AN ANGELIC OPPORTUNITY

On this fascinating sojourn to find a publisher for CRAZY, my Young Adult novel written in verse, I find myself launching into new territory.  Backing up a bit, I have worked with an agent for the past year and-a-half to no avail.  While she loves my book and has found a publisher who also claims to love my book, no contract offer has been made, and the hope of one coming in any time soon is fast waning. The tight state of the writers' market these days, particularly for Young Adult fiction, is a whole topic for another day's discussion.  

But getting back to the here and now, my agent has become a friend and advocate who has agreed to look over any contract offers I might land on my own and to help with foreign rights should this book ever make it to the shelves.  So I find myself once again polishing up the queries and cranking out the submission lists, something I mistakenly thought I could abandon forever once I landed that agent.  

My intention here is not to invite you to a pity party, but to join me in a new venture which is the exploration of e-publishing and alternative markets.  As luck would have it, one of the first days out on this new trail I snagged the interest of Tod Davies,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivvoM-5FR5A, publisher of Exterminating Angel Press and its e-magazine by the same name.  And no, neither she nor her site is about eliminating heavenly beings, and I'll leave it up to you to discover the origins of this unique name.  She has invited me to share some of my work from CRAZY. If you will go to http://exterminatingangel.com/ and click on EAP: The Magazine at the top, my piece called "Beth's Opinion" is listed in the column on the right.  It wouldn't hurt my feelings if you "liked" it and I will love to receive comments here, since that option is not open on the site.

Thanks for joining me on this arduous but ever-fascinating journey!  

AFTER THE HIATUS

I'm back.  It's been almost a year.  I told myself I wasn't going to blog again until I had something substantial to blog about.  So I retired from teaching.  That may not be substantial to you, but it is major to me.   Today, as a matter of fact, would have been my first official day back in the classroom.    So I set the alarm for 6:00, in spite of the advice from other retirees who said I should never have to set the alarm again.  I was at my desk by 8:00, well.... maybe closer to 9:00 by the time I read the paper.

The point is, I am now Writer-in-Residence-at-My-House, and I made it to work almost on time this morning.

I'm not at all sure about the substantial information I am going to write about, but I can tell you this:

I will be writing about writing
and writing to make it right
and righting as many wrongs
as I can
through writing
and writing the right way
if at all possible
and sometimes maybe
writing
just to be writing.

You're brave to be hanging in there with me.

I'll see you at my next substantial post.

Writer-in-Residence-at-My-House,
Linda

CLIMBING TOWARDS SUCCESS

Every year at about this time, we take our sixth-graders on an overnight camping excursion to a nearby YMCA facility.  For some this is a first-time experience, and a big part of our planning is dedicated to relieving the anxiety and answering all the questions about the unknown.  This is especially important for our 26 students, all of whom have some form of a learning disability, usually dyslexia and/or ADHD, which is often accompanied by anxiety.

It's no small task putting it all together and pulling it off successfully, but the rewards are worth their weight in gold.  These are some of the nuggets I came home with.

The group really struggled to line up according to their birth dates in an opening team-building exercise.  One boy solemnly informed the facilitator that he was dyslexic and therefore unable to understand positional directions.  The facilitator glanced somewhat desperately towards us teachers before plunging into the next task, which required that all the students line up on two long wooden blocks with one foot on each block.  They were instructed to take ropes attached to the blocks in their hands, and work together to move both blocks across a field while still standing on them.  The same dyslexic boy quickly took the lead position on the blocks and effectively got the team organized and moving towards their goal in no time.  By the way, one of his directives involved instructing the students on the use of left and right feet!

In another team-building activity students had to take turns moving through a maze made of roped off squares on the ground.  They were not allowed to talk until the whole team got through, and every time a student made a wrong move he had to go to the end of the line and start all over again.  Slowly the students began to figure it out.  The pay-off came in watching the quicker students gently and patiently use silent communication to coach the others to the exit.

Perhaps the greatest number of triumphs happened at the climbing wall this year. Student after student overcame various degrees of fear to meet goals they set for themselves.  Some wanted to get to the edge of the first ladder, others to the top platform.  One particular student who has overused the word "can't" in the classroom delighted us with a comical and self-assurred account of how he was overcoming "dangerous conditions" all the way to the top.  I'll look forward to reminding him of his successful climb the next time I hear "can't."

My pockets are weighted down with golden nuggets today, each a small victory in a special student's climb to success.

RADICAL INDIVIDUALISM

The ups and downs of the first full week of a new school year have come to pass and with it, a sigh of relief.  At least now we can begin to establish a routine and settle into some semblance of normalcy.  But that old word--normal--dogs me once again.  Many of the students in the learning disabled population where I teach want nothing more than to blend in, to become like the rest of "them."  Yet sadly, many arrive with fresh wounds having been inflicted by "them."

So ironically, I marched through the week finishing a book featuring one of the most radical nonconformists in young adult fiction, Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli.  Her real name was Susan Caroway, but one of the many names she created for herself was Stargirl, because "I didn't feel like Susan anymore."  She arrived at unspectacular Mica High with an array of long hippie-like skirts, accompanied by her pet rat and a ukulele for singing happy birthday without an invitation to anyone and everyone.  Put off at first, the students began to warm up to her random acts of kindness and her infectious enthusiasm.  Largely due to her cheer-leading charisma, bottom-ranked Mica High was headed for the basketball championship for the first time in years when things fell apart.  Stargirl not only cheered for both teams at games ("I root for everybody"), but when a star opponent became injured, she rushed onto the court to help him.  Overnight the entire student body turned against her.  They shunned her. There was no turning back, even when Stargirl made a brief and painful attempt to look, act, and sound just like "them."

While Spinelli doesn't sell himself as a Christian writer, returning an angry slap in the face from a jealous cheerleader with a kiss on the cheek is right out of the New Testament.  If you don't go with the Christian theme, you might be tempted to swing to the other extreme, wondering why Stargirl didn't have a total and complete mental collapse, so unpredictably, out-of-this world crazy she seems.

So at the end of this long first week of school, I look at my sweet students and want to say "go for it!"  Be who you are.  Don't let "them" ever stop you or try to remake you into someone you are not.  And I look at myself as a teacher and writer and wonder, how willing am I to step out there and be so different, so innovative, so creative beyond imagination, so other-directed that my own sense of normalcy becomes significantly redefined.

Radical individualism.  If you've had a brush with it, I'd love to hear from you.

RENEWED PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE

Summer as we teachers know it is drawing to a close.  In order to make the journey back to the classroom more palatable every year, I go through a systems check to assure myself that I did, indeed, accomplish all the items on my hearts-desire list for one more summer.  

Inside painting: check; closet purging: check; deep cleaning: check; renewing a bicycling sport: check; seeing my first book published: negative.  As Jan Karon would say, "there's the rub."  After ten months of being shopped around by my agent, my book, CRAZY, has yet to find a taker.  I've had close calls, and wonderful affirmations by reputable, big-name publishing houses, but in an increasingly tight publishing market, my book is risky.  Written in verse, set in the sixties, dealing with mental illness, it lacks all the earmarks of blockbusters these days such as dystopian themes, werewolves and sexual innuendos.  Those, of course, are all the reasons why my agent loves it. 

My woe-is-me outlook took a wonderful upward turn when I attended my 45th high school reunion at pristine Lake O' the Woods in Oregon last week.  To begin with, you can't walk in a grove of ponderosa pine and douglas fir, paddle on a lake at the base of a snow-capped dormant volcano, and watch bald eagles cruise overhead without experiencing the blessings of this life, and the insignificance of our own petty concerns.  

And then there is the human element.  My best girlfriends and I picked right up where we left off years ago, sharing laughter and tears, heartaches and triumphs, now peppered with inevitable health issues.  Twenty percent of our class of just over 400 is now deceased, and many, we learned, were facing serious or life-threatening health concerns.  But hope and a zest for life prevailed, and we fed off of each other's thankfulness and determination to live life to the fullest as long as we can.  One friend said she works on "gratitudes" each day, and in our short weekend together, it became a theme.  

No, I didn't accomplish all my goals this summer.  But I think I came away with a greater appreciation of who I am and where I am in life's journey.   As I lay in wait for this sunset picture, dragonflies danced around my head, fish jumped just off the dock, and bullfrogs rehearsed for the nightly concert.  There's a whole lot of living going on each day before that sunset, and as a teacher, writer, wife, mother and grandmother, I promise not to waste a moment going forward.

Renewed perspective on life:  check.

SWEET DREAMS

It's half over.  Exactly one month from today.   I avoid looking at the calendar because that's just way too in your face.  I try to ignore the way the clock seems to be racing on its own time-warp schedule, getting louder and more menacing as it tickety-tocks my carefree days away.  But there is one reminder,  regular as clock-work about this time every summer, that is totally out of my control.

The inevitable back-to-school nightmare syndrome!

It was that typical first day when the little darlings arrive so fresh faced and eager, unaware that their fully rested and rejuvenated teacher has already been launched into overload by too little time in her room, too  many new programs to learn, and too little sleep the night before.

I arrived late and discovered that I had left something vitally important in my car. Whatever it was, I simply couldn't do first day without it.  I raced back to the parking lot, just on the edge of the campus that resembled a cross between New York City and Disneyland, only to find that I simply could not remember the way back to my room.  Who knows how long in dreamland it took me to find my way out of the maze but thank heavens for quirky coincidences.  I spotted my fellow teachers at the football stadium along the way and suddenly remembered it was the opening day assembly.  My luck continued when my colleagues, gathered in a tight cluster in a dark corner at the foot of the stands, assured me they had covered for me, and my class was in good hands.  No admins in sight.  Whew!

"Where are my students?"  I inquired with relief and a good bit of curiosity.

"Students?  What students?  We're just here to watch the game.  Have a beer!"

Wow, I thought.  School start-up has really improved.  This is going to be a great year.

I somehow found my way to my room and was further delighted to find not one, but two brand new state of the art computers.  I must be dreaming, I thought.  I remember only putting in for a new power cord on the wish list.  Suddenly someone down the hall said they saw a cloud of locusts moving across the campus in our direction.

The students have arrived!

By now my computer elation had morphed into panic when I realized my room had no electrical outlets, indeed no electricity, and I had forgotten to prepare a lesson plan.

Give me a few more dreams like this one, and I'll be powered up for another great year!

SUMMER FUN

It's finally here.  Summer.  I'm free as a bird for a precious cluster of weeks and I don't want to waste a minute.

First, I tackled the to-do list, starting with the windows inside and out, upstairs and down.  My husband and I chuckled over our choice of bonding time as we shouted and pantomimed directions through the brightening panes.  Somehow he thought he could get by without the aids (hearing) that day, sort of like one of my students showing up for a field trip without the meds.  I forgave him when the sunshine practically burned a hole in my spotless windows much like horseradish kickstarts a stuffy nose.

Next it was the floors.  Down on all fours Cinderella style until the original colors began to emerge.  Out out, "darn" spots, I commanded. Lady MacBeth couldn't have washed away the sins of the year any better, and Anne Lamott would have been proud of my tile-by-tile technique which reaped some fertile plot points and colorful character ideas as my mind drifted way beyond the floor.

Don't get me wrong.  My idea of summer doesn't translate into a self-imposed hard-labor camp.  It's just that teachers and writers both tend to let things really pile up during school and writing projects, and it makes us feel extremely efficient, well-organized and productive to stir up a bunch of dust once a year (maybe twice) before settling into the fun stuff.

And what about that fun stuff?  First I took one giant leap for woman-kind (at least for this kind of woman) and invested in a smart phone.  I began to experience the length and breadth of my leap when I ran into one of my sixth-grade students at the phone store who escorted me around the displays with sales tips that put the customer service rep (and me) to shame.  This is supposed to be fun?  I secretly vowed to go home and cram like a freshman before finals lest my smart phone outsmarts me.

But the fun event that tops all so far this summer is the resurrection of two nostalgic 3-speed bikes:  my husband's 1966 Rudge and my 1972 Raleigh.  This culminates several years of debate about whether or not anyone could even work on such antiques, and assuming they could, how cost-effective it would be compared to buying new bikes.  It turns out the process was much easier and less expensive than buying a smart phone, and the learning curve just a matter of practice and review.

                                                                 1973 - Queens, NY

                                                                    2011 - Charlotte, NC

Now if I can just stay upright and use the GPS on my Droid to find my way home, I can truly say I am at least as smart as a sixth grader!