2010 100+ Reading Challenge/Library Challenge

All right, I am doing a few reading challenges in 2010. One is the 2010 Debut Author's Challenge, for which I will read at least a dozen YA novels written by new authors on the scene.

Another is the 2010 100+ Reading Challenge. Now that one I know is going to be a bit of a stretch. In the long free days of my youth, I averaged a book or two a day; the day job and school both sort of interfere with my reading these days, though. I *think* a book every 3 days is still manageable, though, assuming I avoid the thick non-fiction books (like the one on the history of eugenics in America that I'm working on now). As much as I love some brilliant non-fiction, I need more novels in my life anyway!

And, since I plan to make hearty use of my local library, I am also doing the 2010 Local Library Reading challenge, also hosted by J. Kaye. My goal is to check out and read at least 50 library books, so half of my 100+ reading challenge.

I'm updating this particular blog entry with the books I've read in 2010, and links to reviews as (if) I manage them.

Books read from the library:
Everyone Is Beautiful: A Novel  Reviewed here
The Life You Longed For: A Novel  Reviewed here
Exclusive: Reporters in Love...and War: A Novel Reviewed here
Liar Reviewed here
Going Too Far Review coming soon
Jacob Have I Loved Review coming soon
Some Girls Are Review coming someday
Shiver Review coming someday
The Fiction Class Reviewed here
Impossible  Review coming
Chasing Brooklyn  by Lisa Schroeder, Review coming soon
Switch by Carol Snow, Review coming soon
Story of a Girl  by Sara Zarr
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet  by Jamie Ford
The Dark Divine  by Bree Despain
Boys, Girls and Other Hazardous Materials  by Rosalind Wiseman
The Hunger Games  by Suzanne Collins
See Jane Write: A Girl's Guide to Writing Chick Lit by Sarah Mylnowski, Farrin Jacobs
Lady Vernon and Her Daughter: A Novel of Jane Austen's Lady Susan  by Jane Rubino, Caitlen Rubino-Bradway
The Good Nanny: A Novel  by Benjamin Cheever
Hush, Hush  by Becca Fitzpatrick
Beautiful Creatures  by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Scones and Sensibility by Lindsay Eland
All Unquiet Things by Anna Jarzab
Rampant by Diana Peterfreund
Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)  by Suzanne Collins
Girl, Hero by Carrie Jones
House Rules: A Novel  by Jodi Picoult
Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore
The Everafter by Amy Huntley
Candor by Pam Bachorz
The Body Finder  by Kimberly Derting
Intertwined by Gena Showalter
Hex Hall (Book 1) by Rachel Hawkins
Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Prada and Prejudice by Mandy Hubbard
The Reinvention of Edison Thomas by Jacqueline Houtman
The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Changeless by Gail Carriger
Be CentsAble: How to Cut Your Household Budget in Half by Chrissy Pate and Kristin McKee
Dead and Gone: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel  by Charlaine Harris
Adam by Ted Dekker
The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea M. Campbell
Before I Fall  by Lauren Oliver
Nation by Terry Pratchett
Every Last One: A Novel  by Anna Quindlen
The Shack by William P. Young
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
Scenes From A Holiday: The Eight Dates Of Hanukkah\Carrie Pilby's New Year's Resolution\Emma Townsend Saves Christmas (Red Dress Ink Novels) by Laurie Graff, Caren Lissner and Melanie Murray
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Silent to the Boneby E.L. Konigsburg
Godless  by Pete Hautman
Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer by Jen Lancaster
My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being A Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or, a Culture-Up Manifesto  by Jen Lancaster
The Secret Year by Jennifer Hubbard
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libby Bray
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Graceling by Kristin Cashnore
The Rebel Angels by Libby Bray
The Sweet Far Thing by Libby Bray
Baby Proof  by Emily Griffin
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
A Bad For Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
Need by Carrie Jones
A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend  by Emily Horner
Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction by David Michael Kaplan
The Corrections: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen
Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken
The Mark by Jen Nadol

Books read from other sources:
Plot & Structure: (Techniques And Exercises For Crafting A Plot That Grips Readers From Start To Finish) (Write Great Fiction)
The Lightning Thief by Rich Riordan
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman
Larger Than Life by Adele Parks
A Dangerous Affair by Caro Peacock
Geek Charming by Robin Palmer
Land of a Hundred Wonders by Lesley Kagan
Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen
Get Lucky: A Novel by Katherine Center
Devilish by Maureen Jonhson
Please Excuse My Daughter  by Julie Klam
The Stolen Heart: A Novel of Suspense by Lauren Kelly
Paper Towns by John Green
Normal Girl: A Novel by Molly Jong-Fast
Peeps by Scott Westerfield
Girl Most Likely To by Poonam Sharma
Jack Absolute by C.C. Humpherys
The Magicians: A Novel by Lev Grossman
Dead Until Dark (Original MM Art) (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood)  by Charlaine Harris
Model Summer by Paulin Prizkova
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner
Charlie St. Cloud: A Novel by Ben Sherwood
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins
Blameless by Gail Carriger
City of Bones (Mortal Instruments)by Cassandra Clare
City of Ashes (Mortal Instruments) by Cassandra Clare
City of Glass (Mortal Instruments) by Cassandra Clare
Perilous  by Tamara Hart Heiner
Fallen by Lauren Kate
An Abundance of Katherines  by John Green
Wish by Alexandra Bullem

Final tally of 2010: 106 books so far

2010 Debut Writer's Challenge

Reading is an important part of writing -- we can't write well in a vacuum. I enjoy writing YA, amongst many, many other categories, but I don't always read enough YA. I have pretty limited free time and tend to choose a lot of non-fiction when I can read. But, I know I need to make this a (very fun) priority. So I'm joining the 2010 Debut Authors Challenge, for which the goal is to read a set number of YA and middle-grade books by the debuting authors of 2010.  I'm certainly eager to support debut authors, the ranks of which I hope to join sooner rather than later!

You can read more about the 2010 Debut Author's Challenge here. It's hosted by the lovely Kristi over at The Story Siren.


My goal is to read at least 12 YA or MG books over the course of 2010 from debuting authors.
 There are so many books that look irresistible, but here are what I've read so far:

These two books are reviewed here.












I've also read:

My favorite so far is All Unquiet Things, but I am loving reading these debut novels!

Happy holidays!

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a happy NYE (and more importantly, a happy new year, for that matter)!

My husband MJ and I are visiting family for the holidays, so I expect this to be my last post until closer to the end of the year. It's been a very nice trip -- yesterday I had the chance to see a long-lost friend for lunch and do some last-minute shopping together, and then MJ and I saw Avatar in 3d.  Today has mostly been spent baking things and chatting with the family, and I'm still in pajamas. Overall, a very satisfying trip.

But I must admit to being a little distracted. I received this book for an early Christmas gift:

I really love it so far. Bell's advice seems really down-to-earth, and some of the writing exercises have already helped me work out where I'm really trying to go with SHARDS. Since the re-write has been anything but easy, I feel really energized to tackle this project again.

With SHARDS I just feel like I am so close to this novel, I can't see the forest for the trees sometimes in the re-write.  And since I need to pare the thing down anyway (how did I end up at 125,000 words? I wanted to stop writing, but I wasn't at the end), some perspective on the re-write is much needed.

So yes, amidst the holiday frivolities, I am alternately reading, tapping away on my computer and eating christmas cookies. 

Updates to follow, as always. I think we will be discussing SHARDS for a long, long time to come.  Probably as long as it takes me to work off those cookies (pecan sandies, peanut butter snowflakes, lemon bars, toasted coconut macaroons, chocolate chip cookies, brownie drops, Greek kourambiedes, mmm...).

Books books books!

There's a nifty give-away on Shannon O'Donnel's "Book Dreaming" blog. Become a follower, and you could win one of two sets of SIX books. One is a set of YA books and the other is a mix of YA/writing books.

Check it out... I am definitely crossing my fingers on this one!

http://shannonkodonnell.blogspot.com/

Cinquain. Say what?

I need to trek over to Dictionary.com for a tutorial on how to pronounce the word (being far more oriented to the written word than the oral, I tend to forget this necessary step before embarrassing myself in public). However, I am joyed today by my discovery of the simple cinquain.

The cinquain is what you get what you google for poetry forms and start clicking around, as I am apt to do. So far, I've never had a problem the internet couldn't solve, and that applies to moments of writer's block as well. The cinquain is a short unrhymed poem, similar to a haiku in concept. They are 22 syllables, 5 lines, structured as so:

2
4
6
8
2

I first read about them here. The blog also includes several modern examples of the form, which I thought were really excellent. I liked this one by Tom Greer, for instance:

Your skin,
a delicate
melange of sand and sun,
the slightest taste of cinnamon
and salt.

and this one, by Jean Cassler:


First Visit to the Ocean
She's lost
inside her laugh
before the rising tide
that reaches out to tickle her
bare toes.
You can read these poems, and others by the authors, on the linked site.

Apparently the cinquain is not a very popular form of poetry these days, but there are always poets trying new things. I find for me, experimenting with form can be very educational -- it focuses my writing, and I often find myself with something fresh.

So. I wrote my first cinquain today. What about you?

Frequently Asked Questions

Alright, so to be honest people haven't asked me very many questions in the comments of my blog, so these cannot technically be Frequently Asked Questions yet. Really, I'm answering questions that could theoretically be asked. I'm pretty loquacious in real life, so it's not unlike me to answer questions no one has asked!

Q. Who are you?

A. You can see on the site that my name is Guinevere, but I usually go by Guin (as I tell people on the phone who want to transform my name into Jen or, for some reason, Quinn, "like Gwen Stefani").  I'm a 26-year-old with a very boring day job, and I'm going to school for Finance. Writing is the little sun in my wintry world (as are my darling husband and cat... so three suns... very alien landscape).

Q. How did you end up with a name like Guinevere?

A. My mom majored in English and is a bit of an Anglophile. Actually, I lucked out -- the other baby-name contender was Cassiopia. No, that Cassiopia. The space-prostitute-turned-nurse from Battlestar Galactica Cassiopia.  I also had a very ethnic maiden name, so learning to write my name in  kindergarten was brutal.

Q. When did you start writing? Pretty much as soon as I started reading -- as soon as I developed the skill set to put words on the page. So around 6. I had been telling stories for a long time before that, though. I told many long involved stories to my parents involving six orphaned sisters (orphans being a hot commodity in children's stories).

Q. What do you write?

A. A little of everything.  When my adolescent angst wore off, I stopped writing poetry, but now I'm back to writing poetry (this time about a more diverse range of subject than unrequited love and alcohol).  I write short fiction. I have a completed YA novel that I need to revisit.  I have a literary fiction tale that I had marketed and am now re-working, and a half-finished fantasy novel.

Q. Have you been published at all?

A. Yes -- I've two publishing credits that I proudly brandish on my cover letters with submissions, both poetry. Cicada and Windhover.

Q. Why start a blog?

A. I discussed this in my very first blog entry. This is what I said:

What would happen if you made a truly dedicated effort, as a writer:
• To produce – not just to write when you feel like it, but to write consistently, as if it were, in fact your second job, even if not your day job;
• To hone your craft in a dedicated and disciplined fashion – reading, researching, re-writing.
• To market yourself and your writing. To network. To send out your query letters and outlines. Maybe even to start a self-serving writing blog to help enhance your visibility. ;)

If you really put forth a concerted effort, will the literary world - as happens in most human endeavors - eventually succumb to the pure force of will?

So this blog is a gamble. I’m betting that I can make it in five years. And I am going to chronicle the process – the writing, the editing, the rejection letters, the break-throughs.  In the end, I'm hoping that twenty years from now I'll be a popular author, a career novelist with multiple books, and new writers can look back over the blog and see the journey. And if it doesn't happen? To be honest, I'm not going to stop writing anyway!

Q. What are your goals?

These are the short-term goals:

• Secure an agent for SHARDS OF GLASS, my completed chick lit novel about a 22-year-old woman who helped her terminally ill father commit suicide in high school (it's more upbeat than it sounds, I promise);
• Sell several more short stories and poems;
• Break into non-fiction writing;
• Complete and then polish my fantasy novel WIP, tentatively titled HER OWN NIGHTMARE. 
• Write another novel.
• Keep the blog updated!

The long term goal is to make writing into my day job!

Q:  Why Twitter?

A. Ah, this is a question I often ask myself. I don't "get" Twitter... which makes me feel old. But a) it's another way to connect to other writers and escape the solitary nature of the work and b) I thought it would be neat to have a Twitter feed with more personal stuff. I want to share a little of my personal life with y'all, but without displacing writing and book themed content on the blog.

Q. What's with the advertising on the blog?

A. I use Swagbucks, Google Adsense and Amazon links (for which I get a percentage of any purchase you make from a link, even if it's not the item I linked to). My perspective on these things is that they don't take anything away from the blog (I don't think it looks cluttered, and I was using Amazon links and book covers anyway in my posts).  Aaaand... I plan to put any money raised right back into the blog, buying books and whatnot for giveaways.

If there's anything else you'd like to know, feel free to ask. :)

Today's fairy tale

I have the start of a fairy-tale, which I was going to use as the opening for a book, possibly a YA novel. I'm worried it's too slow, though. What do you think?

When I was little my mother told me fairy tales. She always told very long bedtime stories, long enough to give me the chance to fall asleep by their end, nestled in the quilt she had made between my motley collection of teddy bears. Usually I didn’t hear the ends of these tales, as my mother’s stories trailed off into warmth and sleepiness. In the morning I would demand to hear the end of the stories, not quite sure where the last part was that I remembered, and she would shake her head at me and say that I had to wait for bedtime. Fairy tales don’t exist in the daylight.

But there was one fairy tale that I remember in its entirety, and it went like this:

Once upon a time there was a fisherman. He was a very young fisherman, the youngest son in a big family. Their family had never been very successful. He had been hungry all the time when he was growing up, and now he was determined that he would never be hungry again. He always wanted to go out to sea, and in the wintertime when he couldn’t, he sat by the fire and always kept his hands busy making beautiful wood carvings to sell. Some people said that he was hard-working and clever, and other people said that he was too ambitious and foolhardy.

The truth was that some of the people who said those mean things about him may have been envious, and may not have liked him too much. Some of the people who said those nice things may have been envious, and liked him too much for it. Either way, though, both groups were right. . In truth he was a very, very impetuous young man, and he was a little bit greedy, but he had a kind heart.

He saved up all his money. He wouldn’t think of spending any of it on a new cottage to replace his rundown shack, or on a bride – which made some of those people that had liked him, like him a little less. Finally came the time when he had enough money to buy his own boat. He took this ship, which he called Good Fortune, and its crew out every day, and even in the worst conditions. He was very careless, but he was also very successful. He still didn’t spend any money, though, but saved it up for a newer and better ship further on.

And this went on for years, and the fisherman refused to take a bride, and he kept on living in his little run-down shack. Everyone said that he was a miser – mostly because they were miffed that he didn’t want to marry any of their daughters, when he had enough money to be such a good son-in-law. Soon he had a fleet of ships, but he kept on going out with one of his crews every time, and that was always the most successful boat—whether because he really had the good luck that everyone was beginning to attribute to him, or because he drove them, I don’t know.

One day he was out with a boat when it brought in a net of what was supposed to be tuna, and in the midst of all these unprepossessing and wiggling tuna there was a enormous gold fish. Not a goldfish like you keep in a little bowl – a great long fish with golden scales that shimmered under the sunlight and big golden eyes, like a cat’s. Everyone backed away from the flopping tuna and the still, great gold fish, that didn’t move except for the slow pained sputtering of its gills as it failed to get enough air. And everyone, of course, looked to the fisherman, because he always knew what to do.

“That’s a strange fish,” someone volunteered helpfully. “It must be worth a lot of money to someone.”

“Yes, it must,” the fisherman said, because almost everything is worth a lot of money to someone, if you find the right buyer. And especially things that are shiny. Yet he was stirred by a strange sensation looking at the oddity amongst his tuna. He picked up the great fish and dumped it over the side. Everyone watched him in a little bit of shock. Then he gruffly told them to go back to work, they had a lot of fishing to get done before dark. They expected that kind of thing from him, so everyone felt better and went back to dealing with the unfortunate tuna.

After that the fisherman couldn’t stop thinking about the gold fish, though. He wondered if its scales just looked like gold, or if they really were gold, and he couldn’t believe he had let it go. After a while he convinced himself that the scales were made of gold. He was so sad about the thought that he had let all that gold slip away that he began to wander outside at night, along the shore, wondering if he would ever catch the gold fish again. Although he still thought about tuna, his primary interest now was the great golden fish.


That's the first part of the tale. The idea is the women in this family tell fairy tales that mask the true stories from their lives. The main character, Lydia, grows up thinking that the Fisherman and his Golden Wife, or How Gretel Saved Hansel, are fairy tales that every child knows, and comes to learn that these fairy tales are private to her family. It's their way of retelling family secrets, and pretending to be discreet about it.

I'm just not sure my made-up fairy tale is quite as intriguing to everyone else as it is to me.

What are the best blogs?

The best blogs to read about writing, that is?

I'm going to take a bit of time out from talking about writing, to talk about reading -- blogs. So, I usually find new writing blogs to check out by clicking on the people following my blog, and then clicking on the blogs that they read. Which can be a bit cumbersome.

Are there are any writing blogs that you love reading? Because if you could just tell me, it would save me a lot of clicking.

Moment by moment

I am slowly making progress on this writing thing, despite that other thing called life.

I bought this book:
I have been researching my little heart out.

I also bought this book:Sage Cohen's Writing the Life Poetic. All I can say is OMG, this book is fun (did that make me sound like a valley girl?). I am enjoying it so much. It's all short chapters -- easy to slip into a few minutes in the morning before I go to work -- with a poetry subject, a poem for inspiration, and exercises to try yourself. Some sample chapters include: Tell Someone Else's Story, The Alchemy of Doing Nothing, Work the White Space: Shaping Poems with Line and Thirteen Ways of Looking (bonus points for anyone who gets the reference in that last chapter title). There are also chapters on submitting poems and even on blogging. Speaking of which, I could probably stand to skip ahead to those chapters!

I also finally dug out the tape recorder someone gave me for Christmas a year or two back. I am using it to record those random brilliant thoughts I always seem to have commuting to work when I'm doing 65 in traffic and can't possibly write anything down.

And most importantly of all? Yep, I'm writing. Getting up a little earlier, going into work a little laer, and carving out my space to write. Submitting is something I can work on while my husband and I hang out on the couch.

So in these little moments, I am making progress. Slowly, but... well, we all know where I'm going with this. I am making it happen, tortoise-style.

In which I grouse yet again about my life

Yes, I completely fail at updating the blog. I also fail at writing, unfortunately -- thanks to insanity at work, the pressure of school, and of late, a cold that completely leg-swept me. The cold was particularly unfortunate, since after all the talk of swine flu, having a miserable cold for a week seemed anticlimactic. I didn't complete NaNo this year; I didn't even get 10k words. And so far little has come of my eagerness to start turning this writing business into a career, in terms of even just sending things out lately.

Oh well. It's certainly easier to write when you're not sitting in a sleet storm (which is how I feel about work most days), but I'll have to fit in what I can and forgive myself for months like the last. At least school ended yesterday, with delivery of a massive unsatisfying 30-page Strategic Finance paper (I guess I shouldn't complain; 30 pages of fiction or, heaven forbid, rhymed research paper about corporate governance at Apple would have been equally terrible). Hopefully now I can find some breathing room. And my muse. I think she moved out again.

Origins of the novelist

I sent out a short story to a magazine the other day. This was a big moment for me -- due to a lot of logistical reasons, I hadn't sent anything out since the end of 2008. But now I'm serious.

You know why? My job is not fun. At all. And I really, really would rather be making my money on this writing business.

Oh, how often are novelists born out of misery...

Tangible Noun, Intangible Noun

I haven't been blogging about it much of late, but I'm still writing. In fact, I've changed my daily schedule up to suit the changing seasons (and my unwillingness to get up at 530am and run in the dark when it doesn't get light until after 7!). Now I wake up just early enough to have an extra hour before my commute, do a quick Bible study and then start writing. Perhaps this will save me during NaNo in November.

Today was one of those rough sleepy non-creative mornings, though, so my writing today has been limited to writing exercises and now, of course, the blog. I thought I'd share this one with you:

2) This is one of my favorites. I came across it as I was studying metaphors. On the left side of the page, list tangible nouns. Ocean, flood, steam shovel, cinder block, spoon. On the right side of the page, list intangible nouns. Respect, desire, hunger, flight. Now combine them in a phrase like this:

'a of '. Examples would be 'an ocean of respect', a spoonful of desire'. Let yourself get carried away with this, and you will come up with some very powerful images.
from essortment.com

My list of tangibles:
Ocean
Flood
Pint
Half
Rock
Ache
Brick
Spoon
House
Compass

My list of intangibles:
Respect
Affection
Wishes
Romance
Disdain
Meaning
Happiness
Angst
Running
Ego

Starting off with some fun phrases:
“Ocean of ego”
“Flood of wishes”
“Brick of romance”
“The compass of the ego”
a precocious little “Half-pint of angst”

I love writing exercises like this because, whether you feel inspired on a given day or not, it's an easy way to interject some creativity into your day and keep the habit going! Happy writings.

NaNoWriMo 2009

Who's in?

Pics

I know I anthromoprhize everything.

My stories really do feel to me like they have their own life, and I am just barely in control. If I have any say over the world whatsoever, it's more of a minor Greek goddess sort of thing that one of the big brand-name Gods.

Right now, the story just flows. I am working on a rough draft for a YA novel, and every time I sit down at my computer, Deirdra comes to life and keeps doing interesting, sometimes-dumb and sometimes-wise things and driving my story along.

Right now I am completely bestotted with this character and this story.

I know this can't last and the story will eventually turn nasty and uncooperative, and I will sit here and bang at my keyboard and then go back and erase the last 120 words I slowly eked out and write them again.

But when it's good? It's so good.

3 Day Novel Contest

Anyone going to do this?

3-day Novel Contest

The idea is certainly intriguing, but I am going to stick with NaNo because a) 30 days to a novel is unlikely enough for me, forget 3 and b) NaNo is free.

Maybe someday, though. It seems like it would be trippy.

Please to be telling me...

...if this story is terrible. This is the potentially cliche-ridden story that I mentioned feeling so uncertain about in my last blog entry. I feel sometimes that I have these good ideas that I execute terribly. What do you think?

THE LAST DANDELION ON THE BLOCK

Their life had settled into a routine again, and although it was not the routine Gretchen wanted, there was still some trace amount of comfort in it.
She woke up first in the morning – she left earlier for work – and started a pot of coffee for herself. While she checked the news online and ate her bowl of Special K, she heard Jake stirring upstairs, taking a shower. He would mumble a good morning to her when he came down, got his coffee, give her a peck on the cheek as she went out the door.
In the evening, she came home first, changed, went to the gym. Yoga on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; treadmill on Tuesday and Thursday. When she came home, dinner would be on a plate, ready to be re-heated for her, and Jake would be in his office.
Across from the office was their daughter’s room – what had been their daughter’s room – and she wondered if that bothered him. He came to bed after she did, kissed her, as clumsily in the morning, before he fell asleep. She was always awake. Her cheeks were almost always damp, and the kisses felt odd against the wet.
The weekends were harder, finding ways to tactfully avoid each other. She usually escaped to her sister’s house, although seeing the new swelling of Anna’s baby bump each week made it seem like less and less of a safe place.
“He’s always been taciturn,” Anna reminded her, coming back from the kitchen with turkey sandwiches for lunch. They sat in the sunroom, Gretchen’s favorite place in the small cottage, with its expansive windows and collection of green plants.
“Not like this,” Gretchen said. “It’s like he doesn’t feel anything at all. I don’t think I can live like this.”
“It’s just his way of coping.”
Gretchen sighed.
“I know.” Anna reached out and took her hand. There were four years between them, but their hands, at least, were twins, narrow-fingered and freckled. “It isn’t good enough. I wish you two would go back to therapy.”
“It’s not worth sixty dollars an hour for Jake not to talk to me,” Gretchen said. “He can be taciturn for free at home.”
“Well, if he won’t open up for trained professionals, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. If I had more energy, I might leave.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Anna said. “You’ve both been through so much since the accident. You just have to hang in there.”
“Sometimes there’s nothing left to hang onto.”

Anna sent her home with a plate of cookies and a bag of apples – Anna always expressed her love through food – and Gretchen reached out to steady them on the passenger seat as she took the sharp turn onto their street. It was the same way she would have reached to protect Laura, as if seatbelts and airbags didn’t do enough to protect her but her mother’s arms could. But she hadn’t been the one driving when the drunk ran the red light, and Laura had been in the back seat, where small girls were supposed to be safest.
When she turned into the driveway, Jake was bringing the mower out of the garage. It was if he had a sixth sense for when she was re-entering the house. She waved hello to him as she entered the house, gave him a tight smile.
An hour later, she carried the bills and checks in their neatly addressed envelopes out to the mailbox, before she could miss the post. Jake was in the backyard by then, but she could still hear the dull roar of the mower. She frowned at the spotty job she had done, so unlike him; the lawn mower had meandered across the yard, instead of criss-crossing in even rows of grass.
Then she noticed the little clumps of grass he had left standing, surrounding pockets of dandelions.
Laura had been convinced that dandelions were legitimate flowers, not weeds, and she had often run across the yard as he mowed, picking enough dandelions to fill every vase she could find in the house. Don’t mow the pretty flowers, Daddy!
Gretchen’s eyes filled, as they seemed to every other hour these days. Through the blur of her tears, she put the envelopes in the mailbox, and then picked a few dandelions to put in Laura’s favorite red vase on the kitchen counter. She hadn't had flowers in this room since the last ones died six months before, and they made the kitchen look brighter.
When Jake came in, she came up to him. “What?” he asked, clearly startled. She slid her arms around him, laid her head on his chest.
“Nothing,” she said. “I just love you.”
“Love you too,” he said. Uncertainly, he hugged her back.

I'd live in a big marble building if I could.

Today Handsome and I stopped off at one of the libraries in our new town. Even though we're buying a house here, a library card for this county is just one of those things I need for it to feel like home. I am a library addict -- I grew up with what I think has to be one of the coolest small-town libraries in America:

When I was a kid, I wanted to live in that building, with its marble floors, sweeping staircases, and the artwork that depicted its namesake family's history. The lions out front and the fountain were an added draw. Although, of course, the real appeal of the library was its two stories' worth of wonderful books.

Anyway, back to the present day. The particular branch I stopped into was tiny, but in my quick browse through once I had card in hand, I happened across The Writer's Market, 2010. I've only ever seen this in libraries as a reference book, but this one had it available to check out. Swoon.

So I am now the proud borrower of the latest and greatest edition of The Writer's Market, which is already collecting post-it notes.

I also deserted Handsome for the evening to head to a local coffee shop. This is where I get the most work done writing-wise, and I really need to make it a habit to carve these blocks of time out at least once a week, ideally two or three times. My three hours were very productive:

1. Identified a dozen potential magazines to submit non-fic, fiction and poetry

2. Did preliminary research on a half dozen different new markets (checking writers' guidelines and content on websites)

3. Formatted two short stories and four poems for submission and organized them in their own folder, so I can select what I want to submit and dispatch it readily to the chosen market.

4. Wrote a brand spanking new short story from an idea that had been jiggling around in my head. It's short -- approximately 800 words -- and I have no idea if it's any good or not. In fact, at the time I wrote it I kept thinking, "Cliches! Cliches, you damn hack!" But that's my usual positive internal monologue, so I have to let it sit for a week or so before I go back, re-read, and decide if this requires editing or circular filing.

I may post aforementioned short story to see what y'all think. I have been going through a bit of a writer's identity crisis lately, where I do not think my writing sounds as mature as it should. My twenty-something-ness seems to show itself in occasionally confident, occasionally awkward, always self-conscious prose. But the only thing that will change my writing style is more reading, more study, and most importantly of all -- more writing. So I keep at it. Internal editors be damned.