31 Romanians -- Why Blogger, Why?

Okay, this isn't actually a blog post, this is an informative follow-up.

I just thought I should share that even though not a single Latvian ever came back (Forgive me, Lativians, if I was somehow culturally insensitive.), I am now besieged by Romanians. Thirty-one Romanians, to be exact.

And I find myself wondering, is it possible that this isn't another outcropping of my inexplicable popularity in Eastern Europe? Is it possible that I'm being hacked by a nefarious offshore hacker with an unhealthy interest in teen novels? And just when I was on the verge of international fame and vast numbers of pre-sales in Bucharest...(Don't look at me like that. It could happen. They have Amazon in Bucharest, and probably more bookstores -- remember bookstores?-- than we do.)

In any case, I would like to extend the same invitation to the thirty-one Romanians who showed up here 45 minutes ago as I did with their Latvian fellow travelers: Come back. Tell me who you are and how you got here? Are your friend or foe? Are you avid followers of English-language ARC's set in LA prep schools, or was your presence here a happy accident?

Spill, because I'm mystified.

My Life as a Writer Who Used to be Really Awful

I’ve written all my life, in the since-I-could-hold-a-pencil model of the single-minded writer. I remember being seven and printing “Chip and the Sea” in one of those wonderful, old fashioned notebooks with the marbled black-and-white covers, bound with ribbon along the spine. Almost too good for the climax, which read “You must be my long lost brother!”

I remember a poem that opened “When the misty, balmy, silver-clad dawn…” a time of day I had never actually been awake to experience, and I shudder to tell you what the dawn was doing, but suffice to say it involved a certain amount of scampering.

I remember a staggeringly horrible free-verse story about a rape, expressed entirely through nature metaphors, which was a good thing because I wrote it way before I’d ever actually seen a naked man.

And I remember angsty college poems that expressed my unyielding individuality by railing against houses that scarred mountainsides and plastic and Barbie dolls, except that, oh yeah, Malvina Reynolds and the entire women’s movement had kind of been there first.

I was too cool for school.

Indeed, I left high school before actually learning any math or serious science to attend the College of Creative Studies on the backs of all those scarred mountainsides and bad Barbies, attending poetry seminars I departed with the memory of (someone else’s) poem that read “suck, suck, suck” ad infinitum, filling the entire sheet of paper, except for the white space that spelled “fuck.” I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of this, and transferred, taking my creativity with me. At my next college, I came up with a stunning short story that more or less paraphrased a piece of “La Chute.” Only in English. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was profound.

Indeed, there is hardly a single chapter of my life as a writer that isn’t extremely easy to make fun of. (My first PB manuscript was entitled “Binky, the Very Rude Finger.” Not kidding.) Except that throughout all these misbegotten adventures in dreadful literature, I’ve been completely serious about what I was doing.

Even when I didn’t think that I was any good at it or could make a go of it and tried out a series of other (failed) career possibilities, I kept writing. I didn’t see it as a journey – indeed, I am loath to go into the journey, transcendent power of language, cosmically transformative whatchadinget aspect of it all, possibly because I really love what I’m doing and there’s just so much laughing at myself doing what I’m doing that I can take. I just kind of saw it as what I do.

Only now, doing exactly what I’ve always been doing although, one hopes, somewhat more skillfully, it would appear that I have arrived. Professionally speaking. My fifth picture book is showing up in March, the most explicitly religious folktale I’ve ever done, the plot of which turns on prayer and the value of an optimistic faith, the same month as Where It Began, a steamy YA novel full of sex and drugs and rock and roll.

I am officially a children’s book writer and YA novelist. (To authors who have written 20 prize-winning novels of extraordinary depth and power, I say, yeah, well I have an agent and a business-sized envelope with business receipts in it and a scary deadline.)

And while those who use their optimistic faith for more cosmically transformative ends might look askance at me for saying this, it really did take an optimistic faith to get here. Even when I could tell it was bad. Even when the misty, balmy, silver-clad dawn was breaking over Chip’s long lost brother. Even when my critical and satirical abilities outstripped my writing ability by maybe 27 to 1. I just kept doing it because I more or less had to and, as the hero of The Wooden Sword will tell anyone who reads it four months from now, everything has turned out just as it should.

And thank God for that – how embarrassing would it be if it hadn’t?

Greetings, Latvians!

The ways of the internet are strange and mysterious. Obsessed as I am with this blog and whether anyone is coming to visit, and if so, why, and if not, why not, you would think I would have picked up on this fact early on and be a lot calmer about it.

And I was a lot calmer. Until a few days ago, when I had 28 visitors from Latvia.



All right, for those of you with highly popular blogs that get hundreds of visitors from foreign lands traipsing through regularly, this probably wouldn’t be that big a deal. But suffice to say, on that particular day, the 28 Latvians were virtually the only people to come by.

What can I say?

Greeting Latvian blog visitors! I am absolutely delighted that you came over, but simply put, I don’t get it. I looked up your referring sites and I came up with something that appeared to be a search engine that uses the Cyrillic alphabet, and I, not reading any languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, have no idea what you were searching for.

It could have been anything. A couple of weeks ago a visitor from the U.K. found me when he was searching for the image of a large, grey short-haired dog. Apparently my mother-in-law’s tiny brown and white Chihuahua, who appears sitting pertly on my mother-in-law’s chaise in my post #1, filled the bill. Hmmm.

But back to the Latvians. I ask, why now? And why 28 of you? Did every member of an unusually large book group dedicated to English language picture book folk tales all come looking for me simultaneously? Was it a weird coincidence that occurs with the frequency of Haley’s Comet sightings, but with less celestial inevitability? Was it some Eastern-European version of internet punking? Or was I having my 15 seconds of fame in absentia in the suburbs of Riga?

I may never know.

That is why I am posting with this simple message: Come back, Latvian blog visitors! Please. I am obsessed with you and until you tell me who you are and what in God’s name you were doing here, I will remain mystified, obsessed, and confused.

Confessions of a Mad Rewriter

I am a compulsive re-writer. If there were a twelve step program for re-writing addicts, my family would be bundling me into the car and dropping me off there in the hope I’d come to grips with my affliction.

I, on the other hand, would bolt out of there like a neat-freak bat out of a messy, messy hell. Or, more accurately, into the messy, messy hell of the post-ARC, post re-re-rewritten , post re-re-re-reread and re-re-re-re-edited, slightly dog-eared hard copy of Where It Began. With the fantasy of making it perfect before I have to push the send button on what has to be the final, final, final, final, final, final edit.

At this point, it is no longer possible to edit away deep, existential doubts. Things like: Does this book lack a moral center, jaunty pacing, and a sufficiently hot yet articulate boyfriend? And is the protagonist, whom I adore, too whiney and if so, why in God’s name didn’t I notice this before?

Too late, babe.

This is the time for what might be considered less critical flaws that can still be fixed if only I could find them all.

This is when I notice, on the seventh post-post ARC redo, that there are two minor characters named Caitlyn who appear and disappear within five pages of each other and I’d better name one of them something else. Something else perfect that doesn’t start with a “C.” Olivia or Becca? Becca or Olivia? Olivia or Becca? (There is where the twelve step could be useful.) When I realize that there is one niggling spot where Gabby refers to the messaging that’s central to the book as IM when it hasn’t been IM for several drafts. When it hits me that the word “just” is spelled with a “j.” (Don’t ask. Oh, all right, it’s because my scrawled handwriting lead S&S to believe that I insisted that it be spelled differently, and I’ve been so unreasonable about quirky details that it made sense to them that I’d do that.)

It’s not that I haven’t had the gift of a completely fabulous copy editor who found literally hundreds of places where I’d screwed up pre-ARC. She was the one who pointed out that my use of the hyphen (or rather, my failure to use the hyphen) was inconsistent with all legitimate grammar authorities on the face of the earth, and that there’s no apostrophe in “Starbucks.” Even though I had rewritten and done what I thought of as copy-editing myself, over and over, before the manuscript made its way to her desk. (And even when confronted with every grammar authority on the face of the earth, I still spent days going: Midnight blue? Midnight-blue? Midnight blue? Midnight-blue?!?!?!? )

But this is it. The time has come. And even though I haven’t yet figured out why each compulsive re-read yields yet another small but critical thing I failed to notice ever before, I have to be finished. I will no longer be able to hide behind the veil of the uncorrected proof, the mistakes don’t count, it isn’t final, and all is forgiven not-final draft.

Maybe this is therapeutic. Maybe this is premature. Maybe this is folly. Maybe the book was better before I made these final changes. Maybe I should change them back. Maybe I should find out if there are any psycho-active (note the hyphen) drugs for this kind of thing. Maybe I should just shut up and push the send button.

Here goes.