A lot of you asked me to pass along what I learned at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, so I’ll try to boil it down to the information I’ve used the most since I got home.

The view out the window of our Squaw Valley house.

First, let me briefly describe what happens at Squaw, for those who aren’t familiar with it. For one week, you live in the Olympic Village, site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. Everyone’s divided into a workshop group of about 12 people; and for three hours every morning—always with an established writer, editor, or agent as the leader—you workshop each other’s stories and chapters. The rest of the day is filled with panels, staff readings, and one-on-one manuscript evaluations. The unpublished writer and the seasoned writer are side by side throughout, and this goes for meals, as well. I remember a writer, who had just placed an order for one of the cheap bagged lunches, telling me, “I signed up for the roast beef sandwich, and so did Ron Carlson!”

Ron Carlson and Andy Dugas

Some thoughts (not necessarily direct quotes) from the only day I took notes:

Ask yourself what, specifically, does your character want right now? Then, have the story conspire to keep her from getting it. (Carol Edgarian)

Don’t give your characters time for the problem at hand. Each of them had to stop what they were doing to deal with it. (Ron Carlson)

A novel is like a symphony or opera. If you have a day scene, you’ll want a night scene. If there’s a solo, it’s time for a trio. Fast song, slow song. Inside, outside. Internal scene, crowd scene. But also remember the importance of repeating earlier musical pieces, taking a thread and picking it up again. (Janet Fitch)

Take the story out of the head and into the body. (Ron Carlson)

Dialogue should read like a sword fight: One thrusts, the other reacts. (Carol Edgarian)

End with a sense that you know what the character’s trajectory is. (Carol Edgarian)

Don’t end with the narrator in a confused or philosophical state. (Ron Carlson)

Only focus on one day’s work, not on something so daunting as “a book.” (Amy Tan)

Leave the editor at the door. Don’t worry if it’s good enough. Just write the next substandard sentence. Let your spelling and tense go to hell, and keep going. (Ron Carlson)

What’s it like to get all of this advice from your heroes and peers? To have 12 pairs of eyes on your work? To hear hours upon hours of do’s and don’ts from every corner of the business? It’s inspiring. Humbling. Overwhelming. It helps very much if you’ve made some good friends who will laugh and cry with you.

My Squaw Valley roommate, Wayetu Moore, and my gossip buddy, Frank DiPalermo. I adore them both!

If you ask me what was the most valuable thing I learned at Squaw, the answer is easy, and it’s not about craft but about the heart of the writer.

Every day, I write for hours in my little camouflaged office, writing and crumpling up papers and writing some more. I dream of communicating something important and then hate myself for falling short. There are always reasons to give up: It takes so much work to get it right; what looks right one day often looks horrible the next; there’s rarely any pay; it’s hard to keep the momentum; I don’t have the toughness for rejection. And yet, I can’t stop myself.

So guess what the superstars at Squaw Valley spent most of their time talking about? This very thing: The struggle with the blank page, with chaotic first drafts, with self-doubt, with deadlines they fear they won’t meet.

Susan Moke, Vlada Teper, and Noel Obiora

Knowing my writing heroes struggle in this same way renews my energy and courage for editing this book. Now that I’m back in New York, writing in my little camouflaged office, I don’t feel so alone. I don’t feel like a failure. Because writers with bestsellers and movie deals are doing this, too: thinking, typing, crumpling, and just committing to finding the story and the best way to tell it.

Before I go, let me get back to Ron Carlson of the roast beef sandwich bagged lunch. He talked to us a lot (and me, specifically) about how it is the writer’s responsibility not to spread herself too thin. And I considered long and hard the many hours a month I spend blogging, and the effect it has on my time and my writing. So this is my very last Monthly Wrap. And soon, I’ll run my very last interview. But I can’t, and won’t, give up the Question of the Month because I like hearing your stories, and because I’m a happier person and a more productive writer when I take time off to play.

*

Thank you to my September guest, Judi Hendricks, to everyone who played here, and to the three outrageously fine authors I read this month:  Ron Currie (EVERYTHING MATTERS), Dylan Landis (NORMAL PEOPLE DON’T LIVE LIKE THIS), and Binnie Kirshenbaum (A DISTURBANCE IN ONE PLACE). I felt like I won the literary lottery!

And finally, shout-outs to some really lovely, talented people at Squaw Valley, who either led my workshops or lent me things when my suitcase got lost (Remember the LaGuardia bomb threat evacuation?) or flew with me, or gave some crucial piece of help on my book, or wowed me in some way or another: Sands Hall, Louis B. Jones, Lisa Alvarez, Andrew Tonkovich, Janet Fitch, Mark Childress, Michael Pietsch, Susan Golomb, Peter Steinberg, Rick Kleffel, and Glen David Gold.

Have a good one!

This month, we talked about the instruments we played when we were kids. Mostly I played imaginary instruments, playing as fast and impressively as the masters. In real life, I was impatient with the learning curve, but I do have a story for you about me and the piano.

The high point of my piano playing was Humpty Dumpty, a humiliating song to lay on a girl who’d rather play Rachmaninoff. But even Humpty Dumpty didn’t come easily. I didn’t like to practice. And sometimes I walked up the street to my piano teacher’s house and never even rang the bell. I just stood there, considering, and then walked back home the long way.

I don’t know what upset me so much about her sitting beside me on the bench, her gnarled fingers on the keys, singing the correct notes as I played the wrong ones. Maybe I have issues with inadequacy. Failure. People telling me what to do. People sitting too close.

I’ve never been the kind of person to fly into a rage. I’m quieter than that. So one day, I sat at the piano with my father’s wrench and quietly snipped a piece of ivory off of every key. In order: low notes to high notes. Every one. And then, without a word, I swept the pieces into my hand and closed the lid. Never told a soul.

I’m not sure what that says about the kind of child I was, but I suspect it says something.

Shortly after Mr. Henderson and I got married, my parents surprised me by sending us the piano. It was an expensive shipment, very generous, but it came into the house like a ghost and made me avoid the room we’d put it in.

This is how much my husband loves me. That year for my birthday, I came home and found that he’d magically removed the piano from the house, even while wearing a sling for a dislocated shoulder, and replaced the piano with a tank filled with frogs.

Best birthday present ever!

*

What did I read this month? Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez (editors), WRITER’S WORKSHOP IN A BOOK: THE SQUAW VALLEY COMMUNITY OF WRITERS ON THE ART OF FICTION (Gave me new writing heroes like Anne Lamott, Mark Childress, and Lynn Freed); Jennifer McMahon, PROMISE NOT TO TELL (The wickedness and heartbreak of young girls; LOVED it!); and the book for next month’s interview.

Thanks to my August guest, Naseem Rakha, and to all of you who played here. And thanks to those who linked to LitPark: Simply Wait, In Her Own Write, Confessions of a Hermit Crab, Publishers Weekly, The Writer’s (Inner) Journey, Backspace,  Marilyn Peake, Yearning 4d Sky, Jim Hanas, Blanquis26, Recommended Reading,  Book Bird Dog, Kirk Farber Fiction, Laurel Snyder, Ashlyn Harper, Dynamic Josh, kmwss2c, Charles Palmer, AS King, Joanne Levy, Robin Slick, Maureen McGowan, ktsetsi, Backword Books, Emrson Creighton, David Habbin, phalpern, i follow the night, lancerey, Brigita09, Eileen Rita, sarzee, TNB Tweets, Carmelo Valone, Laura Benedict, Despi Doodle, Georgia McBride, Maria Schneider, Jason Boog, HarperPerennial, Lori Oliva, Spaced Lawyer, Kimberly Wetherell, Jamie Ford, KayinCatEyes, BukowskiD, Laura Benedict, Regina Marler, Mike Gackler, My Feng Shui Life, Emrson Creighton, Rumbly in my Tumbly, Upstate Girl, Editor Unleased, and Lee Crase’s Vagabond Lit. I appreciate those links!

We talked about heroes this month, and every time I think of the word “hero,” I get that Mariah Carey song stuck in my head.

I heard that song constantly when I worked as a counselor at a rape crisis center because one of my teenage clients loved to sing to me. She liked over-the-top songs: “Hero,” the theme to “The Titanic.” Oh, she was an awful singer – I suppose she couldn’t help it because she was hearing impaired – but what she lacked in pitch, she made up in emotion.

When you’re a counselor, people come to you with expectations that you’ll be some kind of super hero who can save them from the complicated pain they’ve been living with, but you know better. And your clients will find out soon enough: You’re just two human beings sitting in a room together and hoping for the best.

Downstairs in the waiting room, week after week, were the parents of my singing client. They’d adopted her when she was a malnourished orphan living on the streets. They gave her a home, took her to a doctor to get hearing aids, found her a school, and brought her to me when she was date raped.

Heroes? Maybe not.

Imagine you’re a 25-year-old counselor who looks like you’re going on twelve, and it’s the day your singing client tells you that those parents in the waiting room have been molesting her. As you’re riding down in the elevator, you’re trying to find the right words, words that will become part of the court case, to explain why their daughter can’t go home with them, and what they can expect when the investigators get in touch.

If you think there’s anything heroic about stripping a girl from her family and sending her into the nightmare of group homes, there isn’t. The thing about group homes is that the workers and the residents there have that same quality as counselors and adoptive parents and all the rest: they’re human. Sometimes beautiful. Always flawed. Capable of great good, great evil, and mostly, great mediocrity.

Maybe the word “hero” can only truly describe a single moment, a single courageous choice that happened to get good results. Most times, there are no heroes, nor even heroic moments – just people trying (or not trying) their best.

If you’re wondering how the girl’s story ends, I don’t know. Counselors share a tiny room full of painful secrets and brave recovery for just a brief time. And then you just hope the kid’s doing okay. You hope she still sings.

*

What I read this month: A whole lotta research books for the novel I’m writing, plus Naseem Rakha’s THE CRYING TREE (I’ll talk more about this beautiful book very soon), Zora Neale Hurston’s THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD (What took me so long to read this book?! It’s glorious), and John Connolly’s THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS (Two beautiful opening chapters about death and fairy tales and WWII before it becomes, much more clearly, a children’s book. I read it through anyway, hoping the ending chapters would hit the same notes as the first two, and I’m glad to say they did).

*

Thanks to my July guest, novelist Lance Reynald. Thanks to all who played here, and to everyone who linked to LitPark: She Writes, Georgia McBride Books, joannamauselina, Mots Justes, Side Dish, Tayari’s Blog, Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Amazon Blog, Stet, Alpha FEmale Mind, acparker, EllenMeister, spacedlawyer, lancerey, marilynpeake, artbizlaw, kmwss2c, BklynBrit, redRavine, LitChat, TerryBain, LanceRey, lorioliva, PD_Smith, nicebio, and zumayabooks. I appreciate those links!

Okay, off to dinner in the West Village with Amy Wallen, Eber Lambert, Neil Lambert, Rebecca Friedman, Rachel Shukert, Kimberly Wetherell, and Mr. H. Looking forward to it!

I have the kind of voice that’s meant to whisper. Good for libraries and pillow talk. When I answer the phone, the first thing people tend to say is, Did I wake you up? They didn’t; I don’t even like to sleep. I just have one of those voices. It’s my father’s voice. The sound of someone who needs to clear his throat. The sound of someone who can’t raise his voice though he certainly has the temperament for it.

When I try to speak up – even enough to talk to someone across the table from me, my voice quickly gives out. I speak from that place you shouldn’t – the place Brian Johnson of AC/DC uses to sing. If I have a long conversation one day, I’ve got a sore throat the next.

Do I have an accent?

I never thought of myself as having one until I went to college, where I was teased for my southern twang. I worked hard to lose it by reading out loud to my Boston-bred roommate and letting her correct me. Now I’m not sure why I tried so hard to lose it. But my Virginia roots show when I’m tired – I get lazy with the vowels.

I was glad to hear your stories of stutters and loud laughs and nasal tape-recordings. For those of you I haven’t met in real life, it’s a nice way to sharpen the picture of you.

*

What I read this month: Joe Hill, HEART-SHAPED BOX (not my usual genre, but, wow, it’s a good ghost story, and I’ve been recommending it to everyone). I’ve also been knee-deep in a whole mess of research books for my new novel, but I’m not telling what the books are about.

Thanks to my guest, Attica Locke, for her courageous story of finding her voice, and to all of you who played here this month. Also, big thanks to those who linked to LitPark: The Thrill Begins, In Her Own Write, Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Amazon Blog, Upstate Girl, Side Dish, Terry Bain’s Amazon Blog, Rumbly in my Tumbly, Tatuaj.org, Kimberly Wetherell, Red Room Blogs, Rachel Kramer Bussel, EI Johnson, Tayari Jones, Tanya Egan Gibson (thank you for the book!), Neil Gaiman, Brad Listi, Alexander Chee, Robin Slick, kmwss2c, Urban Haiku, Trish Tha Dish, Tayari, Rachelle Gagne, Nick Belardes, Bella Vida Letty, th3maw, Spaced Lawyer, and to the mentions in Wikipedia pages for Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Maria Dahvana Headley, Daisuke Tsutsumi, Scott Snyder, Denis Johnson, Greg Downs, and Bruce Benderson. I appreciate those links!

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One announcement before I go…

The Nervous Breakdown is a creative non-fiction literary blog, written by published and emerging authors from around the world.

Come hear the writers of this award-winning collective as they read hilarious, journalistic, poignant and often salacious tales, as told on the pages of this engaging and highly interactive literary website.

The series kick-off includes readings from:

Jessica Anya Blau (The Summer of Naked Swim Parties)
Autumn Kindlespire (Random House Books)
Greg Olear (Totally Killer, coming Sept ’09)
Kimberly M. Wetherell (Filmmaker: Menage a trois, Why We Wax)
Todd Zuniga (Opium Magazine, Literary Death Match)

Tuesday, June 9
7:00pm
D-Lounge
101 E 15th St, NYC
(downstairs from the Daryl Roth Theatre, Union Square)
$10.00 Cover

After party at Bar 119, 119 E. 15th St.

If you haven’t seen very much of me in the last two months, it’s because I’m right about here in the new book:

Just after Thanksgiving, I took out a blank piece of paper and started to think about the things I love and the things I fear and the questions I’ve always wanted answers to; and I began to build those things into a plot. I went to bed with questions, and as the weeks went on, woke up with scenes and characters and more questions. Pretty soon, pieces of the book came into focus: a sense of setting, details about the characters and what they desired and what kind of mess they were in.

What a lot of faith you need to start with nothing and believe you can create something good and important.

Of the writers and artists I know, confident isn’t the first word I’d use to describe any of them. Cheery in their outlook on life and their place in it? Uh-uh. Excited by dreams of making big bucks? Buoyed by past successes and constant, overwhelming praise? Ha. Quite the opposite.

I can tell you that while I’m writing this new book, I have another on submission. And every day I have to pretend it’s not distracting, pretend I have room to be crushed a little bit more. Like all of you, I have to keep believing (knowing that belief and confidence are things I’ve lacked my whole life) that my writing will connect deeply with someone out there who will take a chance.

Maybe it’s precisely because it’s so easy in this business to sink into despair that I’m hesitant to give an honest answer to the Question of the Month. In fact, I’m hesitant to even think too long about what my answer might be. So I’m going to flip the question a bit. Rather than musing on the thing I desperately wanted and needed as a kid, I’m going to tell you a story about something I got, something truly simple but revolutionary that changed who I am.

I used to babysit every single day, for years and years, for a little girl who had a brain tumor – from age four when her parents first noticed the weird way her eyes would twitch and cross and how she’d bump into the door frame rather than walking cleanly through, to the surgeries and the horrible things that happen when you take away pieces of a person’s brain, to bike lessons and swim lessons and special schools and vacations (like the one in the picture; that’s me holding the baby bottles).

This is about a family who had every right to be stressed and focused soley on that tumor – killing it and saving the girl.

But that’s not how they did it. In this family that shouldn’t have had time for me or for each other, they read my dumb poems and stories, watched the skits and fake-Olympics I helped the three kids put on, listened to bad knock-knock jokes, and tolerated Vanilla Ice dance-offs. They always made sure there was enough food so I could stay for dinner. And one winter, in the middle of the worst of it, their father taught me to waltz.

The lesson I learned? There’s time. Time, even in the midst of a crisis, to give attention and show love. And there’s room for joy. There had better be. Or the cancer and wars and other things that are out of our control win it all.

So, for all of you who overwhelmingly answered that what you wanted and needed so dearly as kids was to be visible and to matter – and I’m talking the real you, not the potential of you, and not when you got your act together or hid parts of yourself away – my hope is you get that here because you deserved it then and you deserve it now.

Last thing…

This weekend, we’re having a huge, musical barbecue to celebrate our anniversary – 17 years; 22 if you count when we started dating – and I already know what Mr. Henderson got me: red Doc Martens!!

~

What I read this month: Chris Adrian, THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL (God floods the world again and the only survivors are inside a floating children’s hospital. The first 300 pages are some of the best pages I’ve ever read – quirky, profound, emotional, and the brother, Calvin, who is dead before the book begins, is one of my favorite characters ever. But something too magical for my taste happens in the middle of the book, including a wedding I didn’t care for, and for me, the book never quite recovers its magnificence after that. I’m going to recommend it all the same. Uneven or not, it lit me up from the inside in a way few books do.)

What I read to my boys: We did that thing I hate where we start too many books at once and kind of ruin the momentum of all of them, so the only finished book was John Masefield’s THE MIDNIGHT FOLK (The boys found it fascinating in that great and creepy Neil Gaiman-y way, but slow because of the 1920′s British writing). And I also read them a whole bunch of little-kid picture books because I’m their mom and they still go along with what I say, even though they groan about it now. So: Jacques Duquennoy, THE GHOSTS’ TRIP TO LOCH NESS; Robert Bright, GEORGIE; Mark Teague, THE SECRET SHORTCUT; and Leo Lionni, FREDERICK MOUSE.

Thanks to everyone who played here, and to my guest, Lac Su, for giving such an honest and emotionally powerful interview. And thanks to those who’ve been linking to LitPark: New Pages (best writer resource on the web – check ‘em out!), Side Dish, Eat, Sleep & Read, Bliggidy Blog, Buy More Books, Mediabistro’s Galley Cat, The Book Deal: A Publishing Blog for Writers, CarolineLeavittville, Alpha FEmale Mind, In Her Own Write, A Title? What’s in a Title? I Was Never Told There Should Be a Title!, Paul Lisicky: Me Big Shiny Man, Kaylie Jones, Spaced Lawyer, Maureen McGowan, Raima Larter, Raven Books, Terry Bain, Ric Marion, and Terry’s LiveJournal Axis (Yo). If I missed anyone, let me know.

See you the first week in June with a new question and a new guest!

I was thinking about the years my kids were still into wearing costumes – no holiday required – and we’d head to the bookstore: me, Superman with a dishtowel for a cape, and his sidekick in a knight’s helmet, shorts, rubber boots and a whistle necklace which he was not to blow in the store.

My boys knew exactly where the books they loved were located, and liked to open one after another and explore every genre and turn the rack of Little Critter paperbacks round and round. We often read books to each other for an hour or more before choosing which ones to buy.

We love going to the bookstore together just as much now as we did then, but our visits have dropped off. More often, we sit at one of the many computers in the house and type our orders into Amazon. We don’t stray from our lists. It’s just so easy to do it this way, but there’s none of the sense that we are bonding or creating good family memories with this way of shopping.

I hadn’t noticed this fact until our discussion at LitPark this month. Your answers to the question – Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indie? – changed me. And so did my guest, who not only made me realize the invaluable role of the liasons between publishers and bookstores (Cory Doctorow describes them beautifully here), but the hit these stores are taking each time we choose to shop at Amazon.

When you buy from an independent bookstore, $68 of every $100 stays in the community. Think about what that means in this economy. And now think about what it would mean if physical bookstores disappeared altogether.

Here’s a little story for you. I like to take my kids to The Book Revue when there are visiting children’s authors. A couple of years ago, I took them to see Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, who had co-written a prequel to Peter Pan (called PETER AND THE STAR CATCHERS*) that my youngest loved, and that evening was the launch of the follow-up prequel. * = for an indie store click here

Dave Barry wore a Peter Pan hat and talked about what it was like to write a book with another author when one liked to work from an outline (Ridley) and the other liked to wing it (Dave).

Green-Hand, the one who used to wear the whistle necklace, was sitting in the first row with his newly purchased book, already reading and not at all bothered by their talking.

And then the terrible thing happened. Dave Barry (who might as well have slapped my son) opened his own copy of the book and began to read aloud from Chapter 3.

Green-Hand, still on Chapter 1, stood, pissed, and dragged his metal folding chair from the front row to the back of the bookstore, saying they were ruining the book by giving away what would happen. It was a long and loud while of pretending we weren’t related, and when he reached the back wall, he sat down in his metal chair and opened the book again.

At the end of the reading, the kids got in line to have their books signed, and I insisted that Green-Hand join his brother there. That’s him in the green shirt. And he’s smiling. Or trying to. Because I told him he better.

What will the world come to when there are no more physical bookstores, and all the readings are on YouTube? How will you show your righteous indignation? Who will hear you scrape your chair across the floor? These are the important questions we must ask ourselves.

And this is why I’m going to suggest that you join me in a little exercise this month. Click on this Indiebound link and type in your zip code and find a few indie bookstores in your neighborhood. Then have a visit. See if there’s anything that might bring you to the store on a regular basis: a book club, a café, wi-fi, comfy chairs.

Introduce yourself. Tell someone who works in that store that you’re a writer. Tell him or her what you like to read. Learn something about the person you’re speaking with – maybe that person is a writer, too. Maybe he or she has an interesting story. Ask questions about the store. Find out if they sponsor readings, if they have a website, if they’ll order books for you that you’d otherwise buy from Amazon.

Just try it, and I will, too. I’ll be bringing the kids.

*

Normally, this is where I tell you what I read this month, but all were galleys, and I don’t want to give away future guests. I will, however, share the book I’ve been reading to my kids: Trenton Lee Stewart, THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY *. It’s about extra-smart kids who are chosen to take a secret test, and if they do well, they will be given a “very special opportunity” – but is this a good thing? We’re just a few chapters from the end (the book is 485 pages) and absolutely love it. Every chapter is strange and unexpected and dangerous. And this author understands how alone smart kids can feel, which adds a real depth to the thrilling plot. * = for an indie store click here.

*

Okay. That’s it for March. Time for me to get back to the new book I’m writing. Thanks to everyone who played here, and to my guest, the very awesome bookseller, Ann Kingman. And thanks to those who linked to LitPark this month: Bookdwarf, Kash’s Book Corner, The Debutante Ball, Word of the Day, Daryl Ebneezra Kadabra, Bookavore, BitterSweet Blog, First Person Narrative, Bookies, Erin Balser, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Brad Listi . Com, Side Dish, Gray Skies, Endless Knots, and Read by Myfanwy. See you next month!

Do you remember, when you were a kid, what it was like to walk through the cafeteria with your lunch tray or walk down the aisle of the bus, and kids are putting coats and backpacks across the empty seats so you can’t sit down? Remember that feeling?

Or, say, you’re walking down the hallway at school and some girl comes up behind you and cuts a foot-long section of your hair off while her friends (yours too, you thought) laugh hysterically.

This is why books are so important during childhood. Because one day, you’ll open up a book and discover a child who hurts like you do, and suddenly, you’re not alone.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Because books are not just about company or validation. They shake up your ideas about everything you think you know. They show you that the world is infinitely more glorious and more wicked than you ever dreamed.

The world is no longer just a tiny corner crammed with backpacks and mean girls. And while you once walked silently past the girl holding the scissors, determined not to let her see you cry, now there are so many more possibilities.

My favorite children’s books?

If it’s been a while since you’ve read a children’s book, try one again. You’re not too old!

*

What I read this month: Barbara Kingsolver, THE POISONWOOD BIBLE (Absolutely tremendous. Thanks to Lizzy for the recommendation); Deepak Chopra, CREATING AFFLUENCE (I know, Mr. Henderson teased me, too, but okay, so I downloaded this off audible.com and I listen to it when I’m folding laundry, and now I’m going to be so rich and famous). I also tried to learn how to build suspense by reading these: Laura Benedict, CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS (I had nightmares for days); Alexandra Sokoloff, THE HARROWING (It’s like a master’s class on how to structure fear); Joe Hill, “THE BLACK PHONE” (Whoa. I’ll remember this one forever).

What I read to my kids: Neil Gaiman, CORALINE (freeaky!); Stanley Weintraub, SILENT NIGHT: THE STORY OF THE WORLD WAR I CHRISTMAS TRUCE (read the intro and first chapter – very interested in the story but not in the cumbersome way it was told – so we decided to order the movie, Joyeaux Noel, instead); Laura Ingalls Wilder, LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS (I’ve read this to the boys before, and they always complain because the cover is so girlie, but it’s fascinating history: balloons made of pig’s bladders, a corn cob named Susan, and who can eat cheese again after reading about rennets?).

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Thanks to everyone who played here, and to my guest, Belle Yang, for sharing her art and her powerful story. And thanks to those who linked to LitPark this month: The Daily Cartoonist, Editor and Publisher magazine, Jill Wheeler, Kristan Hoffman, Dog Fact #9, Journalista – the news weblog of The Comics, Editor Unleashed, BitterSweet Blog, Gray Skies, The Debutante Ball, David Niall Wilson, A Cold Rush of Air, Write Black, Kelley Bell’s FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, Ad Libitum, Side Dish, Belle Yang, Read by Myfanwy, Word of the Day, and African American Family Spotlight (this was a fun surprise to see an old, old friend show up at LitPark. I hope you’ll check out his brand new site and spread the word to anyone who might be interested!)

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Oh, wait! A few announcements, all concerning former LitPark guests: Danielle Trussoni just got an absolutely huge book and movie deal for ANGELOLOGY (!!!).  Frank Daniels’ FUTUREPROOF is now out with HarperPerennial (it’s raw and nerve-wracking and quite amazing). And finally, Jessica Keener is helping to organize writers and bloggers to raise awareness about children’s epilepsy. If you’d like to be involved, all you have to do is put this logo and this link on your webpage or blog through March 26th:

PurpleDay.org

If you do this, please leave your webpage url in the comments section so Jessica can add your link to the thank you page over at Purple Day. And if you have questions for her, you can leave them in the comments section, as well.

That’s it! Tomorrow, my kids will be playing in the Best of Show concert at the Blender Theatre – Green-Hand on lead guitar for Gimme Shelter and Bach-Boy on keys and vocals for Paint it Black. Have a great weekend, everyone! And I’ll see you here the first Monday in March…

Years ago, when I left my job as a rape crisis counselor, I was presented with a plaque. In beautiful calligraphy, my co-workers had listed the qualities they valued most about me: Dedicated Somethingerother. Compassionate Listener. Some Other Things. Patient.

I showed the plaque to Mr. Henderson, and he asked, “Do you think they meant this as a joke?”

Because not only am I known for listening only when I feel like it, but I will do things like put a frozen waffle in the toaster, and as soon as the edge is even slightly cooked, I’ll eat around the outside because I can’t wait two minutes for something I want.

You’d think I’d have picked a career that involved immediate rewards.

But logic is never one of the reasons a person becomes a writer. You know how it is. Your friends see you madly scribbling your ideas down on paper. They see you carrying around typed pages, crossing out words, circling things and drawing arrows here and there. They comment on how you disappear for weeks, sometimes months, to work on your manuscript. And, innocently, they ask, “What have you published?” And, “Can I read your book?”

They have no idea why these questions are so deeply frustrating. Or how a person can write for months, for years, and have nothing to show for it. Nothing that counts on their terms: A trip to the bookstore to find a beautiful hardcover book on one of those front tables.

It baffles them how you can write so slowly. How the things you’ve published are so hard to find. How you are never, or hardly ever, paid for your work. How, after not being paid for twenty years, you continue to call yourself a writer. And yet, that’s what you are. And you know the big break will come soon. It must. Because you’re good. Because you have things to say. Because you know your writing is better than the books on the bestseller list, or it will be after this next revision.

I can’t tell you how moved I was by your answers this week on how and why you endure, and was glad to see David Niall Wilson continue the discussion over on his blog with a post entitled Perseverance: Writing is NOT the Hardest Part.

So what do you do while you hope someone falls in love with your work? What do you do while you hope for that career break?

If you’re an impatient type, you do this: You move forward. You put your finished manuscript in play, and then you get to work on the next one. And you try to make this new thing the best you’ve ever written. You move forward because a writer doesn’t wait; a writer writes.

What I read this month: Tawni O’Dell, Back Roads (Dark and brilliant); Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Love it even more now than when I first read it as a teenager. Choked me up so many times. No real plot, but, oh, what a portrait of a generation! Wonder if it would sell today?); Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed (Wow. First half of the book is better than the second half, but still: Wow); Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms (Like most first books I’ve read, particularly the unpublished ones, it’s a bit of a mess. But here and there is something wonderful, like this: “They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities? I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was no egotist…he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the one beautiful comrade, the only inseparable love…poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point”).

What I read to my kids this month: Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book (Just try to read the first 2 pages and not buy the book. Loved it); Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales (We read this out loud every year, and whoever happens to be reading when they get to snowballing the cats, or Ernie Jenkins, or the dry voice singing on the other side of the door always feels like they won the lottery).

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Thank you to my January guest, the fabulous editorial cartoonist Jimmy Margulies. Thank you to everyone who played here. And thanks to those who linked to LitPark this month: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Buy Books, Rioter’s Roost, The Nervous Breakdown, The Debutante Ball, Ad Libitum, David Niall Wilson, Inside-Out China, Daryl Ebneezra Kadabra, TweepleBlog, Notes From the Handbasket, Truthenia, Kelley Bell’s FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, Upstate Girl, Making it up, Koreanish, read by myfanwy, Kick Off Your Shoes And Stay A While, Twilight Spy, Satin Black, Biscuit Cream: A Writer’s Blog, Word of the Day, Southern Fried Latina, and Bookies. I appreciate those links!

Before I get to the monthly wrap, I just want to acknowledge this historic election. I haven’t felt so emotional and deeply grateful since my kids were born healthy. (With maybe the one exception of when one of my boys got me a Madeline tea set for my birthday so we could have tea parties together.) It’s an amazing time – turning away from divisiveness and towards what we might become if we work together.

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This month, we told stories of the foolish things we’ve done. I do foolish things on such a regular basis that it just seems like part of life-as-me includes walking into a tree after passing someone cute, or carrying a briefcase upside down to a job interview, or managing to parallel park underneath another car, or answering, You’re Welcome when someone asks, How are you?

But I’ll share a story I told to my friend, Kimberly, the other day when we had lunch together.

As many of you regulars know, Mr. Henderson and I started dating when we were both 19. That’s more than half of our lives ago. But we did break up for a significant period of time, and this is a story of that in-between time, when we were broken up but trying to hang out as friends again.

He showed up at my place and said, “We’ll go wherever you want.”

I offered up The Cricket Lounge. It’s a place I passed on the way to the university every day. Painted on the side of the building was this giant tuxedoed cricket along with the words “Go-go! Go-go!” I told him I’d always wanted to dance there, and he found this “interesting.”

Already, I felt defensive because how could anyone who supposedly knew me well not know how much I loved go-go? Despite the campus’ preference for mopey alternative music, I still preferred anything with excessive drums and cowbells, blasting my records by Trouble Funk (the band I’ve seen in concert more than any other), Experience Unlimited, Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers. I had a favorite go-go club back in DC that was jam-packed on the weekends with people trying to out-dance each other, and the best dancers got paid spots on raised platforms a la Soul Train. Since high school, I wanted to be one of the girls dancing above the crowd.

I wore a dress Mr. H had always liked because – even though we were just going to be friends – I still didn’t want him to look at anyone but me.

We entered The Cricket Lounge, where I expected to hear the crazy drumming, the cowbells. This was where I’d show the crowd that no one can out-go-go a girl from DC.

But this was not the same sort of go-go club. This was the kind of club with nude ladies dancing. Sad, old ladies. Bad dancers. Mr. H knew this all along, apparently, and I could tell he got a kick out of the look of surprise on my face. He asked if I wanted to leave, and I said, No, because then they’d know we made a mistake, and who wants to look like they made a mistake? I ordered something with scotch in it, and  Mr. H whispered to me, “Good dancing here. Want to ask for a job application?”

We drank fast, then wandered all around town, looking for something to do, both of us very conscious of trying to walk the correct distance apart so our hands didn’t bump. Finally he said, “Well, we can go back to my place. I’ll cook for you.”

It was one of the sexiest non-dates I ever had, sitting on his living room floor, eating tater tots and watching the Headbanger’s Ball on MTV. We sat so close that, if he had turned his head toward me during an Iron Maiden song, we might have accidentally kissed. There was the possibility there for a kiss so amazing he’d forget how much I’d hurt him. And because I couldn’t have known, then, that nothing at all would happen, it was a feeling that anything was possible.

By the way, I found a photo of that Cricket Lounge mural on the web, and I see they’ve now made a clarification on the sign for folks like me

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What I read this month: Rachel Resnick, Love Junkie (I agree with Janet Fitch’s blurb of this memoir: “Reading Love Junkie is like watching a sleepwalker taking a stroll on a freeway. All you can do is pray.”); Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns (beautiful writing and a beautiful heart, though it didn’t pierce me the way The Kite Runner did, and maybe because I am always most moved by stories with children at the center of them); Mark Spragg, An Unfinished Life (every book he writes helps me understand my Montana relatives better); Amy McKinnon, Tethered (a really engaging read about an undertaker who finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery); and Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (just halfway through this one because I am savoring it). What I’m reading to the boys this month: Lois Lowry’s Messenger (in this world, you can trade your soul for your heart’s desire – wonderful and freaky). Mr. H is reading them Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids  (they laugh; I don’t).

Thanks to everyone who played here this month; to my guest, Dan Conaway, for sharing his insight and expertise; and to those who linked to LitPark: Editor Unleashed, Helen Dowdell’s Satin Black, Biscuit Cream, The Write Report, Maureen McGowan, and Every Second of the Moment. I appreciate those links!

And one more link for you: Kemble Scott’s thoughts on Prop 8 (it’s a response to pastor and author Rick Warren).

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Oh, p.s. Last night, Mr. H was filming a scene for his film noir in a Brooklyn alleyway. Here’s a still:

There was a guy living in that alleyway, so they gave him cash and a pack of cigarettes for the trouble of moving out of the shot.

I just want want to say how much I loved hearing the stories of your most pathetic Halloweens: the man who answered your request for candy by giving you dead chickens, the yellow body paint that wouldn’t come off, the parents who had you passing out evangelical pamphlets, the small children you terrified in your dead can-can girl outfit, …!

Here’s my story of deciding to go to a Halloween party on my due date. Mr. Henderson wanted me to go as a watermelon farmer. He was going to buy me a pair of biggie-sized overalls, cut out the front, and paint my belly. Nice!

Then we decided painting my stomach might make things difficult for the midwife if I happened to go into labor that night, so we kept thinking.

At the last minute, we thought a better (and warmer) option would be for us to go to the party as Don Juan and some chick he knocked up. The problem with doing things at the last minute is getting the costume right. Mr. H pulled something from the costume shop at CMU, where he was teaching at the time. The kinds of dresses that are stored there are generally designed for beautiful, skinny actresses, and let’s just say the costume he chose didn’t fit. There was the problem about how high the skirt hung in front. There was the problem about where, exactly, to tie the sash.

But the real problem was that this dress was made for some cute little actress to mush her cute little bosom upwards for a sexy barmaid look. And at 9 months pregnant, my bosom wouldn’t fit inside that no-stretch fabric, so I had to kind of stuff everything down, into other, roomier areas of the dress. And maybe your experience is different from mine, but I don’t know a lot of woman who want to angle everything downwards before they step out for the evening. Let’s just say the result was really seriously not barmaid-sexy.

Of course, no one in their right mind would post a photo of that sort on their blog.

The only thing that got me through the embarrassment and the discomfort of being at the party was the idea that I might actually go into labor and be able to take a full breath again. Alas, it would be another week.

But one year later, guess who spent his first Halloween dressed as a tree frog?

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Real quick. Something I’m thinking of attending (Thur, Nov. 20): Transformers: The Story of How A Literary Property Becomes A Film

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Thanks to all of you who played here this week, and to my guest, Dan Conaway, my really and truly amazing agent, who – did I fail to mention? – also plays guitar and has a photo of Keith Richards on his wall.  Thanks, as well, to everyone who linked to LitPark this week: Ellen Meister’s Side Dish, M.J. Rose’s Buzz, Balls & Hype, Red Room, and Backspace. I appreciate those links!

Remember: I’m running Part 2 of my interview with Dan next week, so stop by for a new question of the month and a very revealing talk that you absolutely don’t want to miss!