Goals for the Summer

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

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!

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

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

Gentrified.

Your turn.

Good News Abounds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."

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

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

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.

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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!"

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

Sore Tooth

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

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?

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

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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

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.

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* Not really.

And That's When...

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

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

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

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

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.

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* 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

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?*

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*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?

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?**

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*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

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

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

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?

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.

or

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?

or

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

I love you.

An Update on the YA

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

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

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

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

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

_______________________________________________

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"

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

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

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.