimes," "like," and many others show weakness. Just say it and stick with it. Even the most discerning reader won't take offense to the mild inaccuracy of the revised sentence above. Sure, the girl probably doesn't always feel disoriented when she sleeps in a strange bed, but it's better to err on the side of conviction than to signal to your readers that even you believe the idea of description is weak.

Three Items

2010-11-12T15:46:00.003-05:00

1. I got pulled over for speeding yesterday with my daughter in the car. She told me she was going to tell her preschool teacher about it. I said go ahead, because she was going to whether or not I gave her permission. This is one reason The Wife and I will never spank her. She would tell everybody, and I'm pretty sure something would be lost in the translation.

2. Overheard before school this week: A kindergartner and his mother were awaiting the start of the school day in the hallway outside my room. The kid was whining and carrying on about something. So the mom, pulling out the trump card all parents carry up their sleeves, says, "Stop it right now or you're not going to Wal-mart after school."

3. I've seen the future, and the future is postcards.

Guess the Hack: A Game

2010-11-08T17:24:00.005-05:00

Introducing a new game today. Below you will find four excerpts. Three are cleaved from real live books written by real live professional authors. The other one I wrote. Can you spot the one written by the hack? Also, bonus points if you can guess the authors. (They're all famous.)

1. She turns, a gun glints, then sprouts a bright white flower. But the shot, in that dark, cramped corridor, goes wild. It ricochets, knitting a wild web of velocity trails across the corridor before settling, finally, into the meat of a conduit in the ceiling.

2. The embers of the fading day cooled on the horizon. And as the sun approached the end of its daily parabolic stroll, she knew she didn't want to be alone when night drew its heavy curtain.

3. For a minute or so he was quiet, catching glimpses of the big homes through the trees and manicured shrubs, all the places so clean and neat and not a soul around, nobody outside.

4. He paused, silent for a moment. Then without another word he turned away from the lights and voices in the fields and tents, and followed by his three companions went round into his garden, and trotted down the long sloping path.

Make your guesses in the comments. There are prizes, but this blog is not a participating location. Better luck somewhere else.

Speaking of which, if you'd like to post your own version, consider this express written consent.

A Lesson from Michael Chabon

2010-11-03T22:20:00.005-04:00

As you can see over there I'm reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. I've not read him before but I've heard good things. I picked up the book because Gary Trudeau, interviewed in my USA Today newspaper insert, said that he reads mostly non-fiction because if he reads someone like Chabon it'll take him three months to get through the book because he's so frequently knocked off his feet that he stops to analyze just what Chabon did that accomplished the knocking. So I pretty much had to read him even though I hate Doonesbury. (And most comic strips, really. Not funny. Like, hardly ever.)

Anyway, Chabon taught me something not to do.

He's an amazing writer. That much is clear a page or two in. But he does something at the beginning of chapter two that I have now promised myself not to do. I share it with you, free of charge:

Here's the end of chapter one:

Joseph Kavalier lifted his own head from the mattress and stuffed the pillow beneath it. "Thank you," he said, then lay still once more. Presently, his breathing grew steady and slowed to a congested rattle, leaving Sammy to ponder alone, as he did every night, the usual caterpillar schemes.

I was blown away by "caterpillar schemes." At first, it was one of those short phrases that in the course of reading strikes you like a hand to the chest. You stop, notice, and then really consider the thing. I went back and reread and, once having figured out the meaning, just kind of sat there for a few seconds thinking, Shit, that's good. Who among us hasn't, in our youth, lain awake night after night, considering how we might break free of our ugly selves and emerge fantastically into a new world of color and possibility? It's a perfect metaphor. I was left both bitterly envious and awed at once.

And then Chabon ruined it.

I was proud to have figured the thing out. I'm not a smart man, Jenny. When I understand a metaphor, I'm like to tell my wife about it. So I was feeling good about myself and feeling a fawning admiration for the writer when I read this at the start of chapter two:

It was a caterpillar scheme--a dream of fabulous escape--that had ultimately carried Josef Kavalier across Asia and the Pacific to his cousin's narrow bed on Ocean Avenue.

I was pissed. I wasn't immediately aware of why I was pissed, so I thought about it. And here's the lesson for the day, kids.

When you come up with something so incredibly fresh and awesome such as "caterpillar scheme" you don't repeat it. Use it once and get out quickly. Repeating it lets everyone know that you know it's fresh and awesome. It's a turn-off. It's a little like coming up with the perfect one liner at a dinner party and then saying it again.

Also, trust the reader. I wasn't educated at Harvard. I was not raised on the classics. I never took a college course that required me to analyze literary novels. But I understood exactly what Chabon meant and he cheapened my understanding by explaining it to me with "a dream of fabulous escape." I felt insulted. Trust your reader to recognize your brilliance. And if they don't, so what? It's their loss.

Some Thoughts on Stuff

2010-11-03T20:46:00.002-04:00

I've been reading a lot more lately. This is because it's now cold outside, and my new favorite place to read is in the hot tub.

Speaking of reading, I read Michael Lewis's book The Big Short. It's about the subprime mortgage crisis. Although I understood approximately one-third of the book I still enjoyed it. Lewis obviously sees the Wall Street traders and ratings agencies as the villains, and he makes a strong case. However, I still can't excuse the actions of millions of Americans who took out loans that were obviously too good to be true. The greed wasn't only on Wall Street. There's a problem with society at large when that many people feel the need to impress their friends by purchasing what they had to know was too much house.

Has anyone invented a washer-dryer combo that allows me to avoid the physical transfer of the wet clothes into the dryer? This doesn't seem that hard. You put the washer on top of the dryer. When it's done, a hatch opens in the bottom and the dryer turns on. Come on, inventors. Quit dicking around with making phones do stuff I never want my phone to do and come up with something useful.

I voted. I got a sticker. It felt good. The voting, that is. The sticker didn't feel like much at all.

I have a new and what will surely be short-lived interest in high finance after reading the book mentioned above. And here's my advice: The Fed's 600 billion dollar stimulus is going to lead to more inflation than they hope. Buy gold.

I wrote a killer lead to my work-in-progress, but connecting that killer lead to the next sentence is proving difficult. The transition is sort of a let-down. Maybe that's why so many books I read don't really have very good leads.

Judy Blume overuses dialogue tags in the Fudge books. (I've been reading them aloud to my class and reading something aloud makes most dialogue tags feel superfluous.)

I can't explain it, but I'm really good at Wii Tennis.

Vote

2010-11-01T21:48:00.003-04:00

I'm doing my civic duty and reminding you to vote. I would like to say that I don't care how you vote, but that's not true. I actually do care. Because the morons you people in other states elect can completely screw things up for the rest of us. (Talking to you, Massachusetts.)

Now, some people say that if you don't vote then you have no business complaining about how things turn out in the coming years. But that's just a bunch of nonsense that people repeat because it sounds good. The truth is, half of the people in this country who are able to vote will not. And guess what? A lot of them will bitch about all sorts of things in the coming months and years.

And they can. It's called freedom of speech. See, freedom of speech means you can say any stupid thing you want to and you can even say it if you don't vote. No one's checking. Seriously.

If you don't vote and then you complain about the results and someone says to you, "Yeah? Well who did you vote for?" you can simply lie to them and say you voted for the other person and things would be better if that person had won. It's really easy. You just pretend to have voted. And if you're the kind of person who's going to lie about voting then you're probably also the kind of person I don't really want voting in the first place. There are enough disingenuous turds in the political process already. So stay home. Liar.

Halloween Party Time!

2010-10-22T23:02:00.004-04:00

Next Friday is Halloween party day at school. For the uninitiated, Halloween party day is when students stuff their cheap Wal-mart costumes into their backpacks, spend the morning learning absolutely nothing because all they can think about is changing into said costumes, and then, after donning their Iron Man or Darth Vader or fireman (how quaint) get-up, proceed to growl at me under the mistaken impression that I am somehow confused about their true identity.

Holy shit. The Hulk is in my classroom.

We have a parade first. Here's how it works: Everyone gets in their costumes (including the teachers. If you don't, you have to endure an hour's worth of "What are you supposed to be?" and "Nice costume" and "Party pooper". And that's just the other teachers.). We line up. We walk through the halls and around the building, then back through classrooms so that all the little kids can see us. Kids I don't know wave at me. Three of my future delinquents will try their damndest to terrify the five-year-olds. I will pray that the line moves slowly so we can delay the start of the party and that no one gets lost.

Then we'll go back to our room. In the room I will try to stretch out any quiet activities for as long as I reasonably can. So we'll eat first. And I'll do the whole, "I'll call your group as soon as you're quiet." Except even when they are quiet I won't call on them right away because I want the eating to take as long as possible. Kids are quieter with their mouths full.

However, there will come a time when most of them are done eating and they'll start talking. It will get progressively louder. Some of them will leave their seats and cause trouble. A couple of boys will take their temporary personas too far and wrestle or sword fight or kick each other in the 'nads. Someone will cry. There will be parents in the room and I'll attempt to win them over by offering them food that I did not provide. Then I'll get on some kid (probably the nad kicker) to show the parents how stern I am. Eventually, we'll play a game to kill more time. I like quiet ones, like 7-Up. If I'm lucky, the clock will move fast. And if I'm really lucky, some of the parents will ask to check their kids out early.

This is what happens when you become an old fuddy-duddy. Halloween is no longer about the costumes or the candy or frightening little kids or even getting kicked in the 'nads. It's about getting through it as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Posts from the Past:

Want to know what not to pass out this Halloween? Click here.
Want to read about a terrifying Halloween tradition? Click here.
Want to participate in the Great Chocolate Milk Debate? Click here and vote in the comments!

I Sold a Poem

2010-10-07T19:13:00.002-04:00

I haven't submitted any poetry in about a year and a half, but this week I got a contract in the mail from Jack and Jill and they're paying me fifty bucks to publish one of my poems. It's about sledding. So that's fun.

My mother-in-law got selected for jury duty. Most people I know dread jury duty. In fact, I may be the only person in America that would LOVE to be on a jury. Alas, in my thirty-four years I've never gotten the call. What's a guy have to do to be inconvenienced around here?

After lots of submissions and plenty of requests for fulls, I'm pulling my YA off the grid. I know "it only takes one" and all that, but I've gotten very similar feedback on the story and it's quite obvious that the problems are significant and ultimately not fixable (at least, not without drastically changing the story. And I use the word "story" loosely.)

The good news: Almost done with another book.
The bad news: Been "almost done" for months.

Firing Bad Teachers

2010-09-28T12:05:00.004-04:00

Unless you've been living under a Rock--efeller Plaza you probably know that NBC is focusing on education this week. Coinciding with the release of Waiting for Superman, every NBC station (and I think there are like twenty of them) is taking their turn telling us how crappy the American education system is. I've got a lot to say on the subject, including how I think the above conventional wisdom is mostly wrong, but I'm going to limit this post to what I've heard a lot this week: Bad teachers need to be fired. Even the President said it.

What strikes me most is what happens after someone says it. Never is the logical follow-up question asked: Just what exactly is a bad teacher?

Teachers are unique. There is no one metric that can be used to assess a teacher's performance. Other jobs are simple. If you're a salesperson and you don't meet your quota, you suck. If you're a lawyer who loses cases, see ya. If you make widgets and nobody buys them, you're going to go out of business. And if you're a chef that makes food nobody wants to eat, you're not going to be cooking for very long.

The easy answer is to say that a bad teacher is one who doesn't educate the students in her classroom. Right now we use standardized tests to determine this. Putting aside for a moment all of the problems inherent in rendering a verdict based on the results of a single test, the method has other obvious flaws.

I give you the following examples. Let me know which teachers you'd fire.

Teacher A is young and energetic. Just out of college she wants to make a difference. Although she could probably get a job in the suburban district where she grew up she wants a greater challenge. She gets hired in a poor, inner city district where many of the parents didn't graduate high school, much less college. Some of them barely speak the language. Many of her students come to her reading well below grade level. A lot of them don't want to be there. Some of the parents resent the amount of homework she's asking these students to do in order to catch up. She sends home books for students to read but they don't read them. A lot of the books don't come back. Additionally, she spends much of her day dealing with behavior problems and feels like she can't teach. When she contacts the parents about these problems they tell her to quit complaining and do her job. At the end of the year she gives the state standardized test and despite her best efforts many of her students perform poorly. One kid just filled in bubbles to make a pretty picture. Another was sick but his parents sent him anyway.

Teacher B is old and set in her ways. She doesn't like to try anything new. She's got her way of doing things and it's worked pretty well, thank you. She teaches in a lily white district where many of the parents are professionals. They volunteer in the classroom. They send in extra supplies. They follow-through with homework and assigned reading. Teacher B doesn't worry too much about her students. Most of them already read well when they get to her and she figures that as long as she doesn't screw them up they're going to be okay. She's right. Despite ignoring "best practices" and an over-reliance on worksheets, her students regularly pass the state test. They will again this year.

Mrs. Jones is a hard-ass. She's the teacher a kid fears getting. You can't away with anything in her class. There is no fun allowed. It's work, work, work. And if you don't work you can forget about recess. Mrs. Jones regularly calls parents when students don't turn in assignments or if they slip up in class. The parents don't like her much either. She's opinionated, blunt, and often confrontational. A lot of parents skip out on parent-teacher conferences. This is fine with Mrs. Jones. She doesn't need them anyway; her kids are going to learn come hell or high water. And learn they do. Every year, Mrs. Jones's students outperform the other classes in the school. But her kids absolutely hate it. Many of them pretend to be sick. Some cry in the morning. Shelby in the back of the room is so worried about getting in trouble she goes through most days with a stomachache.

Miss Violet isn't too bright. She doesn't know the curriculum very well and isn't real effective at teaching what she does know. She doesn't have great control of her classroom. What Miss Violet really likes--no, loves--is the kids. She spent her high school years babysitting a group of three of them and there's really no better way she can spend her day than with a group of students. She loves talking to them about their lives. She asks about their weekends. Once, when Stephanie was reading a journal entry about her dog dying, Miss Violet actually teared up. Her students adore her and they can't wait to come to school. In fact, if you asked them their favorite place in the whole world, a lot of them would tell you Miss Violet's classroom. At the end of the year, Miss Violet's students don't do very well on the state test, but they love school and the idea of coming back next year is exciting to them.

Which teachers would you want your child to have?
Which teachers would be best for kids from broken families?

Here's a crazy idea: Before we start labeling teachers as "good" or "bad" maybe someone should actually watch them teach.

And here's another point to consider: Half of new teachers quit within the first five years. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan tried to encourage young people to go into teaching because the workforce is old and when the economy recovers the country is going to need teachers. But why in the hell would you enter this field if you're going to be the scapegoat for all the nation's ills? And why would you choose a job where you're judged not on how dedicated you are or whether you're willing to go where you're needed most, but on how well your students (whom you do not get to choose) perform on a test?

If we want smart, dedicated people to become teachers we might first try not vilifying the profession.

A Unicorn Chased Me

2010-09-08T21:35:00.004-04:00

It was late at night. I was walking through the woods with my video camera because weird stuff happens in the woods at night and I'd yet to adequately test my "Nightshot" setting on the camera. Allow me to paint you a picture with words: it was kind of foggy. And cold. Not cold enough where you could see your breath (it was too dark for that and I wasn't aiming the camera with its Nightshot setting anywhere near my breath. I mean, who wants to watch someone breathe in black and white?) but cold enough that you could wear a sweatshirt for a while and then wish you hadn't when you started running from a unicorn.

There. I don't know about you, but here's how I decide which blog posts to read: I use the Blogger Dashboard and I read the title of the post and the short excerpt from the beginning of the post and if it sounds interesting I click it. If it don't, I don't. So I thought to myself, Who wouldn't want to read about a unicorn chasing me? And now I have you within my nefarious grasp. Yes, you could leave, but then you'd miss out on learning the top five worst places to fart. (That probably should have been the blog title, huh? Oh well, blog and learn.)

So I thought about apologizing for my blogging absence but then I read someone's blog post title and it was something like ANNOUNCING MY COMING HIATUS and I thought, Who gives a shit? I don't care if you don't blog for a while. Seriously, I have other things I could be doing other than reading your posts about your kittens. So I am going to assume that you too have been doing other things. (Even though my mind insists on creating images of you refreshing my blog every thirty seconds while you sip one of those absurd energy drinks to fend off a panic attack. (Assuming energy drinks can do such a thing.)) So, screw the apologies. You're fine. I'm fine. Let's get on with it then.

TOP FIVE WORST PLACES TO FART:

5. The shower--even a benign little tut stinks when it ventures out into the aromatic mist created by the intoxicating blend of Ivory Soap and Garnier Fructis Fortifying Shampoo.

4. Elevator--but it's hilarious if you're drunk enough

3. Job Interview--which, I don't know about you, but when I'm nervous my digestive system churns out an impressive amount of gas. Or maybe it always makes that much gas and I'm so used to farting it out that I don't realize how often I do until I can't.

2. On a date--an early date, that is. Like the first or second. If you're not farting in front of her by the third date, move on. She's obviously not the one. Every guy knows that farting in the presence of a girl is the exact same as saying those three little words. It's just a lot funnier.

1. In bed (or the couch or backseat or wherever you prefer, you animal) during "the act." Not that this has EVER happened to me. I've just heard stories. Funny ones.

I'm Still Alive

2010-08-26T13:16:00.003-04:00

I have two somewhat flimsy excuses to explain my absence from the blogosphere.

1. I've been on vacation. I don't mean, like, summer vacation, because duh. I mean I was in a car and traveled first to Traverse City and then to Wisconsin. I won't entertain you with the details. I realize this excuse kind of sucks because both places I stayed had better Internet access than I have at home. Nevertheless, it's not cool to go off and blog while on vacation. That, my friends, is dorky.

2. School is starting. I've been in my classroom on three occasions and I sat in on job interviews for an entire day. We've got a new math program that I've yet to sink my teeth into and I have to teach a couple of subjects that I haven't taught in a few years. This excuse is also poor because I haven't actually done any teeth sinking and I haven't looked much at the content expectations for the subjects I haven't taught. But I feel a little guilty blogging when I know I should be doing responsible things and so I haven't. This is the same reason I didn't read much in college. I just couldn't justify reading Stephen King when I'd already decided to neglect 100 pages of assigned text.

Apologies for not commenting on any of my faithful readers' blogs. It would be political of me to assure you that I have been reading them, really I have, but it would not be the truth. Haven't read a blog in weeks. I trust, though, that you're posting more frequently than I and that you haven't let the quality slide. So keep it up, everybody!

Oh, and this has nothing to do with anything, but a while back The Wife was reading off things other people had said on Facebook and my favorite, in response to this story, was "Way to go, Jesus!"

I have taken to saying this just because I think it's hilarious.

So, fellow bloggers, Way to go, Jesus!

Didn't See That One Coming

2010-08-09T17:45:00.002-04:00

I started running over Spring Break and I've been really good about keeping at it all summer. And if you would have told me back in April that the biggest problem I'd have in August was painful nipples, I'd have given you the same look I gave the TV when I watched this.

Apparently, nipples are sensitive. Some of you may have already known this, but I've always had a strict policy regarding my own. Specifically, I like to pretend they're not there. Adhering to this policy has become difficult, though, because whenever I run five or more miles the suckers really hurt.

The Wife did some research (because, in accordance with the above stated policy, I was busy pretending the pain was a figment of my imagination) and learned that the problem is pretty much what you'd think. You sweat, the nipples get hard, they rub against the shirt, and the salt in the sweat acts like grains of sand, and there you have it, sore nips.

So now, before I run, I put Band-aids on them which I hate doing because 1. We don't have that many Band-aids in the house and I'd hate to actually need one and find them all gone because I used them on my stupid, shouldn't-be-there-in-the-first-place nipples, and 2. they don't work all that well because you put them on when the nipples are smushy and then when they turn unsmushy the Band-Aid is no longer flush and you've got the potential for chafing anyway and 3. the whole process forces me to spend way too much time thinking about, looking at, and tending to my nipples.

I have figured out a remedy, though. I've never once even thought about them while sitting on the couch eating ice cream.

Jim Jamo Lost

2010-08-04T16:45:00.003-04:00

I'm pretty sure it's because the Lansing State Journal did not publish my letter to the editor. The Wife was unsurprised by this. (She's also unsurprised that Joe Biden has yet to reply to my chocolate milk question.) I'm not entirely sure how the LSJ decides which letters to print. Yes, mine was obnoxious and full of obvious falsehoods. It was not serious in any way. But who decided letters to the editor have to be serious or, you know, factual? Read through them some time. Most of the political ones are full of nonsense, and I find at least half of them obnoxious. I guess the difference is intent. The lesson is clear: if you want to make an ass out of yourself, don't be too obvious about it.

In other news I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because as a person living on the planet Earth in the year 2010 I believe it is required. The Wife warned me that there was a ton of backstory in the first 100 pages or whatever, so I was prepared for it and it didn't really bother me. Once it gets rolling it's hard to put down. I read all six hundred plus pages over three days.

Also read The London Eye Mystery and enjoyed it, especially the voice of the autistic main character. Really well done. It's not as good as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but there's no shame in that.

Closing in on the end of my novel. It looks like the first draft will be done by the start of school, which was the goal. I'll spend a couple of months smoothing out the story, fixing inconsistencies, dropping in details that didn't become necessary until later, etc., and then I'll be looking for readers to affirm my worst suspicions.

I'll be vacationing for most of the next two weeks, so basically nothing will change with respect to the blog. Feel free to reread this post over and over again or, even better, go back and read some old stuff from when I was funnier.

Vote for Jim Jamo

2010-07-30T09:40:00.006-04:00

With the elections coming up this Tuesday I've been researching the candidates. Yesterday, I created a tally table to record how many yard signs each candidate has within a three mile radius of my home. I figured I'd just vote for whomever had the most signs. That way, I help to ensure that people who spend the most money get the most votes. Hey, it's worked so far, right?

Right?

However, there is one man for whom yard signs cannot dissuade me. His name? Jim Jamo. He's running for circuit court judge. With all the letters to the editors floating around this time of year, I thought I'd write my own. So many of these letters take things way too seriously. I took a different tack. I sent this letter to the Lansing State Journal today. They probably won't publish it, so I offer it to you, free of charge:

I support Jim Jamo for Ingham County Circuit Court. I’ve known Jim since before he was born, when he visited me as a spectral fetus while I slept. Even then he impressed me with his overwhelming integrity. Jim has more integrity in his left nostril than you have in your entire family. When Jim Jamo blows his nose, he uses a Brawny paper towel because Kleenex is unable to contain his integrity.

Jim Jamo’s experience as a lawyer will make him an excellent judge. He once wrote a brief so eloquent that the judge who read it wept. In 1992 I witnessed Jim defend a client with nothing but a series of well-placed facial ticks and exasperated sighs. Defendants will be unable to lie in front of Jim Jamo. Thanks to his integrity-laced mucus, Jim can sniff out a liar at a distance of thirteen miles. Tough, all-seeing, phlegmatic--that’s the kind of judge we need. Vote for Jamo. (Or he’ll flick an integrity booger at you.)

I'm Getting Close! (And a Writing Tip)

2010-07-26T00:08:00.005-04:00

Almost done with my latest book. I love this feeling.

I'm at 60,000 words and probably have ten thousand more to go. I have a writer's tip tonight:

We all get to the point where we're not super excited about writing the coming chapter. It might be one of those chapters that are necessary but not as exciting as the ones before or the ones that will come after. If I were a good writer, my advice would be to find a way to make that chapter interesting, but since I'm not, here's what I do instead:

I think about just skipping it and going to the next chapter.

Then I tell myself that I'm avoiding the issue and ultimately doing nothing but delaying the inevitable and besides, it's just easier to write it in order.

So I write the chapter, but here's the tip:

I write the thing as quickly and as crappily as I can. Well, I don't intentionally write it crappily, but I tell myself not to care if it is crappy. I tell myself the same thing I told myself during every finals week at Michigan State University: Doing well is not as important as getting it over with. And while that probably wasn't the most effective self-talk in college, it works just fine in writing, because if it is in fact crappy I can go back and make it better later. But usually, I find it's not 100 percent crappy; there's usually a few lines or at least ideas that get to hang around. It's like 95% crappy most of the time and since just about the whole first draft is 95% crappy, there's really no reason not to just spew the words out.

So that's my advice: Crappy writing is better than no writing.

Word.

Hey, I finally bought an ipod. I bought it because I always felt guilty about disappearing when I wrote. I would leave The Wife and The Wife likes hanging out with me even if I'm not really conversing or listening to her and am totally in my zoned out writing mode. But she likes to be in the same room regardless. I can't blame her. I like hanging out with me, too. Anyway, I bought the ipod because I'm sitting there in the same room as The Wife and she tends to watch really bad TV while I'm trying to write. Tonight she had Joy Behar's pathetic excuse for a talk show on. So I put the headphones on (my ear holes are too tiny for the ear buds that Apple provides--maybe that's why I never hear what The Wife says. Ha.) and I can write without being interrupted by Nancy Grace or Joy Behar or one of the Kardashians while still being in the same room as The Wife. That's problem solving, folks. So I've got the thing going right now and Dolly Parton's Here You Come Again is playing. Why do I have Dolly Parton on my ipod, you ask?

When what you should be asking is why you don't.

Also, I have a pimple on my nose. Because apparently, my nose didn't get the memo that I'm no longer 15. Due to the pimple and the blogger's unrelenting vanity, there will be no v-logs anytime soon.

My Day at the Beach

2010-07-20T11:24:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we went to the beach. I'm not really a beach person. I hate the feel of sand between my toes. The water is usually too cold and full of things I'd rather not think about. I don't like people. And I try not to be seen without a shirt.

But I figured, how bad could it be? It was a Monday. We were going to a state park. State parks tend to attract a certain clientele, many of whom are overweight, ghostly white, and hairy. I'd fit right in.

No such luck. It was like a convention of skinny, well-tanned people. I've read there's an obesity epidemic in this country. Could have fooled me. Everywhere I looked, gorgeous people frolicked in the surf. A group of buff seventeen-year-old dudes engaged in some horseplay and Frisbee. Wispy blondes strolled along the sand, smiling and checking out the guys playing Frisbee. Old guys with ponytails and smooth chests made out with fit, leather-skinned ladies. It was a nightmare of beauty. All of which is to say I kept my shirt on, as you can see in the pics. This was not a crowd that would have appreciated my fine pelt of lustrous back hair.

Little one had fun, but only because she's too young to know any better. About thirty seconds after entering the water (you'll notice me helicoptering like the over-protective parent I am) a chunky five-year-old swam over and admired my daughter's Ariel toy. She asked to play with it. My daughter handed it over. Big mistake. Because later, this same ragamuffin came strutting over while Little One and her father constructed a badly misshapen sand castle. I had placed Ariel in the moat area and commented that she was swimming in her pool. The fatty corrected me. "That's not a pool. That's a river."

"No," I said, "rivers have sources. Rivers flow downhill. Rivers have a current. That, young lady, is a pool."

She chose to ignore me. Then she plodded over to where we were keeping our other beach toys and hijacked a plastic watering can. She came over and gave Ariel a shower. Little One cried. We took Ariel and went back into the lake, hoping to escape the roly-poly snot. We got away. Ten seconds later, I look back to see The Wife pointing at the watering can floating aimlessly in the lake and telling the little shit to go pick it up. The little shit did not. "It's not mine," she said. Obviously.

The Wife retrieved it. Later, when the whale came paddling toward us yet again, I steered Little One away, and since I was carrying a yellow plastic pail I decided to put it to good use. Nonchalantly, while walking away and not looking at her, I scooped up a bucketful of water and tossed it into the air where it just happened to fall on the head of an impertinent little thief who didn't know how to respect other people's space or privacy.

Yes, I felt kind of bad. Thirty-four-year-old men should not be throwing water on five-year-old girls, no matter how annoying they are. But then again, five-year-old girls should have parents who actually watch them and teach them to not be jerks.

John Grisham Proves It: Writing for Kids is Hard, Yo.

2010-07-20T00:57:00.004-04:00

I'll admit it, I was excited to read John Grisham's first foray into children's literature, Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer. I've read about 20 of his books and generally enjoyed them. (Especially The Firm. That book rocks.) So because I am cheap, I waited until the other men in their mid-thirties returned the two copies the library computers claimed to have and I snagged one a couple of days ago.

I read it. It sucked.

At first, I had a hard time believing Grisham actually wrote it. Then I thought, Well, okay, he wrote it but it couldn't have possibly been his idea. His marketing team must have talked him into doing it so he could branch out and ensnare a new generation of readers to replace all the old trial lawyers who're dropping like flies due to long hours and stress and amicus briefs.

I still hope this is true.

Because it was like Grisham forgot how to write. He's never been Hemingway or Faulkner or other authors known for their comparison usefulness, but Grisham knows how to tell a story. He keeps the tension high. The earnest young lawyer is constantly in trouble as he fights an enemy with both limitless power and sinisterness. His books move at breakneck pace. He cares not for fancy language and wastes no ink with metaphor or allusion or other such literary crap. John Grisham tells good stories simply.

In Theodore Boone, the story is awful. There is no tension. Worse, there are tension teasers which never develop into anything. It's almost like J.G. was afraid to put his young lawyer in any real danger because he thought he might scare his readers. In fact, most of the problems I have with the book derive from what quickly becomes abundantly clear: John Grisham has no clue how to write for kids.

First, the voice is third person omniscient and not even moderately appealing. It's stodgy, like the story is being told by a fifty-five year old former Southern lawyer. Grisham wastes little time writing scenes. Instead, he just tells the reader whatever it is he needs to know.

Theodore Boone was a good kid who didn't care about girls and never got into trouble and really really liked the law.*

Stuff like that. Also, Grisham commits that most heinous of kidlit sins. He uses his book to preach. His sermon: "LAWYERS ARE NOT ONLY USEFUL TO SOCIETY, THEY'RE INDISPENSABLE AND REALLY GOOD PEOPLE, TOO." I suppose he's trying to head off all the lawyer jokes that his innocent readers will be exposed to about the time they hit high school.

Theodore Boone himself is too good to be true; he is a character without flaws. His parents, both lawyers, work hard, care about Theo, and volunteer at a soup kitchen (I'm not making that up) when they're not working diligently (and honestly) for their clients, even though they really don't make as much money as you kids hear about on the television. And Theo, because he's such a law freak, is constantly helping his poor classmates (and even an adult here and there) with their legal problems. He provides advice on divorce, foreclosure, and a DUI, to name a few, and he does it all gratis because charging would be unethical (Theo's not a "real lawyer," after all.)

Another problem (not that preaching and a lack of conflict isn't enough) is the seemingly random sidebars (see what I did there?). In order to establish Theo as a legal expert, Grisham has him give the aforementioned advice to his classmates. But none of this, including what could have been an interesting bit about his best friend (a girl) going through her parents' divorce, ever has anything to do with the main storyline. I kept waiting for these bird walks to come back and matter and they never did.

I could go on. But I think it's interesting to note that John Grisham,who could sell a few hundred thousand copies of his grocery list, wrote such a horrific novel for kids. Why? I posit the following:

1. He just didn't give a damn.

2. He doesn't understand that kids want a great story just as much as adults.

3. He adopted a paternal stance and instead of writing to entertain, he wrote to guide and to educate. There are a number of places in the book that read like a primer on America's legal system. Grisham has young Theo tell his classmates all about how the start of a trial will work so that his readers can understand such terms as "prosecution" and "witness stand" and "jury box." It was as if Grisham didn't realize kids watch TV and movies and probably already know all this shit.

4. It's not easy to write a thriller for kids because you can't just hack up bodies to create suspense and intrigue. Grisham, to his credit, realized this and had the murder in the book be a tidy strangling. There were other moments where you could almost sense that Grisham wanted to have a bad guy do something naughty but couldn't quite pull the trigger. I guess he was protecting his readers. (See #3)

5. He hasn't read much middle grade and young adult fiction.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough. The book stunk and I think you should read it to revel in its stinkiness.
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* Not an actual line from the book, but trust me, it's close enough.

Tidying Up

2010-07-19T10:05:00.002-04:00

A quick post because The Mom, The Wife, and The Jonathon have all pestered me about announcing a winner for the poetry contest. I mistakenly thought that since I was offering no prize that no one would care about winning. Guess I was wrong.

The winner is Tina Laurel Lee. Tina's poem was so completely baffling to me that I just figure it was probably awesome. My experience with poetry (and modern art and Kafka and string theory) is that if I don't understand it it's because I'm too obtuse to recognize its inherent genius. So Tina wins!

Also, I'm going to the beach today.

And a teaser: I read John Grisham's book for kids, Theordore Boone: Kid Lawyer. It gave me a blog idea. When I get back from the beach, I might write it. And you will agree with me.

I'm So Pumped!

2010-07-11T23:17:00.003-04:00

Been churning out the words on my work-in-progress. And I love it like whoa.

I'm at about 50 thou out of what'll probably be around 70. Then I'll add a bunch of useless shit that I think is hilarious to push it up to 80. Then I'll cut most of that out when I realize it's really not all that funny and end up right around 70 again. This one's totally getting pubbed. It actually has a plot. It's an absurd plot, but a plot nonetheless. (I like "nonetheless." Three words in one--can't beat that. (Or maybe you can. Are there any four words in a word words? Say that three times.))

And can I just say that my story has awesome characters? Okay. My story has awesome characters. I'd share, but you really have to read the thing to get it and I'm not letting you read it.

Yet.

If I let you read it now, you'd be all, "Where's the ending?" And I'd be, "I said I wasn't done, but you were impatient. Let that be a lesson to you." And you'd be, "There should be an ending." And I'd walk away (virtually, of course. I don't actually meet my beta readers. I mean, could you imagine the awkwardness? We'd start a conversation and I'd trip all over my words and you would be, "You don't trip over words on your blog." Jerk.)

Oh. And I have repetitive bits. I love repetitive bits. "Running gags" you might call them. There's one about of one my characters who dated a girl with an "enchanting chin." See, this girl---never mind. Just trust me, it's killa funny.

So what are you up to?

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I read Ray Veen's Talonshale this past week. It's seriously good. I don't even read that genre much and I thought it was seriously good. And I'm not just saying that because he reads my blog. If I didn't like it, I just would not say anything at all. (But behind his back, I'd email other people and be like, "Oh, my god. That sucked so bad. What a waste of my time. If he asks you to read it say you're going on vacation and they don't let you read there.") Seriously, it's awesome. If he lets you read it, you should.

_________________________________________

Haven't heard jack squat from any agents in about six days. New round of queries goes out the virtual door tomorrow.

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Congratulations to Spain. You are the best at the most boring sport on the planet. Even though it took you almost two hours of playing time to score a goal, I'm sure the three people in America who were watching were really excited when it finally happened. Muy bien futbol. (I don't know how to get those diagonal slant things above the letters. They're stupid anyway. Other languages...pssh.)

How About a Poetry Contest?

2010-07-07T09:59:00.003-04:00

I got this idea from Tracy, so blame him.

He posted a poem called "Kick a Little Stone" on his blog and then said, "The simplicity of this poem blows me away. Topics [in the book] range from kicking stones to going to the beach to swinging up, up into the sky."

So. Go to Tracy's blog. Read the poem. Get a feel for it.

Then come back here and write your own.

The Rules:

1. Keep it short. I'm not looking for Paradise Lost.
2. It must be about something children do.
3. You can be serious or funny. Please don't be oblique or metaphorical. I'm not up for that today.

Small print: No prize will be awarded, but a winner will be named.

Mine:

Wagon Bumps

Daddy pulls the wagon

Over sidewalk cracks

He rolls it through rain puddles

The wheels leave skinny tracks

We hurry under dripping trees

My mouth is open wide

We take a hairpin turn so fast

The back wheels start to slide

I’m shaking in my wagon seat

Rattle-battle-thump!

And then my wagon’s in the air

It’s hit a tree root bump

Daddy stops and looks behind

There’s worry on his face

But I just smile my biggest smile

And say, “Pick up the pace!”

Etc.

2010-07-05T15:04:00.003-04:00

It's hot.

I sent a few queries out today even though I know nobody's working, and lo and behold I got a rejection just hours later from Joe Veltre. I appreciate those agents who send out rejections while the rest of the country takes the day off.

The Wife and I watched Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief last night and holy smoke did it suck. I can't think of a movie I enjoyed less. I turned it off with ten minutes to go because I just couldn't take it anymore and because it was almost eleven o'clock and I figured even the local news would be more interesting. I was right.

Conversely, we just got back from Toy Story 3 and it was awesome.

I read a book for grown-ups recently, Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes. It was found in his files and published posthumously. Now I know why. Here's a tip for all you successful writers out there: If you have unpublished novels just lying around, get rid of them. Because after you die your family members, caring more about money than your reputation, will publish them to your embarrassment (assuming you can still feel shame in the grave). My guess is most of the music in Michael Jackson's vault similarly blows. (But I'll probably still listen to it. I mean, c'mon, it's Michael Jackson.)

I'm struggling to find books this summer and my reading is suffering. The local library has a limited selection and my checking account has limited funds. Most of the stuff I'm excited to read (Fat Vampire) isn't out yet. So recommend some slightly older books for me, will you? I'm looking for titles that are maybe a couple of years old that fell through the cracks and I forgot about them. Young adult and middle grade preferred, go heavy on plot and if there's some humor all the better.

Out.

Elena Kagan for the Court

2010-07-01T10:35:00.002-04:00

There's some question about whether Elena Kagan is qualified to serve on the Supreme Court because she's never been a judge. People complain that there isn't much a paper trail because she hasn't had to rule on cases and this makes both sides of the aisle nervous. There seems to be a lot that isn't known about her.

But if judging is what I think it is, then Kagan should be confirmed based on her answer in the following clip alone:

I wish you wouldn't, indeed.

I Read The Deathday Letter

2010-06-18T00:35:00.005-04:00

I'm not going to review the book because a. I suck at reviews and b. the author has been known to stop by this blog so 1. If I write a complimentary review people (who, I don't know) would say, "Well of course you wrote a complimentary review" and 2. If I didn't write a complimentary review I'd a. feel like a dick and 2. would be lying.

But the book got me thinking, although not about the stuff I was supposed to think about.

It got me thinking about how difficult it is to succeed writing a book like The Deathday Letter. And by succeed I mean selling lots of books, becoming a household name, and then treating people horribly.

First, I should say that Shaun David Hutchinson made it further than I think most books like this do or will. The Deathday Letter, if you do not know, is about a fifteen-year-old kid who receives a letter telling him he's got one day left to live. It's a clever premise; one that's easily understood and tickles the imagination. And it's funny. And it's well written. And there's a serious message, too.

But the book's target audience is unabashedly young adult males. And I love that. I wish there were more books for these kids. I like to read books like this and I like to write books like this so I wish The Deathday Letter all kinds of crazy success. (Seriously, just buy the book. I did. See photo above.)

Unfortunately, the book has and will continue to fight an uphill battle. I bought the book at a honest to goodness bookstore. It was in the YA section which was on the back wall and took me ten minutes to find. I bought it the day after it came out and it was sandwiched between other authors who last names start with H. And there were two copies.

Conversely, I knocked down seven vampire books with black covers and was screamed at by a gang of goth girls because they thought I was disrespecting Richelle Mead on my way to the YA wall. This was because the vampire books were practically placed in the middle of an aisle so that you needed to go out of your way to avoid them.

Now I know Shaun is just elated to have the thing published and out there and there's no way he'll ever complain (I wouldn't either), but let's just look at the hurdles he's had to clear to elbow aside enough books to get his own on the shelf.

First he had to write it. This is hard.

Then he had to get an agent interested in it, even though the target audience tends to spend a lot of time playing video games and watching YouTube and playing sports and staring at girls. And when they do read, they pick up fantasy novels or books for adults. (I know. I mostly read Stephen King in high school. I didn't even know there were books for high school kids.)

And then said agent had to get a publisher interested, in spite of the above challenges.

And now I'm skipping some steps, but after all that there were two (now there's one) copies of the book in my local bookstore (and it's a big one) and you pretty much had to be looking for it like I was to find it.

It depresses me. Mostly for selfish reasons because before I sit down to write another novel I will think to myself, "I really want to write a funny book for high school guys, but will anybody read it? And if nobody is going to read it, then do I have a chance of finding an agent? And if I do find an agent who gets it and loves it, which might be kinda hard because 90% of YA agents are chicks, will he or she be able to find a publisher (more chicks) who not only likes it but thinks it will sell enough to make it worth her while?" And I won't be the only one.

So here's hoping The Deathday Letter gets great word of mouth, high school dudes buy a copy, and publishers are suddenly clamoring for more books like it. Because I really want to click on an agency Web site and read, "I'm always on the lookout for books with penis jokes and scatological humor." Because, dude, that's my kind of agent.

Goals for the Summer

2010-06-08T21:44:00.007-04:00

Summer for me does not start on whatever date it's supposed to start. It starts when I'm done teaching. That day is Friday. So I've been thinking about what I'd like to accomplish over the next three months with respect to reading and writing. My goals are all things I can do without help from anyone. This is why you will not see ACQUIRE AN AGENT. ACQUIRING AN AGENT relies on someone other than me (or Anita or Tracy or The Wife or The Mom) reading my stuff and recognizing it for the pioneering genius that it is. Unfortunately, I have discovered that literary agents have a huge blind spot when it comes to appreciating pioneering genius. I call that blind spot The (Il)Literati's Collective Bias Against Anything Written by Paul Michael Murphy.

On to the goals:

1. I am going to query like a madman. My plan is to query over 100 agents for both my middle grade novel and my YA. Ideally, I'll be able to stop somewhere before 100, but I will not stop querying until the agenting community has publicly denounced both my books and me personally. If I were them, I would start with my chin. My chin deserves widespread scorn.

2. I'm going to finish my third novel. I have one that stalled out about halfway through but I still like it quite a lot. So now that I don't have to grade papers or plan lessons or enter stupid data into the stupid work database or watch Criminal Minds, because I think I've seen them all, I can look at it with fresh eyes and finish the thing.

3. I am going to read 40 books over the summer. My reading has been a little behind last year's pace, partly due to lack of initiative and partly due to the cinder block that was Under the Dome, so I'm going to make it up this summer. I still plan on hitting 100 books by year's end.

P.S. Westerfeld's Leviathan was cool.

I Have Discovered a Magic Formula for Titling Books

2010-06-04T19:56:00.002-04:00

First, before I share my genius with the world, can I just say that "titling" is an odd word. I want to either read it as "tilting" or think of it as slang for a tiny breast. Just me?

Now. Sometimes, admittedly not very often as evidenced by my lack of blogging activity in the last few months, I am struck by the God of Great Ideas and given some rare insight that we mortals call an "epiphany."

Today's struck in the shower. (This seems to happen more often than not, which makes me think I should spend more time attending to personal hygiene.) I was standing there, you know, with the water beating my chest and et cetera, when a title came to me from out of the mist. Picking Blueberries in the Rain, that was the title. Not too shabby, I thought. Not something I would write, but I could see it as one of those books Target always puts at the end of the aisle. You know, the ones I walk past on my way to walking past the glut of vampire novels so I can find the one or two titles that I might actually consider reading. Picking Blueberries in the Rain would be right next to Three Cups of Tea or Water for Elephants. That kind of book.

And then something else happened. (We're back in the shower now.) Another title came to me. This one was Drawing Pictures in the Dark. I thought that was pretty good too. Kind of mysterious. Might be about an artist with autism. It didn't take divine inspiration to then make the following leap. I soon realized that by using a very simple formula, you, yes, even you, can make your own eye-catching, imagination-sparking title. From the God:

"ING" VERB + PLURAL NOUN + "in the" + A PLACE = AWESOME TITLE.

Try it. Pick any verb, plural noun, and place and presto! Even the bad ones are kind of good, like Licking Marbles in the Bathroom.

You could do much worse.

I'd make this a contest, but I suck at sending prizes, so just have at it. Using the above formula, leave your titles in the comments. Go nuts. Leave all you want. But please know that the Murphblog legal department would like to inform you that any title you post can (and probably will) be stolen and used on a future Target aisle book. Someday you'll see it, right next to Making Rainbows in the Sand.

Yes! I've Been Tagged!

2010-05-26T21:21:00.004-04:00

Anita tagged me. I believe she thinks I don't like being tagged, but she couldn't be more wrong. I love being tagged. Unlike Tracy, who pretends to be put out by the obligation, I relish the opportunity to talk about the one topic I both know and love--me.

You don't know how often I start to blog and then stop and say, "Come on, Murph. Think of your readers. I know you love talking about yourself and yes, it is true that you live a fascinating life full of dangerous escapades like drinking milk even though it's supposedly expired, but it is possible, just possible, that your readers don't feel quite the same way." And then I delete the entire post about exactly how I beat LSU in College Football 2007 on my X-Box or how I found an old Cheeto between the couch cushions and just for a second considered eating it or how Quality Dairy has chocolate milk on sale. And I write some lame review about a book that garners five lousy comments instead.

But being tagged gives me permission--no, it demands that I tell you all about my inspirational existence. And so, without Freddy Adu...

Where was I five years ago?

I can't remember five days ago. Not kidding.

Where would I like to be five years from now?

Doing exactly this. Blogging about myself so that five people can read it and three people can comment. That would be so awesome. Personal growth and ambition are overrated anyway. I prefer the Vanna White method of self-improvement: Find something anybody can do and stick with it.

What was on my to-do list today:

Pick up new dining room set from furniture store. Did it.

Put set together. Yeah, right.

Mow the lawn. Figured it could wait another day.

Write blog post in which I answer questions nobody cares about. In fact, I'm betting most of you have already considered clicking off here.

Five snacks I enjoy:

1. Cheetos
2. Combos
3. Just about anything on a toothpick (see photo above)
4. Pringles
5. Ice Cream

If I Were a Billionaire I Would:

Wait until the Powerball jackpot reached $300 million. I would then buy 196 million tickets because the odds of winning are about 1 in 195 million. I would buy every possible combination, therefore insuring my victory. Provided I don't have to share any jackpots, I would make a profit of about $100 million each time I did this. I would then write a book called How to Win at Powerball--Guaranteed! and make infomercials like that Kevin Trudeau guy. And when people saw me, they'd say, "Hey, I recognize that guy from somewhere." And someone else would say, "Yeah, I think he sells food dehydrators." And the other guy would say, "No, that's not it."

So I Read Will Grayson, Will Grayson

2010-05-23T22:21:00.002-04:00

And...eh.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I did not, like the rest of the world, particularly love Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and I judge John Green unfairly. Simply put, his books are so awesome that I expect them all to be. And that's kind of a high standard.

Let's get the good stuff about the book out of the way first:

1. I liked the format. Alternating chapters is cool with me and it works in this book. It in no way feels disjointed. The story flows nicely.

2. There are funny parts and I'm all for funny parts.

3. One of the things I like about Green is how he writes dialogue and how he handles male friendships. Once again, he did not disappoint in these areas. Levithan's dialogue was just as good.

4. I always admire how Green handles parents in his book. He gives them their due, but keeps them largely in the background. So many authors create stupid parents or evil parents or neglectful parents or parents who are on vacation so they (the authors) don't have to deal with them. Green writes parents who actually love their kids. It's refreshing in YA.

And now the things I didn't like so much. I've tried to put these in order from that which annoyed me the most to the least.

1. The characters--Tiny Cooper and Straight Will's dad are I think the only two characters I liked.

2. The story--In short, there ain't much of one. There's a nice little surprise about a third of the way through that concerns Gay Will, but that's about it on the plotting front. The term "character study" was created for books like this, and since I'm in the rejection process right now and getting a fair amount of "I liked this and this, but there just isn't enough story," I'm kind of sensitive to books that have this and this but not much story.

3. The gayness--Yeah, yeah, I know it's about the universality of love and whatnot, but I think we all like to read about characters we relate to and I just didn't.

4. The ending--Sorry, not buying it.

5. I have a prejudice against original song lyrics in books, especially when said lyrics are intended to be funny. First, it's impossible to read the song the way the author hears it in his head, so it's like reading poetry with terrible meter. Second, it's obvious the author thinks he's being clever and that's annoying. Third, how the characters react to the song lyrics says something about how the author views his own song writing ability. So if the author thinks it's all kinds of funny and has the character say something like, "I almost fell on the floor laughing" then the reader knows that the author thinks he wrote some funny shit and funny shit should be funny shit on its own. When a character laughs, I usually don't.

6. Too much theme--This is an issue in all of Green's work. (I haven't read enough Levithan to make the same criticism.) Green gets a little too didactic, especially near the ends of this books. He kind of hits you over the head with the message.

And can I say that I feel for the writer who's trying to write a book that gay kids will pick up? (And I think that describes this book, although I'm sure the authors would not admit to it.) On the one hand, we want being gay to be, like it says in the book, just another characteristic of the person, like having blue eyes. The character is this and this and this and, yes, he happens to be gay. This sort of treatment seems to get the most positive reviews, especially among those who are gay. But there's also a rule in writing that your characters are who they are for a reason. I once read a review that called a main character "ethnic for no reason." It was meant as a criticism. Implied is that if you make your characters Latino or black or gay, then that Latinoness or blackness or gayness must somehow matter to the story.

And so there's a conflict. By making gayness just another personal trait, the author is saying it doesn't matter. Like the color of the character's eyes. But clearly, it has to matter, or the reader will wonder why in the hell the author made the character gay. And I don't think this conflict only exists in the world of fiction. We claim to want equality, but is equality really enough? Don't we celebrate our differences? Don't we think our differences make us who we are? Don't they matter? And if they do, don't our differences drive each of our personal stories? Do we not form our self-identities based mainly on that which makes us stand out from the pack?

Equating gayness with blue-eyedness sound nice and is certainly the politically correct thing to believe these days, but is it the truth? Do gay people really want books where a character's gayness doesn't matter?

I don't know. Maybe they do. But I sort of doubt it.

Quick, name a fun word that starts with G

2010-05-23T15:05:00.002-04:00

Gentrified.

Your turn.

Good News Abounds

2010-05-16T21:13:00.004-04:00

First off, let me publicly congratulate Anita for landing an agent. Read about it here. I myself may never get published, but Anita's success means that I might get to see my name in print--on the Acknowledgments page of her book. Of course, now things get interesting for the rest of us. From what I can tell, most writers, upon meeting with success, react in one of three ways.

1. They stay pretty much the same.
2. They start tweeting with well-known authors and dropping the words "my agent" into every other conversation and they just generally piss everyone off with their vainglory.
3. The initial dose of success isn't enough and it isn't long before they start complaining about how their agent can't sell their book or how unfair the publishing word is or how, yeah, they sold their book, but gawd---did you see the cover? And what's up with that release date? And so-and-so got a bigger advance. You know the type.

I'm guessing Anita will be a 1.

More good news: I have now lost 12 pounds. I ran my first 5k last week and yesterday I ran six miles (without stopping. Is that implied?). I hope to lose 10-15 more. I usually need some sort of motivation--the last time I lost a fair amount of weight was the summer of my wedding--but I don't really have a reason this time. I want to be healthier? Eh. I want to look good in a bathing suit? Not possible without major back hair removal. I want to be able to eat terrible food and drink beer all summer? Okay. That'll work.

Something I thought was good news, but actually wasn't: My laptop stopped working and wouldn't turn on. After consulting The Whole of the World's Knowledge, AKA the Internet, I bought a new battery. Popped it in and voila, it worked. For two hours. Then it quit again. This shouldn't have happened because I had the thing plugged in. So the good news is I did some new work on my current project. And the bad news is there is still something wrong with my preferred writing device.

Not good news at all: That oil spill in the Gulf. No one will ever accuse me of being an environmentalist, but Jeebus, that thing is nasty.

The Dicken Elementary Snafu--Some Context

2010-05-08T09:44:00.003-04:00

For those who missed the story on the news, Dicken Elementary (Ann Arbor, MI) principal Mike Madison, in an effort to help struggling students, set up a "Lunch Bunch" composed only of African-American students. He then took these students to hear a black rocket scientist speak at the University of Michigan. When the kids got back, those excluded from the trip booed them.

Now, what he did was just plain stupid, not to mention probably illegal. (In 2006, Michigan passed Proposal 2 which bans preferential treatment based on race.) I've never quite understood the idea that we achieve racial equality through inequality. If we hope that kids will judge each other on the content of their character and not race, then dividing them based on race seems a little counterproductive. Sending one group on a field trip while the others stay back at the school reinforces a message that these kids hear all too often: that they're different because of the color of their skin.

Also, if the situation was reversed, I have a feeling Al Sharpton would be coming to town. It's difficult to even imagine a white principal scheduling a field trip for only white students. Perhaps they could visit an NBA team and listen to a white basketball player so they see that they too can play in the League.

So why would an otherwise intelligent person and, from what I can gather, good principal, do something so dumb?

Answer: No Child Left Behind

NCLB requires schools to make "Adequate Yearly Progress," which means that the percentage of students scoring "proficient" on the state standardized test must go up by a certain percentage every year. Too many years of failing to make this improvement and the school faces progressively harsher sanctions, many of which will cost the school money (money they don't have).

So why does that matter? Because people who work in schools are no different than anybody else. If they are judged largely on the basis of one test then they will focus their energies on preparing students for that test. If they must improve the overall percentage of proficient students every year, then they will focus their energies on improving the performance of those who didn't pass the test the year before, assuming, usually correctly, that those who already passed the test will pass it again. All of which means that an incredible amount of energy, time, and money are put into helping the least successful students and very little time, energy, and money is spent on the high achievers.

But it doesn't stop there. NCLB also requires that each school achieve AYP in a number of subgroups, one of which is race. So is it any wonder principal Madison did what he did? I am sure that if we looked at Dicken's MEAP scores we would see an African-American population that performed below the level of their white counterparts.* To increase these students' performance, the principal creates this Lunch Bunch and then looks for opportunities to motivate the kids. The white kids are ignored because a. they scored better on the MEAP as a group and b. they are not an official "subgroup." In other words, they get the same treatment most students who do well in school get: they largely get ignored.

All of which leads to this conclusion: When put in ridiculous situations, even smart people will be do ridiculous things.

And for what it's worth, as a white kid, I think I would have dug listening to a rocket scientist. No matter what he looked like.

_______________________________________________
* I don't know Dicken's demographic breakdown, but statewide 89% of white fourth graders scored proficient in reading versus on 69% of African-Americans.

A Fart Poem

2010-04-28T21:06:00.004-04:00

Anita was supposed to write a fart poem for Tracy's son, but she's all stressed out about her revisions and couldn't get it going. She wanted me to lead a group effort, but I don't play well with others. So since my own writing is a bit stalled (thanks partly to a dead laptop), I figured I'd just take a shot at it. (And, let's face it, I like writing fart poems.) So here it is in all its glory.

A Mystery Solved

By me

There are many questions in this world,

I wanted to answer one.

I needed little for my task--

No food, no map, no gun.

I didn’t need to travel far,

Or save a lot of money.

It didn’t matter if it rained

Or was overcast or sunny.

Bigfoot I did not care about,

The Loch Ness Monster? Boring.

Vampires, Werewolves, Zombie Hoards

all just left me snoring.

The Bermuda Triangle swallowed planes,

Raleigh wrote CROATOAN.

Did aliens build the Pyramids?

I don’t care or KNOWAN.

The mystery for me to solve was sitting in a chair.

Her eyes were getting heavy,

She fell asleep right there.

I listened very carefully,

The moment was at hand.

I dared not move a muscle,

Things were just how I had planned.

And then I heard it, a booming roar,

It gave me such a start.

My question had finally been answered.

Yes, even grandmas fart.

Now, go forth and write your own fart poem. Tracy's son is a fiend.

Status Updates

2010-04-24T15:01:00.002-04:00

I wrote a chapter in my work-in-progress yesterday. It probably sucks, but at least it's done. Which is pretty much exactly the attitude I had toward every single one of my performances on final exams in college. Summa cum laude I was not.

The Wife got an iPod Nano. I'm listening to it now. She bought it for running, but we've quickly discovered the inadequacies of the earbuds. Namely, they fall out when we so much as tilt our heads like a confused German Shepherd. So now we have to buy new earbuds. (I find it curious that Blogger doesn't recognize "earbuds" as a correctly spelled word, even though the iPod has been around since 2001 and Blogger was redesigned in 2006.)

I've lost seven pounds so far. My efforts started in earnest last Tuesday. (As opposed to the half-assed attempts I usually make, typically consisting of replacing pop with Gatorade.) I took only last Saturday off (I didn't run).

Got three books from the library today: The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, Liar, and The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin.

Four queries sitting neglected in in-boxes. One partial at the Nelson Agency, proving they have discriminating taste.

Seven weeks of teaching left. [Insert own joy-expressing interjection here. I'd go with Huzzah!, but that's just me.]

Go Wings.

Justin Bieber's Hair Attacked Me

2010-04-21T16:15:00.004-04:00

Last night I was attacked by Justin Bieber’s hair. Here’s how it all went down:

I was watching TV with the wife. She likes to watch these shows about celebrities. You know the ones. The Osmond family is highlighted at what seems a frequency incommensurate with their fame. Anyway, there was this kid on the show. I’d never seen him before. “Who’s that?” I asked.

“Justin Bieber,” the wife said. She’s knowledgeable about such things.

“Who’s he?”

She told me he’s this kid who sings some song. All the girls love him, apparently.

“What’s up with his hair?”

It’s his trademark, she said, what he’s known for. Like Michael Jackson’s glove or Ellen Degeneres’s… humor. The girls love it, I guess.

“It looks ridiculous.” And it did. It was pretty in a way-- nice hair, I mean, but odd. It was sort of brushed forward like he’d been walking with a strong wind at his back and it got whipped around his face and he’d just left it there.

“The girls love it.”

I pushawed. I don’t understand “the girls.” Never did.

An hour or so later I was outside pushing the wheeled trash receptacle down to the curb. It was dark out. I like to wait until dark because I don’t want my neighbors to know I make trash. I turned around to head back to the house when someone hissed, “Hey, buddy.”

Except it was not a someone. It was an it. Specifically, it was Justin Bieber’s hair. It was floating, looking like a really nice toupee, right there above my driveway.

“What are you doing here?” I asked it. It seemed like a good question at the time.

“I heard what you said about me,” said Justin Bieber’s hair.

“How?”

“I have certain…abilities.”

“Whatever. I’m heading back in. I don’t spend my nights talking with disembodied hairdos.”

That’s when Justin Bieber’s hair attacked me. It leaped at my face and tried to gouge out my eyeballs, but mostly it just tickled. It was really soft and I couldn’t help noticing that it smelled good too, like vanilla and lavender. “You will respect me!” Justin Bieber’s hair yelled in a girlish voice.

I was about to grab for the hair to rip it from my face, but just then a few strands found their way into my mouth and the taste! Oh, the taste! “Certain abilities” indeed! I would compare it, were there anything on this Earth to compare it to!

Okay, I’ll try. How’s this: It tasted like a rainbow would taste if you had giant hands and could squeeze the rainbow and extract rainbow juice. Yes, just like that! It tasted like rainbow juice.

Needless to say, I abandoned my attempt to free myself from its intoxicating clutches and instead slurped. I slurped Justin Bieber’s hair. And it tasted divine. When I was done, the hair pulled itself from my face. “So,” it said, all haughty.

“So,” I answered.

The hair stared at me.

“It would seem I owe you an apology,” I told it.

“It would seem.”

“I am sorry. I…didn’t understand.”

“Not many do.” And then Justin Bieber’s hair departed, like a rainbow-flavored, vanilla and lavender-scented zephyr, back to Atlanta. Back to Justin’s head. Back to its improbable, glorious existence.

I'm trying to lose weight

2010-04-17T13:53:00.002-04:00

This has absolutely nothing to do with writing, so if you're looking for some insight on that subject, I suggest checking elsewhere. (Anita's at least trying to connect her exercise posts to writing.) Actually, even if this was going to be about writing, I'd still suggest you seek knowledge elsewhere because I don't really know what the hell I'm doing.

I'm trying to lose weight. I'm not going to get into all of methods I'm employing because whenever I do people try to tell me I'm going about it all wrong. And of course they're wrong, which makes things really awkward because I then have a choice of getting into an argument or pretending to be open-minded about what they have to say.

Anyway, obviously, I'm exercising some. I jog. I walk. Here are some thoughts I had while walking and jogging lately:

I feel like a tough guy when I'm running into the wind. (It reminds me of when Rocky was training for his fight against Ivan Drago.) And I feel super fast and in shape when I'm running with the wind.
I keep my mouth closed when I run because a. you look like an idiot otherwise and b. I'm always afraid one of those fat, lethargic, and seemingly confused bees is going to fly right down my throat. Swallowing a bee is one of my greatest fears, right behind reaching into a dark hole and being attacked by scorpions.
When running on the sidewalk, I still try to avoid stepping on cracks. You're welcome, Mom.
It's a damn good thing birds don't realize how terrified I am of them.
One of the more annoying things about running is it seems to produce a kind of watery snot that I really don't know what to do with. I don't want to bring Kleenex with me. Handkerchiefs are just disgusting and, as I am not yet over the age of seventy, may even be illegal. I'm not an accomplished snot rocket launcher, so the bottom of my shirt it is.
People who own dogs and allow them out of the house should keep them on a leash.
I run faster when people are watching. I also suck in my gut more and hold my breath so they can't tell how out of shape I am.
Joggers apparently feel a kind of kinship with fellow joggers, no matter the difference in fitness level. I'd rather they didn't, because it's hard to reciprocate a greeting when you're holding your breath and sucking in your gut.

In Which I Celebrate the Beauty of Form Rejections

2010-04-13T21:02:00.004-04:00

I would like to thank all of the agents who have sent me form rejections. It's difficult to get defensive about a form rejection. There isn't much analyzing or parsing to be done. Form rejections are barely even remembered, so terrifically uniform and bland they are. Exhibit A, for those out there who have never received one:

I regret to say that I don't feel that I'm the most appropriate agent for your work.

However, opinions vary considerably in this business, and I wish you the best of luck in your search for representation.

Nothing in there to piss me off too badly really. It's polite. It lets me down gently with the whole subjectivity thing. Hell, it even wishes me luck. Not once have I read a form rejection and wanted to explain my novel any further than I had already done in the query letter. Not once have I had my reading interrupted when I realized that what I was criticized for in a rejection was now happening, right on the page, of the book I was reading.

Take my current Newbery Honor read over there on the right. A Long Way From Chicago by one of the Pecks who writes kids' books is "a novel in stories," which basically means it's a bunch of short stories starring the same characters. The stories are funny. The novel--if you can really call it that--is historical. But it's meant to be a kids' book, and while the stories are told by the boy, the star of the show is undoubtedly the boy's grandmother.

Now I wouldn't normally care about this but for the fact that an agent who rejected my current young adult manuscript cited as one of its weaknesses too much of a focus on the adults. I thought it a valid criticism--until I read A Long Way From Chicago, a book in which the two kids do pretty much nothing except witness the exploits of their no-nonsense grandmother. So I guess the lessons are these: Agents, just send along the form rejection; it's far less painful. And make sure you mention how subjective this business is, because...it is.

So, Suppose I Should Blog Something

2010-03-31T23:10:00.002-04:00

I'd like to thank the 3-6 people who still check in here even though I don't. It's kind of like I went on vacation and left you all keys to feed the cat. You pop in, fill the bowl, take a look around to see if I'm into any weird shit, and quietly leave. I can hardly tell you've been here.

I'd like to say that my frequent absences are a direct result of busting ass on the current manuscript, but that would be a lie, and here at Murphblog, we don't take lying lying down.

Here's what I've been doing:

1. Collecting rejections on the YA.
2. Thinking about, but not actually sending, more query letters.
3. Playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii. (Birthday gift)
4. Opening the work-in-progress, reading some of it, telling myself I suck and it sucks and no one anywhere at anytime in any dimension would ever want to read such poo, typing a few sentences, editing a few more, planning the next scene, deleting those plans, closing the laptop, and watching TV.
5. March Madness. Go State!

I've also, in a fit of either madness or inspired lucidity, allowed my work-in-progress to be read by Anita, who was kinder than the story probably deserves. She assured me that it does not suck, but instead of accepting this affirmation, I question her judgment. Nice guy, huh?

And because I'm in the writing doldrums, I find it hard to justify blogging. Remember in college when you had two hundred pages to read by tomorrow because you blew off a week of classes, and even though you knew there was this reading you were supposed to do, you instead played Bill Walsh College Football on your Sega Genesis, woke up "early" so you could watch Saved by the Bell reruns, and took a nap at 2:00 so you would be "ready" to head to the bars at 10:00?

And even though you liked reading and Stephen King finally got around to finishing the latest Dark Tower book, you didn't read it because you had all this required reading to do and even if you tried to read the DT book, you wouldn't enjoy it because a little voice in your head would say, "Shouldn't you be reading that really exciting university press book written by your prof about the history of Ghana?" And you'd listen to that voice. Sort of. You'd put down Stephen King and go play another game of Bill Walsh College Football.

For those who lost their way in that labyrinth of metaphor, a guide:

My work-in-progress is the required reading.
This blog is the new Dark Tower book.
And the New Super Mario Bros. Wii is Bill Walsh College Football.

Off to take on World 4.

When Writers Don't Follow the "Rules."

2010-03-28T23:13:00.006-04:00

You try this long enough and you read quite a lot about today's supposed rules of writing. Here are a few:

No prologues
Don't start with backstory; drop it in as you go.
Go easy on the description
Characters should not look in a mirror as a way for them to describe their appearance to the reader.
You should have clever a premise or a new twist on an old one.
Your main character should be likable.
Your main character must act.
Your main character must solve the central problem.
There should be lots of conflict.
Fast-paced is preferable.
And so on.

And when you write, you try to follow these rules because you figure the people who are making them know what they're talking about and you don't want to eliminate yourself from the game before you get a chance to play.

And then you read something that's crazy successful and breaks all sorts of rules, like the book I'm reading now, Going Bovine, which takes about a hundred pages to get to the plot.

Or another book that I've read probably ten times, Because of Winn-Dixie. The book is beloved. There is no other word. I like it too, so don't read the following as a criticism of the book. It's more of a criticism of the people who promote the above "rules."

Winn-Dixie is about a girl and a dog. Not exactly breaking new ground there. The girl lives with her dad who's into his work. Mom is out of the picture. The girl misses her mom. Again, nothing original there, either. The girl takes in the dog and the dog helps her make friends and not feel so lonely. That's pretty much it. Most of the book is Opal meeting and talking to these people, most of whom are adults. She talks to Miss Franny Block, the librarian. She talks to Otis, the ex-con who runs the pet store. She talks to Gloria Dump. A couple of boys tease her, but she's never in any real danger. There is essentially no conflict to speak of in the story, unless you count Opal missing her mom and feeling lonely as conflict, which I suppose you can, but it's a pretty forgiving definition of conflict. The only "exciting" part of the story, I would submit, is when Winn-Dixie goes missing at the end of the story and Opal tells her dad she's not giving up like he did when Mom bolted and her dad says some things that make you feel all squishy inside. But then she does give up, but it's okay because Winn-Dixie was at Gloria Dump's house all along. The end.

Now, I like the story. I do. But I don't know why I like it. The writing is pleasant. The voice is excellent. The characters are kind of quirky. But as for plot? Eh. Honestly, it's one of those books that, if you were to describe it to somebody, I doubt they'd want to read it. But once read, almost everyone agrees it's excellent. Which goes to show that the rules matter, unless they don't.

A Short Story

2010-03-20T10:05:00.003-04:00

Here's the story I submitted to the Writer's Digest Your Story contest this past month. In came in second, which is just as good as coming in last. The prompt was "A magician's trick goes horribly wrong at a child's birthday party."

"XYZ"

The magician’s fly was open, and judging by the lack of response from the other parents, I was the only one who saw it. Maybe it was because of my angle, but I had a clear view of what appeared to be red boxers. I should tell him, I thought. But how would I do that without embarrassing him in front of the six-year-olds assembled on the floor watching with what could only be described as awe?

I didn’t know, so I did the only reasonable thing. I nudged my wife because I thought she might have a good idea. But my wife shrugged me off and flapped her hand at me. She was apparently enjoying the show too much to be bothered.

The magician held a gold coin in the air, turning it so that it caught the light. “And now,” he said, “Lester the Magician will make this coin disappear!”

Lester had come cheap and I was beginning to see why. The kids didn’t care, though. Judging by their spellbound faces, they thought Lester was great. Apparently, so did my wife. I couldn’t get her attention for anything.

“Jane,” I whispered.

“Alakazam! Alakazeer! Make this gold coin disappear!”

Lester clapped his hands, and when he displayed his palms, sure enough, the coin was gone. Most of the kids cheered enthusiastically. So did my wife. But Ralph, the most annoying of my son’s playmates, pointed at Lester and said, “It’s in your pocket! I saw you put it there!”

Lester the Magician ignored him. He was smarter than he looked. Which isn’t saying much for a guy standing with his pants unzipped in front of a bunch of mostly admiring kids.

“Your right pocket!” Ralph shouted. “Empty your right pocket!” I wanted to tell the kid to knock it off, but his dad was across the room beaming proudly at his son’s impertinence.

I couldn’t say anything to Lester either because he would have had to zip up in front of the kids, and I knew from past experience that anything having to do with underwear or that section of the human body was cause for six-year-old hysterics. So while he was fanning a deck of cards in front of my son, Joe, I tried to make eye contact with him.

I cleared my throat, “A-hrm,” but he kept going with the card trick.

My wife looked at me then. It wasn’t a pleased look. Or even a curious one. More like one that says, “What’s the matter with you, you moron?”

“His fly,” I mouthed, pointing at Lester’s midsection.

“What?” she mouthed back.

“His zipper,” I hissed, but she still didn’t get it. So I pointed at my own groin and my wife shook her head disgustedly and refused to look at me again.

After Lester correctly guessed the card Joe was holding and received his applause, he bowed. Then he turned around, bent over, and came up with a wooden box. As he placed it on a stool I thought I saw something other than red boxers through his open barn door.

I blinked. Was that…

Jesus. I sprinted toward him, my arms windmilling, my legs hurtling three soon-to-be scarred for life first graders. “Don’t move!” I yelled. Distantly, I heard Jane gasp, “Michael!” but she didn’t know. None of them knew.

I tackled Lester. Hard. The children shrieked. Ralph called out, “There it is! The coin! See? Right there on the floor!”

The other parents were on me in seconds, prying me off the magician. I struggled to free myself, to get back to Lester so I could explain, but the parents were shouting things like, “What’s wrong with you?” and “What a psycho,” and “We’re getting out of here.” Before I could offer a defense, they were dragging their kids out the door.

Soon, there were only four of us left in the room. My son was looking at me like I’d…well, like I’d tackled a magician, and Jane was too stunned to say anything at all. But when Lester the Magician staggered to his feet, Jane saw it. She quickly threw her hand over Joe’s eyes and pointed at the man’s partially exposed organ.

“XYZ,” I said.

The magician turned a deep shade of red and zipped up. After he left I turned to Joe and said, “I want to explain what just happened.”

And Joe replied, “That was a good trick, Daddy. You made the man’s pee pee disappear.”

Why Boys Read Less Than Girls--My $.02

2010-03-17T20:52:00.004-04:00

Why don't boys read as much as girls? I'll give you one reason: teachers. Specifically, elementary and middle school teachers who use the dreaded class novel. The class novel, for those out of the know, is when a teacher selects a book (usually something like this in elementary school or this in middle school or, God forbid, this in high school*) and then they spend about eight times as long as necessary reading and discussing the book until, even if the book is halfway decent, all the interesting has been hoovered out of it.

Now, most teachers, for too many bad reasons to name, tend to choose books that they think have high literary merit. They teach classics, or at least books with pretty words that tend to be character driven and big on THEME (and yes, as a third grade teacher I am required to teach THEME). In other words, a lot of these teachers use pretty much the same criteria that the Newbery judges use. (And a lot of them don't know jack about kidlit and figure if it's got a shiny medal on the cover then it has to be good.)

So pretend you're a boy and because it's short and because it's historical and because it won a Newbery, your third grade teacher decides to torture you with a month-long study of Sarah, Plain and Tall. In fourth grade, you get On My Honor. In fifth, maybe it's Island of the Blue Dolphins and in sixth, how about Bridge to Terabithia.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with any of the above (except Sarah, Plain and Tall. That books sucks. See below.), but if you're a boy who'd rather be spending his in-class reading time, I don't know, choosing books you actually want to read like your teacher does when she takes her steamy romance novels to the beach in the summer, then you might just start to think that reading is:

a. Boring
b. Something you're forced to do, like eating your vegetables
c. For the smart kids, especially the girl ones
d. All of the above

And you might receive the unintentional message that some books are worthy enough to be read and some are not (at least, not where your teacher can see you). That Captain Underpants book you saw in the store? "Garbage!" says Ms. Davis. Those Wimpy Kid books? Please. There are cartoons in them!

So my message to teachers is this:

a. no more class novels
b. allow your students to choose the books they want to read and allow them to read them at their own speed. (Kind of like you do.)
c. if you want to know if they're understanding it, read the book yourself and talk about it. (You know, like real people do.)
d. if you must teach THEME, use picture books. They have themes too and you can cover about twenty different themes in the time it takes you to work through one (maybe two) in a class novel.
e. The Wimpy Kid books are awesome.

_________________________________________________

Sarah, Plain and Tall, reviewed by what sounds an awful lot like actual third grade boys (from Amazon):

"I don't think this is a good book for these reasons: It has no emotional, dangerous or mysterios parts."

"Sarah, Plain and Tall is a short and boring book. I, an eleven-year-old boy, had to read it for Accelerated Reader, and as the story progressed it became worse and worse."

"The story goes nowhere fast. My last comment is the book is too short. If you're a person who likes short books basically about the colors blue, gray, and green, and your between the ages of 7-10, knock yourself out."

"Don't put any little kids through the torture of reading this horrible book. It scarred me for life."

"Few interesting things happened, and the dialog stank."

"Some of you say "poetic nature" and a "light romance" what ever!"

"What a snore!"

_____________________________________________

*Thank God for The Outsiders and Lord of the Flies.

Sore Tooth

2010-03-16T15:16:00.002-04:00

Wrote this for a student who complained of a sore tooth. This is what teachers call "modeling" but what is really probably closer to a "dereliction of duty."

Sore Tooth

I'm sitting here in class,
and my mouth is really sore.
I'm trying to be tough,
but it's too hard to ignore.
My eyes have started watering,
I do not want to cry.
My toothache hurts so much
I think I'm going to die.
I have to tell the teacher,
maybe he'll know what to do.
On second thought, he won't,
that guy doesn't have a clue.
Maybe if I punch myself
I'll forget about the pain.
I think I'll try my shoulder,
it's not good for any-thang.
On second thought, that's silly,
my tooth will still feel bad.
There is no way to fix it,
it's starting to make me mad.
So I slam my fist onto my desk,
my teacher glares at me.
But with the tears rolling down my face
he decides to leave me be.
I touch my tooth, it is so loose
I think it might fall out
I pull and tug and twist and jerk
it's coming, there's no doubt!
Then--pop!--it's free, my tooth is out!
It's lying in my palm.
And then I notice another thing--
my feelings, they are calm.
The pain is gone, I feel better,
I push out my chair and stand.
I'm heading to the sink because
there's blood all over my hand.

I know, not my greatest, but you try writing poetry while keeping one eye on 28 kids.

An Idea

2010-03-12T11:42:00.002-05:00

Is it wrong of me to want to write a middle grade Choose Your Own Adventure in which all paths lead to gruesome death?

I know when I read those things (and I did. I so did), that if I ended up dying I would backtrack and then choose a different path until I got to a happy ending. How infuriating would it be if there was no happy ending?

______________________________________________________

If you didn't click the link, do so. It's funny and apparently I'm not the only one to consider this idea.

______________________________________________________

And while I was searching for an image I came across this:

Choose Your Own Adventure Books That Never Quite Made It.

What a great way to waste twenty minutes.

My Thoughts on the News

2010-03-10T21:40:00.003-05:00

I usually avoid current events on here because I like to keep things light and I don't want people to feel bad when they realize they've been wrong about important issues after reading my enlightening posts. But a loyal reader wanted to know my take on a couple of news items,* so I thought I'd oblige.

Apparently, there's a representative from New York named Eric Massa who was the tragic victim of "kill the old guy" at his 50th birthday party. "Kill the old guy" is a popular game played by many fifty-year-old men at birthday parties. It involves groping other men, being tackled, and tickling others until they can't breathe. Yummy! Can't wait till I turn 50!

Corey Haim died of an overdose. If you're trying to remember which Corey that is, it's the one you would have least expected to die of an overdose.

If you're driving a Toyota, stop. If you can, that is.

I guess there's something going on with Health Care.

I've now emailed V.P. Biden three times about his chocolate milk preference and he has yet to respond. The last time I emailed, I pretended to be a six-year-old boy. Apparently, Joe Biden hates six-year-olds. Instead of answering this important question, V.P. Biden is off in Israel working on peace with the Palestinians, as if that's going to happen. Nice priorities, Joe.

Lindsay Lohan is suing E-Trade because she's a crazy drunk. Or because she thinks it's bad to drink a lot of milk. Or because she wants money. I don't know.

The Central Falls school board canned the entire staff of Central Falls High because they have a sorry graduation rate. So if you're a really great teacher who would love to work in a district that obviously respects teachers and works with them to improve their students' education, then Central Falls is the place for you! I'm sure they'll get lots of great candidates.

___________________________________________________
* Not really.

And That's When...

2010-03-09T21:59:00.003-05:00

Okay, writers, let us tackle the sudden change. I've been noticing the phrase "And that's when..." in a lot of books lately. It's usually used like this:

Dickey rubbed the balloon against his head. He pressed it to the wall and it stayed there, magically. Dickey wondered what other powers his hair had been keeping from him.

And that's when a sound like the mating call of a lemur in a mall rent the air.

I've been seeing the "And that's when" technique used over and over again and I like it so much that I now use it myself.

And that's when I realized it might be overused.

What I think is happening is writers have read advice from so-called experts to avoid using the word "suddenly" and the phrase "all of a sudden" (or as one of my third graders wrote it "althesuden"). And so, dutiful little sheep that we are, we go forth and smite all of the suddenness from our stories and replace them with "And that's when"s.

So, anyone have any great ideas for fresh ways to introduce something that throws a scene in a new direction? Feel free to use the lemur in your example.

Book Reviews

2010-03-09T12:00:00.003-05:00

I was going to start this post by apologizing and making excuses about my blogging absence, but that's cliche, so screw it.

I have been reading and I have been writing. Book reviews follow:

The Year the Swallows Came Early

+ Well written
+ Different setting (small town on the California coast)
+ The MC wants to go to culinary school. I like food. Like Everything on a Waffle, there are recipes in the book.

- Dad's in jail. Mom doesn't want to talk about it. Seen it before.
- The MC spends a good portion of the book moping around.
- Not much happens

The Phantom Tollbooth

+ Wordplay. Words work hard; they deserve to play sometimes.
+ Funny parts, but not laugh-out-loud funny, more smart funny. Smart funny is good, too.
+ Allegorical, and although allegory usually flies right past me without me noticing, it was kind of hard to miss in this one.

- The sketchy flip side of allegory: the story's a little weak.

Castration Celebration

+ Totally raunchy
+ Funny
+ Pokes fun at Twilight
+ Honest

- Not as funny as Wizner's first book, Spanking Shakespeare
- The main characters weren't all that likable.
- Some of the songs fell flat.

Sir Farsalot Hunts the Booger

+ The title
+ Had some funny lines

- Not enough farting

From the Pens of Third Graders

2010-03-04T15:18:00.003-05:00

Asked my students to complete the following sentence:

Good stories have...

They said:

Action
Scary parts
Funny parts
Battles
Big problems
Evil characters
Great pictures
Weird parts
Mean characters
No run-on sentences (I'd be in trouble)
Paragraphs
Surprise endings
A great lead
Excitement
Showing, not telling
Good verbs
Dialogue that sounds real
Similes (I had to provide the word. The student gave me the example: "Her face was red as a tomato.")
Description
Exciting Ending
Kissing (Don't even ask.)
Serious problems to solve
A lesson a character learns
Violence
Adventure
Zooming in on an important subject
Robots (hell yes!)
Aliens (same kid. I want to read more of his work.)
Interesting settings
Lots of dialogue (Agreed.)
Funny characters
Interesting characters
Endings that make you feel something (other than disappointment, I presume)

So now you know.

Lesson Learned

2010-03-02T16:00:00.004-05:00

A while back I entered a story for Writer's Digest's "Your Story" contest. And then my story was one of five selected as a finalist and I got all excited and lobbied people on the blog to go vote for it. According to the online tally, I got the most votes. But I did not win because of voting irregularities. My guess is that 1. they found out I'd lobbied for votes or 2. they discounted votes of people who'd registered and voted the same day or 3. some IP addresses voted more than once (for instance, my mom and dad both voted from the same computer; they're supportive like that) and that's against the rules.

Then I got really pissy and said some mean things about Writer's Digest and their stupid "Your Story" competition rules.

Eventually I got over that and when a prompt I liked came up I wrote a story and sent it off to them. And now it's been selected as a finalist.

So... (here's where I show I learned my lesson)

If you are already a registered member of the Writer's Digest Web site...

and if you feel like reading some stories about a magician's trick going horribly wrong at a child's birthday party...

and if you feel like voting for the best story...

then go here.

But remember, don't vote more than once, don't register just so you can vote and then never visit the site again, don't let anyone else use your computer or account to vote, and don't lobby anyone to vote for what is, obviously, the best story of the five.

And no, I'm not telling you which one that is.*

))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) (Something new.)

*You'll probably figure it out on your own.

Once Again, I am Awarded for my Brilliance

2010-02-25T17:24:00.010-05:00

Regular readers of this blog know that I do not look upon blog awards with the kind of scorn which has become de rigueur.* I revel in them. I bask in their self-esteem enhancing glow. I wring their generous teats until I collect every sweet drop of approbation in my bottomless bucket.

But you also know that I believe GUIDELINES ARE FOR THE UNCREATIVE.

So although I appreciate Sarah Dooley and Kelly Polark contributing to my unjustifiably high ego, I will not be posting an image of the award on this blog.
And I will not be posting the rules for the award.
And I will not be passing this award on.
And I will not be following the rules, either. The quote-unquote guidelines say I am to give you six lies and a truth and you are to guess the truth. While I could, with relative ease, contrive six exceedingly imaginative lies (I'm an award winning blogger, after all), I prefer, today, to tell the truth. What follows, therefore, are six truths and one lie. I look forward to your guesses and, although it no doubt goes without saying, your slack-jawed veneration.

1. While whitewater rafting, I once heroically pulled my wife from the rushing rapids seconds before she slammed into a wall of rock.

2. A doctor once gave me a prostate exam by mistake.

3. I once hit an antelope while driving through a nature preserve in Nevada. My car was towed to the town of Winnemucca by a driver named Wiley. Like the coyote.**

4. When I was a kid I won the local free throw shooting competition three years in a row.

5. I live less than three miles from an Extreme Makeover Home Edition house.

6. The Wife and I were in New Orleans ten days before Hurricane Katrina hit. We ate beignets, toured Jackson Square, and got lost.

7. My family hosted an exchange student from Stoke-on-Trent, England, when I was in high school.

____________________________________________________

* Like most of the tools I own, foreign phrases are fun to use, even if I'm not entirely sure how to use them.
** Actually, most likely not. The coyote spells his funny.

I Need Your Assistance

2010-02-24T16:33:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned in the Wizard of Oz post, my current project stars an eighth grade girl. As I have never actually been an eighth grade girl and since I don't currently have a daughter in the eighth grade and because eavesdropping on eighth grade girls at the mall is probably not the best thing for a thirty-three-year-old man to be doing, I need some help.

Basically, I need to know how to think like an eighth grade girl.

So while I am sure it would be great fun for you to tell me everything you remember about your eighth grade selves, I'd actually rather use stuff from, you know, literature.

So if you don't mind, would you please list in the comments books that feature an eighth grade girl as the main character?*

____________________________________________

*And just so we're all clear, I'm not looking for eighth grade girl slang or speech patterns, but more for the types of things they notice and think about.

TIA
BBL

Can We Talk Wizard of Oz?

2010-02-22T17:18:00.007-05:00

So I'm writing a story in which my main character is a girl who basically thinks her life sucks. Her parents are extremely overprotective. She's friendless. Boys show no interest in her (she's in eighth grade). And then she's transported to another world through a toilet drain.

To make the story work, she has to want to get home. It is this desire that causes conflict.

So I was thinking, Nope, that won't work. Because if she hates her old life and this new place offers not only excitement (it does) and a boy she likes (who likes her back) then why would she want to return home?

And then I got to thinking about The Wizard of Oz. I found the script online and reread the beginning and it's not a lot different than mine. We have Dorothy who dreams of "somewhere over the rainbow" and thinks Kansas farm life sucks and her dog's about be euthanized. But when she tells her aunt and uncle they ignore her, dismiss her concerns, and basically tell her to keep out of the way.*

Eventually she ends up in Oz where, because she kills the Wicked Witch of the East, she's treated as a hero by the Munchkins. There's also Technicolor in Oz, which is pretty cool. And she makes friends, something she didn't have before.

So why would she want to go home?

You might think she wants to go home because she's in danger; the Wicked Witch of the West wants her dead. But even after the witch is vanquished, Dorothy desires to return to Kansas.

So my question is this: Given that The Wizard of Oz gets away with it, can I? Or maybe you're cool with it. An argument can be made (The Wife made it, in fact) that all kids this age (I'd argue especially eighth grade girls) think their parents are idiots and want more excitement. There's the notion of the grass being greener (literally, in Oz's case) on the other side. So maybe I'm worried about something I shouldn't be too concerned with. You tell me, is this or is this not a plot problem?**

____________________________________________
*She's also taunted by the farmhands, who tell her to use her brains, have a heart, and find some courage. And her aunt and uncle don't put up much of a fight when Ms. Gulch comes to take Toto. Nice people.

**For a real plot problem, consider the unresolved case of Ms. Gulch and Toto. As far as I can tell, Toto's still a goner at the end of the movie. Maybe Dorothy should have stayed in Oz.

This is Me Being Literary

2010-02-19T08:00:00.004-05:00

It's a poem. Never mind that close inspection reveals most of the lines to be utter drivel. It's art, man. Just feel it. Let it wash over you, like uh....uh...shower water. Yeah. Like shower water, man.

The trees are bleeding color,
Yellow, orange, dark red.
The sky above is granite.
Cold raindrops pelt my head.
There's a river in the gutter,
flowing swiftly toward a drain,
And the sidewalk is a puddle
of dimpled, mirrored terrain.
The worms have left their harbor;
They've come above to die,
And somewhere leaves are cooking
Smoke twists into the sky.
There's sorrow in the air today;
it quarters discontent.
Arriving on a bitter wind
comes summer's last lament.

In answer to your question, I have no idea why someone is burning leaves in a rainstorm. Seems foolish to me too.

A Poem For My Peeps

2010-02-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

Found this one in the vault. I don't think I've posted it before.

When I get bored I pick my nose.
It's really very fun.
I dig real deep and poke around.
My work is never done.
Today I found four boogers.
They were gooey, they were green.
I wiped them on the carpet,
So they could not be seen.
But when it was time for recess,
I had not a moment to lose.
I ran across the carpet.
Now there's boogers on my shoes.

Let's Debate Grammar

2010-02-16T15:11:00.002-05:00

Is the following a complete sentence? Why or why not?

Brian said.

Go.

Are Agents Telling the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth?

2010-02-14T19:03:00.010-05:00

So I've been researching agents. I've been particularly interested in what they have to say about query letters, seeing as a story doesn't really matter all that much unless you can get one of them to read it. A lot of agents say something along these lines* (and by "something along these lines" I mean "these exact words."):

I’m not asking for anything out of the ordinary—just a concise letter that clearly establishes the writer or illustrator as a professional, shows me that he or she has a strong handle on their work, how their work fits into the market, and what their background is.

When I get a query letter, I want to know a few specific things: 1) What kind of book is it? 2) Is it fiction or nonfiction? 3) Is it your first book? 4) Two to five reasonably-lengthed sentences describing the plot. 5) What’s your educational background? And do you have anything in that background that makes you particularly qualified to write it, or gives you a platform?

I'm not really one for gimmicks.

But it seems like this advice is maybe, just a little bit, I don't know...lacking. Sure, if you write a "professional" query letter that's free of grammatical errors and conveys the story succinctly you will avoid having your query letter passed around an agency and laughed at. You won't immediately take yourself out of the game. But I just have a hard time believing query letters that don't jump out of the pile and scream Pick Me! are going to lead to much of anything except a polite rejection letter. And here's why I think that:

Chris Rylander's query letter (Click the link. It's one of the funniest things you'll ever read. You'll need to scroll to the purple words.) As Chris explains on his blog, the query was for a book in a genre that the agent didn't even represent (which is one of the things every agent complains about), but it caught the agent's attention and Chris signed with him.

Shaun Hutchinson started his query "Dear Agent: It is our duty to inform you that your death is scheduled to occur on the early morning of October 17, 2008. Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated. Have a pleasant day."

And there's a writer who reads this blog (and really likes Guinness) who snagged his agent with a query written in...wait for it...first person (gasp!)

When I try to picture what a day in the life of an agent is, I get an image of a person sitting at a computer, clicking on email after email and reading query letter after query letter. I'm sure a professional letter is appreciated, especially when compared to what is surely quite a lot of garbage, but does a merely "professional" letter truly stand out? Will it really grab the attention of a glass-eyed agent?

I think it's doubtful.

And so the question is this: Do you, as a writer seeking representation, take the conservative approach and write something that will be guaranteed not to turn someone off, but will probably also not set an agent's imagination ablaze? Or do you take a risk and do something out of the ordinary, knowing that some agents will roll their eyes and hit delete, but others will sit up in their chairs and say, Hey, now here's something different.**

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*There are notable exceptions. Daniel Lazar, for instance, openly admits here that the phrase "museum of fucked up things" caught his attention in a query letter. (I like it too.)

**Obviously, the above question is probably moot if you write the next Hunger Games trilogy. Books with such awesome premises stand out on their own, which is why we who struggle to write queries hate their authors so much.

Dear Wife

2010-02-13T17:25:00.001-05:00

I love you.

An Update on the YA

2010-02-10T18:28:00.002-05:00

I'm not going to be one of those writers who posts every time he gets rejected, but since a lot of you read my YA manuscript and since I made my initial submission public, I thought you should know that I received word today from the agent to whom I sent it.

He passed.

He had reasons and stuff.

So here's the bad news: I have to write an actual query letter now.

And here's some good news: Agent Kristin Nelson is on the prowl.

Quickies

2010-02-07T16:42:00.002-05:00

I can't decide between two works-in-progress, so consequently, I've been working on both and finding that unsatisfactory.

I give Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist a six on the 1-10 scale. Too much stuff going on inside the characters' heads and not enough actually happening for my taste. Also, Nick and Norah's voices were clever, but maybe just a little too clever. I believe "cloying" is the word I want.

I loved Under the Dome.

I'm taking the Colts.

Anita let me look at her baby. I enjoyed it.

Know what's good? Cheese and meat mixed together.

I agree with this. You should too.

Speaking of the works-in-progress, anyone want to read twenty or thirty pages and tell me which one you like better? Instead of making a decision myself, I'll let you all make it for me.

Rejected Blog Idea

2010-02-03T20:09:00.003-05:00

The other day I had what I was pretty sure was the best idea since Harry Burnett Reese figured out how to combine peanut butter and chocolate in the shape of a shallow cup. But I waited, because like many great ideas, this one scared me a little.

After a couple of days I rejected the idea because it was sure to cause controversy and might make some of my loyal readers angry and could even get back to some powerful people who could break me.

However, because I am nothing if not giving, I am offering this idea to anyone who wants it. Here it is:

I was going to call it the HOTTEST WOMEN OF YA and it would have been pretty much exactly what you think. After hours of exhaustive research (Google images), I was going to post pictures and perhaps some commentary about the lovely ladies who pen potential Printz prizewinners. I would of course encourage recommendations for other ladies in the comments. Then I thought there would be a battle between the HOTTEST WOMEN OF YA to determine the HOTTEST WOMAN OF YA, complete with voting and impassioned arguments and maybe even payola. At the end, a winner would be named. Maybe I'd have even created a fancy award for the HOTTEST WOMAN OF YA to post on her blog.

But like I said, I'm not going to do it. Someone would take it the wrong way. Someone always does. They'd call me sexist and say I was "objectifying women" and all that. I imagine their leader as Ursula K. Le Guin, but I wouldn't put it past Laurie Halse Anderson (who would have probably been a contender, incidentally. Just sayin'). Or maybe Philip Reeve. Those Brits are sensitive gents.
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The photo above is of Ann Brashares. Its appearance in this post is purely coincidental. I swear.

A Couple of Opinions With Which You Should Agree

2010-02-03T19:11:00.007-05:00

Those Newbery Award stickers should have the year on them.
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Also, I'd like to suggest a form of censorship. Dear school librarians, do not order any more I Spy books. Because you know who checks out I Spy books? Kids who can't read. And guess what? I Spy books aren't going to help them get better at reading. They're going to help them get better at finding hidden objects in ridiculous pictures. And while I'm sure that's a valuable skill for a future...um...something, I would rather they practice that at home.*
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Thanks for the books, Myra.
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*Not really. I'd rather they read books with more than thirty words in them at home, but I'm trying to appear reasonable here.

The One Word Response Award

2010-02-01T22:30:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Larissa for presenting me with the prestigious Over the Top Award for Blogging Excellence (I added that last bit). Unlike Tracy, I accept and am grateful for all awards, even if they have been passed around more often than that one girl in high school who the girls all despised because a. she was disgusting and b. although you didn't want to admit it, your boyfriend probably would take a shot if he thought he could get away with it and c. you secretly wondered what it would be like to be that girl and although you never would, it was kind of fun to pretend and the fact that you never would made you hate her even more. Damn her.

And if you're a guy then I'm talking about that girl who, in response to a snide remark from your girlfriend, said, "She is gross. I don't understand what guys see in her," but you actually thought, "Well, I mean, if she wanted to and, you know, if I didn't have a girlfriend, and, I guess if nobody found out, then..."

That award.

Here it is:

See those lips?

I have to answer the following questions using only one word, a feat which I am sure will prove extremely difficult for me (I like words. Too much. Like right now, for example.). Then I have to tag five people, and because he only accepts awards from me, I will be tagging Tracy Edward Wymer.

Your cell phone: Ignored
Your hair: Cowlicky
Your mother: Brave
Your father: Supportive
Favorite Food: This (See what I did there?)
Your Dream Last Night: Forgotten
Your Favorite Drink: Duh
Your Dream/Goal: Publication
What Room You Are In: Mine
Your Hobby: This
Your Fear: Midgets
Where Do You See Yourself in Six Years: Mirror
Where Were You Last Night: Alibi
Something That You Aren't: Pyromaniacal
Muffins? Sure
Wish List Item: Invisibility
Where Did You Grow Up: Who says I did?
Last Thing You Did: Write
What Are You Wearing? Glasses
Your TV: Off
Your Pet(s): Incarcerated
Friends: Few
Your Life: Enjoyable
Your Mood: Aloof
Missing Someone: Reagan (Hell, I'll take Clinton again.)
Vehicle: Impala
Something You Aren't Wearing: Beret
Your Favorite Store: Schuler Books and Music
Your Favorite Color: Blue
When Was the Last Time You Laughed: Tonight
Last Time You Cried: 2007
Your Best Friend: Wife
One Place You Go Over and Over Again: Bathroom
Facebook? Rarely
Favorite Place to Eat: Here

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I award: TEW, Anita, Chris (because he needs to blog something), Ben Esch (even though he won't), and Laura Pauling (need a link)

My "Office"

2010-02-01T18:34:00.002-05:00

This is where I write. It's a couch. That's the kitchen behind me. You might notice the yellow rubber gloves. The Wife uses those for washing dishes because she doesn't like wrinkly fingers. She gets angry at me when I knock the gloves into the sink because then they get wet and I guess that sort of defeats the purpose.

Other things of note:

The pink tray on the left side of the picture is Little One's "princess" tray.

That's a dictionary on the whatever-you-call-that-kind-of-table. I'm old skool that way.

The dangling cord is from a string of Christmas lights. Probably should take those down some day.

The Top 100 Chapter Books of All Time

2010-01-30T17:37:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Jacqui for the heads up. Go here. Read about it. Then submit your selections to Fusenumber8@gmail.com. Put them in order, best to tenth best.

Mine:

1. Potter--I picked the first one for the sake of simplicity, but really, any of them would do. Why it's number one: I used the stranded on a deserted island test. If I were in such a place, I would read and reread and reread any of the Harry Potter books above the others on the list.

2. Maniac Magee--First, it's awesome. Second, it's totally boy. Third, Spinelli deserves to be on the list and Maniac is his best work. There are other reasons.

3. Holes--Pure story. Awesome plotting. And another one for the boys.

4. Charlotte's Web--Is there a better story of friendship?

5. The Tale of Despereaux--I love Kate DiCamillo's writing, and for my money, Despereaux is her best story.

6. James and the Giant Peach--Because you must include Dahl.

7. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing--More a series of vignettes than a "story," but I read it to my third graders every year and they love it. After all these years, it's still funny.

8. The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963--I like unconventional. A lot. Which is partly why Maniac Magee (a serious story about race that's told as a tall tale), Despereaux (the dicking around of the timeline is fun), Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (see above), and Watsons make the list. Christopher Paul Curtis spends a good three-quarters of the book making you laugh your ass off and then--WHAM!--church bombing! I admire his guts (or ignorance--He's admitted as much in interviews), but I admire his publisher's guts even more.

9. The Westing Game--Because mysteries are fun and this is the best middle grade one I've read. We need more good mysteries. Anyone willing to write one?

10. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH--Like James and the Giant Peach, this one makes the list because I loved it as a kid. I like it somewhat less now, but you can't argue with nostalgia. I still refuse to admit Knight Rider sucked.

Now show me yours. But do it on your own blog, please.

From the Junk Drawer

2010-01-28T22:51:00.002-05:00

Since I have nothing to say, I thought I'd scour the flash drive for stuff I've abandoned and share it with you. That's right, I think so highly of my followers that I subject them to my trash.

Our principle is a great big fat lady who wears baggy colorful dresses. If she could hula-hoop she’d probably look a lot like Saturn. But since she’s so big and also so old, I doubt she hula-hoops. Be pretty funny if she did, though.

You don’t want an old principal. They’re like old teachers, but worse. Old teachers, like my last year’s teacher, Mrs. Baker, think can do whatever they want. Last year, Brandon Cleland got caught chewing gum in Mrs. Baker’s class and Mrs. Baker made him stick the gum on an index card. Then she pinned the index card to his t-shirt and he had to walk around with it all day. At night, he had to have his mom sign the index card and he had to bring the card back the next day with the gum still on it. Old teachers can get away with stuff like that. When I told my parents about it they acted like it was no big deal. Dad chuckled. “Still up to her old tricks, huh?” he’d said. Then he went on to tell me how easy kids had it nowadays and how when he went to school the principal had a paddle hanging right on the wall. It even had holes in it to cut down on air resistance. “She still have that old paddle?” he had asked.

Turns out she did still have the paddle. I saw it when she called me into her office. It was hanging right there on the cinder block wall next to her diploma.

“Have a seat,” Mrs. Winterbottom said. She sat behind her huge desk looking a lot like Jabba the Hutt in a dress, but Jabba wasn’t the only bad guy from Star Wars she reminded me of because for some reason Mrs. Winterbottom didn’t use her nose to breath. She breathed through her mouth and it made her sound like Darth Vader. I’d never seen anybody make breathing seem so difficult.

I sat down in a plastic chair. She had one of those gigantic cups you get at 7-11 in front of her, the kind that holds about six gallons of soda. She grabbed the cup with a meaty hand, lifted it to her mouth and sucked on the straw. When she was done she was breathing harder than before.

“Laughing in class,” Mrs. Winterbottom said, peering out over the top of her thick eyeglasses at me. “Why?”

Well I wasn’t about to tell her about what Titus said for two reasons. First, you don’t repeat Uranus jokes to the principal and second, I didn’t want to get Titus in trouble. So I just said, “Something funny happened and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Does that ever happen to you?” I asked her that because with mom and dad it helps to remind them that in many ways they’re not that different from me. Sometimes it makes them think twice about being so angry.

But it didn’t work with Mrs. Winterbottom. “No,” she said. “I never laugh.”

“But you used to, right?”

“No," she said. "Principals do not laugh.” She said it like she'd been principal her entire life, and for all I knew, she might have been.

I'm Positive, and I Have an Award to Prove It

2010-01-24T23:53:00.004-05:00

Boy howdy! The Literary Ramblin' Woman herself, Casey McCormick, just awarded me a rootin' tootin', hootin,' hollerin', positively boot scootin' award. Much obliged, cowgirl.

Enough of that. I'm plum out of cowboy slang. The award is for projecting a positive outlook on my blog. You know, being my regular optimistic self. I'm now supposed to pass it on to five other uplifting bloggers. But first, I kind of feel like I need to prove I'm deserving.

So here are five positive outlooks on things that aren't, at first blush, very positive.

1. Sure, the economy is bad, but if it wasn't, we wouldn't be able to enjoy jokes like The economy is so bad Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America. Or any of these either.

2. Yes, the movie Avatar may have killed a Taiwanese man, but it's got really awesome special effects and the story's not half bad.

3. Being fat isn't a very good idea. Getting fat, however, is really fun and easy to do. You just eat delicious foods like pizza and potato skins then sit (or lay) down for the great majority of your day. Piece of cake. Mmm, cake.

4. Brett Favre did not make it back to the Super Bowl, but---oh, wait. That is good news.

5. The earthquake in Haiti was devastating, but because of it, Beyonce got to change the lyrics to her hit song "Halo" to "Haiti We Can See Your Halo," a la Elton John after the Princess Diana thing. And that's always good times.

Yee haw.

My five positive people:

Kelly
Paul
Corey
Debra
TEW

If they don't find their way here in the next couple of days, will someone let them know? Report cards are due this week. I be busy.

She's Gone

2010-01-23T19:25:00.002-05:00

My hands are still shaking.

I just clicked the SUBMIT button and sent off the YA. Couldn't they have come up with a better term than SUBMIT? For a writer who just sent his work out into the big scary agenty world, the word takes on a meaning that I'm sure the gmail programmers did not intend. Because just before I clicked the button, I had the feeling that I was bent over, grabbing my ankles, and waiting for something prodding to make an unwanted appearance. SUBMIT, indeed.

Right. So I sent the YA and now comes the waiting. This is where I'm supposed to bemoan the sluggish pace at which things occur in the publishing industry. I'm not gonna do it, though. The SUBMIT button was depressing enough, so how about something positive? Here's how I'd like things to go next:

1. On Monday, the person to whom I sent it calls (because I might not get to my email right away) and says, "I've read the first ten pages and I'd like to sign you right now. You didn't send this anywhere else did you?"

2. I sign.

3. "Oh, did I mention that it's perfect as it is? No revisions necessary. Never have I seen such a polished story from an unpublished writer. Actually, now that I think about it, I've never seen such a polished story from any writer. I can see my reflection in this story, and it's actually better looking that the real life me."

4. I act all humble and say something self-deprecating.

5. Agent laughs. Uproariously.

6. Book is sold by Friday.

7. Book is in stores by March because the publisher is hurting and needs a massive infux of cash ASAP and ever since my halftime appearance at the Super Bowl people have been threatening to destroy New York if the publisher doesn't get moving.

8. Book flies off the shelves faster than John Edwards can say "Oops."

9. Oprah calls. She wants me on her last show. I decline.

10. With all of my money and power I decide to purchase New York. I rename it New Murph. I refuse to live there, however, until Times Square is turned into a huge outdoor library stocked with books whose pages have all been laminated, at least until I find a way to control the weather.

And in honor of the title, here's this:

Bad Day

2010-01-20T22:42:00.002-05:00

If you think you had a bad day, watch this and think again.

By the way, my blogging absence is actually due to my writing instead of the usual lack of inspiration. I'm preparing the YA for submission next week.

Prediction Time!

2010-01-17T10:27:00.004-05:00

ALA awards tomorrow. You can watch them here or follow them on Twitter. I will be doing neither since, like every year, I have to work on MLK Day. However, that will not stop me from embarrassing myself and once again incorrectly predicting some of the winners.

I don't read enough new picture books to even bother pretending I know what I'm talking about, so if you want opinions on the Caldecott, I'd recommend getting in touch with Jacqui. She writes the things and reads lots of 'em.

Newbery Award

Tricky year for the judges. First, quite a few past winners (and I'm including honor books in that term) published books in 2009. There was Scat by Carl Hiaasen, A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck, The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo, Al Capone Shines My Shoes by Gennifer Choldenko, and Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson. I don't think any of these books has the goods their Newbery books did, but that won't stop the Newbery Committee from awarding one of them.

The Favorites:

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is on everyone's list and for good reason.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is the kind of book librarians love. It's historical fiction, has a girl MC who's into a stereotypically boy thing, science, there's some good stuff about Charles Darwin, so kids might actually learn a few things, and the language is lush.

Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson makes the list because it seems as though every time she writes a book the Newbery folks give her an award. I don't think it's deserving, but I'm not voting.

Dark Horses:

When the Whistle Blows by Fran Slayton is a book I read and I liked it fine, but never once did I think it was an award winner.

A Season of Gifts, which I have not read, but it's Peck, so it has to be good.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Told Justice could be the Good Masters, Sweet Ladies book of 2010. I haven't read it, so I don't know how good it is, but you can't ignore the recent trend of Newbery judges recognizing works written primarily for an African-American audience. Woodson has been the primary beneficiary, but Claudette gives judges a reason to go without someone else.

Who I Want to Win:

Rebecca Stead for When You Reach Me, although I did not love the book as much as others, I still think it's the most enjoyable of the above. And isn't enjoyment why we read?

Who I Think Will Win: Jacqueline Kelly for Calpurnia Tate, because the librarians gave it to The Graveyard Book last year and I think it buys them a year to pick something quieter, slower, deeper, and more literary.

Printz Award

Thanks to a library system that often seems late to the game, I haven't read a ton of the Printz contenders. Here are ones I haven't read, but I have heard buzz about:

If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Charles and Emma: The Darwin's Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
The Devil's Paintbox by Victoria McKernan.
All the Broken Pieces by Ann Burg

The Favorites:

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson--Honestly, I started this one but couldn't do it. First, the topic was way too serious, as are many of Anderson's books. I read to get away from the real world, not to immerse myself in its small horrors. Also, and I'm prepared to be attacked here, the writing was too good. The writing was so good that I just sat there and marveled at it and instead of wanting to read the story I wanted to study the writing and maybe steal a turn-of-phrase or two. Or fifty.

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork--I read this one and loved it. One of the top three books I read last year. It should win. Period. Plus, the author has an X in his name.

Dark Horses:

Liar by Justine Larbalestier--Haven't read it. Probably won't, but it's generated a ton of Internet buzz and the reviews I've read have been favorable, often highlighting the masterful use of an unreliable narrator.

Going Bovine By Libba Bray--Anyone who's willing to do this deserves consideration.

Who I Want to Win: Stork for Marcelo.

Who Will Win: Stork for Marcelo.