Hops, News and Awards

Friday is for blog hopping! I imagine white rabbits with numbers taped to their backs like jockeys hopping though the blogosphere knocking at rose trellised, faded green doors and hopping into cosy rooms where books, tea and chocolate are laid out in expectation.

I have discovered wonderful, wonderful blogs over the last few weeks. Readers and writers: readers who write and writers who read, reviewers who write and reviewers who read--it is heaven for people who enjoy living in a culture of words. There are readers reading Hardy, Bronte, Tolstoy, Keats. Readers reading historical fiction, literary fiction, chick lit, sci fi lit, ya lit, mg lit, classic lit, and poetry. It is a lovely way to sail through the trees on swings built of language.

So, news. After changing my ticket seven times I am flying home to Hawaii. No one there believes that I will actually turn up. I seem to have become the girl who cried 'plane ticket'. But I am going as I have to have my author photo taken--yikes. From what I gather for the author photo I: do not smile, do look friendly, don't wear white, do wear something I am comfortable in, do not wear a sundress, do wear shoes, do look at the camera, do not look too serious, do look professional. Umm. How does a person who does like sun dresses and does not like photos manage this? Tuesday is the big day. Will let you know how it goes!

And happily, Sarah, at the wonderful "Loving Books" blog (http://always-books.blogspot.com/) gave me an award! The Prolific Blogger Award!

A prolific blogger is one who is intellectually productive, keeping up an active blog with enjoyable content. After accepting this award, recipients are asked to pass it forward to seven other deserving blogs.

Yipee! Thank you Sarah! And if you have not visited Sarah's lovely blog: hop hop right away!

Seven blogs I love...

bibliophiliac at http://bibliophiliac-bibliophiliac.blogspot.com/
She has the most wonderful posts about Keats's heartbreakingly beautiful broken poetry.

Carin at http://carolinebookbinder.blogspot.com/
This wonderful woman has tried so hard to teach me to link properly and as you can see I am failing miserably. A former Editorial Assistant her take on books and the publishing world is fascinating.

Missy B at http://missysbooknook.blogspot.com/
Her reviews are incisive, personal and beautifully written and the elfin drawings on her blog will make you happy every time.

Lindy Lou Mac at http://lindyloumacbookreviews.blogspot.com/
From Alice in Wonderland posters in Hong Kong to wonderfully written reviews, her blog is always fun.

Mademoiselle Poirot at http://mademoiselle-poirot.blogspot.com/
Her delicately wrought photographs feel like breakfast in Paris.

Grad at http://thecuriousreader.blogspot.com/
She loves letters and Wolf Hall and that is so much more than enough for me!

Faith E. Hough at http://faithehough.blogspot.com/
Read her post about the brilliant, brilliant Oscar Wilde.

Hop, white rabbits! Hop!

Mothers Day

I have been thinking about Mother's Day. My mother loves to read. I have never met anyone who reads like she does. She reads six books at once, cross references, looks up, Googles, consults the gigantic, antique pulpit dictionary that stands in her study, laughs out loud, keeps a Jane Austen novel in her purse, remembers, re-reads, looks more up, finishes a book, starts a book, waits patiently while the animals sleep on the books and then reads some more. It is an extraordinary thing to watch my mother read.

She reads to music. There is always music in our house. My family is musical. Well, my mother and brother and sometimes my sister are musical. I am not. There is always music. As she reads she will stop and hold absolutely still to hear as Butterfly dies in Puccini's opera, the Count apologizes at the end of Figaro, Tosca kills Scarpia or Colline sings goodbye to his coat. She will play the trio of Rosenkavalier back to back twelve times and then re-read the history of Strauss. When I get into the car and discover the CD player volume is turned all the way up I know my mother was the last to drive the car.

My mother taught me to write. All along this funny, twisty, larkspur lane that has brought me to writing she has been in the background. When we were in the mountains in India my mother understood that we had to walk the long walk to the bazaar to get the next Nancy Drew because The Crumbling Wall had coughed up the clue sooner than expected. We were allowed to stay up all night reading. She knew it was important for me to find out if Scarlett ever wins Ashley and it just couldn't wait until tomorrow. A former professional editor, she would carefully sift my writing with ferocious, kind, precision, helping me to pull through the strongest threads. Looking back on it now I marvel at her patience. She wanted my fourth grade twenty-two page report on Sparta to be well written rather than just finished. "Is that what you really mean to say?" "Sort of." "Would you like to say it again?" and off we would go. I hear myself asking that exact question of my students in that exact cadence.

Once we could write our own papers she would try to stay up with us but fall asleep on the end of the bed with the dog. "So you don't feel like you are the only person awake in the world." She edited my novel. She is up to ears in research for the next one. She is endlessly fascinated by good stories and the people who tell them, write them, sing them, paint them, run them, dress them, and live them. It is an amazing way to read.

Letters

I love reading letters. It is a shockingly invasive idea if you think about it. I would not want anyone who did not already love me very much to go through my email 'Sent' box. I am not big on grammar in my emails. I do not always take the time to say exactly what I mean. An outsider reading my email written to a close friend or family member would not be able to make sense of the fragmented jumble of tangled references. An outsider reading an email from me to my mother would think I was a repetitive, unlettered but affectionate loon.

Letter writing is no longer an art. Correspondence is not something we make room for in our day. We squish lopsided, frothy emails into whatever negative space is left after we finish doing what we really need to do. The email often just reports the doing.

Rebecca. I remember reading about the Second Mrs. de Winter's first morning at Manderley. Du Maurier was wonderful about giving this sad, loving character just enough obstacles to trip over. The Second Mrs. de Winter did not know the routine of the house and so went to the Library. But the fire was lit in the Morning Room. Rebecca always went to the Morning Room after breakfast to do her correspondence. I imagined letters written at an efficiently organized, slender legged desk on stationery embossed with her long sloping "R". That normality of Rebecca's routine shows the shift in the twentieth century away from penmanship, skill, effort in letter writing.

My father writes in a beautiful slanting script with a heavy fountain pen. He takes fountain pens very seriously. I would have no idea how to write with a fountain pen. Virginia Woolf threw fire lit arrows of possessive prose out to her lover, Vita Sackville West. F. Scott Fitzgerald's letters to Zelda. Antoine de St. Exupery's letters to his wife, his rose. Byron's letters to his sister. Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne. Napoleon's letters to Josephine. They reek of thought, love, effort and artistry. Mmm. Must try that sometime.

Monday Reading

It is Monday and I am reading two wonderful novels, two wonderful poets, two wonderful research books and two wonderful books I have already read but seem to keep picking up. It is a week in twos.

The novels:

Jude Morgan's Passion: genius. Lyric, thickly layered genius. Caroline Lamb, Augusta Leigh, Byron (I always forget he had a club foot), Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley (but as she has not met Shelley yet she is Mary Godwin), the Duchess of Devonshire, the Prince Regent, the French Revolution and Fanny Brawne have all taken the stage.

The other novel, Victoria Hislops's The Return is waiting in the wings. I read her first book, The Island. It is an unexpected mix of Greece, WWII, true love, community, isolation, and leprosy. It gripped me in a way I did not see coming. The lovable but not terribly well stocked Borders is the only option on the island where I live. Amazon will fly over the seas and find you but I like to pick up a book, meet it, weigh it, read it before I buy it. Our Borders often nudges you, with its dwindling stock, to read books you would not otherwise try. Often, as in the case of The Island, I have been very glad.

Poets:

Auden: always. I memorize two poems a month. It is a practice left over from college. At least six times a year, it is Auden.

Zbignew Herbert: another favorite. 'London Rain' is a never ending web of intricate, doubled over thought. You will find you are chasing your tail in the most wonderful way.

Already Reads:

Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors. This book picked up ferocious steam in the third third. It yanked all the long ago laid down tracks together and built a thundering highway of an ending.

Glass of Time by Michael Cox. I find I am haunted by this man's Victorian, ghostly, ivy covered book. The atmosphere of it crawls and creeps and comes looking for you--as all Victorian Gothic novels worth their salt should do.

"Worth one's salt" by the way is a pre 900ad phrase that refers to the practice of paying Roman soldiers in "salarium" or allowance to buy salt.

Saturday Morning in Paris

Yesterday, the lovely Mademoiselle Poirot--who has a beautiful blog that is charming enough to make you feel as though you have just wandered through an early morning flower market in London and then zipped over the Channel to return to your Monmartre artist garret for breakfast--gave me a lovely sunny award! Her blog makes me want to get up early, buy an antique iron bedframe, eat macaroons from Laduree and put summer pink cabbage roses in pale green watering cans. Don't you love that?

Hopalong Friday

You really can't beat square dancing books with feet. I love the Friday Blog Hop, hosted by the wonderful Jennifer at Crazy-for-Books.com. In the last few weeks I have met bloggers who read everything, write everything and review everything--so much fun!

My blog is a little bit of reading--I read everything from classics to chick lit, a little bit of writing--my first novel comes out next winter and I am working on my second, both historical fiction, a little bit of reviewing--although much less organized and routine than some of the amazing blogs I have visited recently, and a little bit of the mad adventurous scramble of the everyday.

So on Fridays I hop down the rabbit hole and meet wonderful bloggers who read and write beautifully!

New Book Thursday

Don't some days feel longer than others? I don't mean individual days but a Tuesday is always less substantial for me than a Thursday. I am sure this is some leftover remnant of my schedule in middle school when a Thursday was a heftier day than a lightweight Tuesday or a half day Wednesday.

Whatever the case I tend to start new things on Thursdays: chapters, characters, new books, pilates classes, haircuts, new shoes--all work better on a spacious, endless Thursday. Today the new stuff includes writing a new thread in The Second Book, walking in the outdoors after being sick in bed all week, trying a new fruit combination for my smoothie (strawberry, pineapple, lemonade), and starting a new novel, well an old novel that I loved but have been wanting to reread and can now that I have forgotten it all--Jude Morgan's Passion.

Don't you love when you forget a book just enough to discover it all over again? It is like rediscovering the perfect pair of jeans in the back of your closet. I also recycleTwilight and old episodes of The West Wing just like this.

Passion is a lush imagining of the women behind the Romantic poets. Beginning in the turbulent Europe of 1789 it unfolds in rich, unbridled prose. I love books that weave around existing facts and paint a story that might have happened. Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and Shelley appear and disappear but the story is for the women. In terms of character, it is woven on a huge frame. I love that it is an expansive novel. I can move in and make camp. Love that.

The Passion and the Prose

"Only Connect" is one of my favorite epigraphs of all time. It is loose, chewy and simple, like crusty Italian bread. I love epigraphs. It is the little look through the keyhole, illuminating and distilling what the author wants you to see most. The moral, the heart, the center, the strength is always in the epigraph. It is sign and signifier at once.

When I was at Mount Holyoke, I was taught by a wonderful, wonderful poet. He was a celebrated, eccentric, genius, lovable, Russian Nobel Laureate, but more than anything else he was shot through with magic. After reciting a poem by Frost or Hardy or Cavafy or his beloved Auden, he would lean on the back of his chair and ask, "What is it all about?".

In prose, the epigraph always always hold the seeds to what it is all about. The epigraph to his own heartbreakingly well crafted essays is taken from Czeslaw Milosz's haunting 'Elegy for N.N.'. Once you meet that poem, you will keep it with you always. It begins "Tell me if it is too far for you" and traces a journey across the world that one lover did not take to meet another. The epigraph my professor used was "And the heart does not die when one thinks it should". It is an echoing, weighted truth.

In any book, I always read the epigraph first and last. 'Only Connect' hints at strung together depths to come and then after you have read Forster's geniuns novel, it means so much more.

Good Things on Monday

What am I reading? It is a funny mix of reading, researching, teaching, rereading and nosing through but not quite reading.

Teaching: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Matilda by Roald Dahl

Reading: Beautiful People by Wendy Holden, An Outrageous Affair by Penny Vincenzi

Nosing: Claude and Camille by Stephanie Cowell

Rereading: Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland

Book Notes: I am really enjoying the swift moving, no nonsense but tons of fun pace of Beautiful People. She is a really good example of 'show don't tell' writing, which I enjoy. I have been circling Claude and Camille at the bookstore but am loath to buy as it is hardback and the sun+sand+salt+damp equation of Hawaii is not kind to hardbacks. Instead I picked up Luncheon of the Boating Party to visit the same period through Renoir's eyes as opposed to Monet's. It is a lovely, subtle, summery book that makes you remember to love the loveliness of the Impressionists and takes you to the banks of the Seine on a June afternoon.


Other Good Things:

I figured out how to put the 'What Are You Reading Mondays' button on my post!

The utterly sweet Maybe Tomorrow blog gave me an award!

Well this I am choosing to see as good. I got a flu which went seriously on the boil last night (not a good thing) and I did not get on the plane at the very last minute. The bags were packed, the plane was leaving in four hours, I had a window seat, my dear friend Matt was all set to pick me up from the airport and then--nothing. Instead, raging fever, Theraflu and The Bourne Ultimatum with my boyfriend who is also sick. At least we are in it together--that is a good thing, isn't it?

Traveling

Books. Shoes. Books. Shoes. Going to Hawaii--books win. The current Hawaiian Airlines baggage restrictions are very irritating when I am endeavoring to travel with a small library of books. Books for the first novel (galleys arrive next month), books for the Second Novel (sooo many books), books to read next, books to read now, books I have already read but cannot quite bear to leave, books to teach, first book for the plane and second book for the plane in case I have a gigantic delay and finish first book. I always feel like I need a deep bench when I travel.

Airport security is going to think I am nuts.

Blog Hop Friday

It has been a different kind of week for my blog. Plum Bean got a lot plum beanier last Friday when I found some extraordinary blogs written by extraordinary readers and writers and they found me right back. And yet I still do not know how to link. I cannot seem to make those little buttons turn blue.

I found great blogs written by prolific readers, reviewers, writers, editors, teachers--it was fantastic! The seeds of community took happy root. It has been a chat, a discussion, not in the Googly-chat way but in a sitting barefoot on a picnic blanket with friends, sunshine, a stack of books and ripe watermelon way. It has been lovely. Here are some of the blogs I found when I hopped down the rabbit hole:

Michelle: http://redheadedbookchild.blogspot.com/
Missy B: http://missysbooknook.blogspot.com/
Whitney: http://she-is-too-fond-of-books.blogspot.com/
Jeannie: jeannie@pinecottagebooks.com
MarthaE: http://marthasbookshelf.blogspot.com/
Carin: http://carolinebookbinder.blogspot.com/
LindyLouMac:http://lindyloumacbookreviews.blogspot.com/
Stella: http://exlibris-stella.blogspot.com/
http://bookquotes-bookquotes.blogspot.com/
http://muse-in-the-fog.blogspot.com/

And of course the blog hop at the wonderful Crazy for Books!: www.crazy-for-books.com

When A Good Book Ends

My sister Tuna really likes to be near my mom. I like to be near my mom too but Tuna really likes to be near my mom. Once at the train station my mom and I were waiting to put Tuna on a train back to college. Tuna went to buy a magazine and told us not to move. We moved. Some seats opened up and we moved twenty feet to go sit down. Tuna of course came back, panicked and promptly had my mom paged on the loudspeaker. When we rushed to the security desk, Tuna just shrugged and said "I wanted you to show up."

When I finish a good book I get a little homesick, a little restless and a little strange flutter of panic. I want to page the next good book to show up at once. I want one that will inhabit the exact silhouette of the last one. I want the edges to match. I am in the market for a congruent shape.

I loved Kate Morten's The Forgotten Garden. It was lyric, but stopped just short of being distractingly so. It was surprising but not irritatingly surprising. It was lit in a gentle, mellowed afternoon light and peopled with complicated, compelling people. The foreshadowings of this story, told in fluidly broken chronology, were heavy but amiable. It follows three stories: two trying to solve the mystery of the third. It works.

I went to the bookstore yesterday and there was no congruent shape. I was not surprised my luck had run out. The Forgotten Garden had already filled the empty shoes of Daphne, the story of Daphne Du Maurier, also set in early 20th century Cornwall. So I decided to up sticks and move to the London modeling scene circa now, and am going to read Wendy Holden's Beautiful People. Let's see if snappy, sharp language and a gorgeously kitch pink and blue cover will make me want a different shape.

Awards!

The lovely Book Quoter--who has a lovely, lovely blog and about the best photo of a sumptuous, three sided, Viennese bookshelf I have ever seen, gave me two lovely awards! The Beautiful Blogger Award and The Honest Scrap Award! Or they might be the same thing? Or the Beautiful Blogger brought to you by the Honest Scrap? I used to wait all through Sesame Street to see which letter brought that day's show.

Thank you lovely Book Quoter! If you have not been to her blog--go quick! And thank you Carin who helped me with the buttons!

According to the rules I am supposed to list ten things about myself--I think? Jeannie at Pine Cottage Books--another yummy, scrummy, gorgeous blog, got this award a while back and that is what she said. So:

1. I have been a vegetarian for over two decades and before that the only meat I liked was McDonald's hamburgers, the best bite being the little pickle in the middle.
2. I live in Hawaii, eat mostly fruit but only made my first smoothie last week as I am afraid of household appliances.
3. I love hats.
4. I am a terrible driver.
5. I wear glasses but don't actually wear my glasses so the world looks like a very late Water Lily sort of Monet.
6. I do not cook anything--ever.
7. Even in the ocean I swim underwater with my eyes open.
8. I still like paintings of women in beautiful sherbet colored dresses like The Love Letter by Fragonard.
9. I am seriously superstitious and believe in kissing windows for luck and wishes.
10. I phone my mom at least twice a day every day.

Dr. Seuss and Shell Silverstein

I don't think it is possible to underestimate the impact of children's books. The rhythm of my brain, my writing, my love of words that are not words, colors that are not colors, things that are not things but are so thingy can be laid at Shell Silverstein's line drawn and Dr. Seuss's most likely spikey pink doorsteps.

The Baby Bat
Screamed out in Fright
Turn on the Dark
I'm afraid of the Light!

Genius. My brain, when I am working out a rhythm of a sentence moves in Seussian galumps along a Snozdoodle track. Doesn't everyone's? 'Twas the night before Christmas decks it out with the Who's down in Whoville for the meter of Christmas. Roald Dahl gifts shape to things that are shapeless. Nancy Drew, Cynthia Voight, Louis Lowry all pull the air tight, teaching dramatic tension. They teach the later is better than sooner power of the reveal. Richard Scary illustrates the importance of detail. The Berenstein Bears taught me to love a good treehouse. These things stick.

The dedication for my book (I am going to ask my parents not to read this post as it is dedicated, with all my love, to them) references three of our favorite children's books and the nursery rhyme that my father took and made his own. Rhythm. Words. Rhyme. They connect. They bind. They last.

Tiffany Blue

Some days are just powered by something different. Writing is different. Reading is different. On these days my brain does not slowly creak to life like an old Volvo as it normally does. It hops out of bed feeling springy and expansive, more like a Mini Cooper painted in Tiffany blue. Knotty plot glitches melt and the obvious path presents itself complete with signposts and balloons. Icky, unwieldy, placeholder sentences get replaced by brightly efficient new ones and writing is so much fun.

I have no idea what it is about those days. (This is not one of them by the way.) I do know it is the same unseen power at work that makes clothes fit better, hair do that weird wonderful flippy thing that is impossible to recreate later, shoes not hurt, parties easy and fun, movie theatres seats comfy, dogs less drooly, hats look good, keys work in locks, old friends phone and money turn up in the pocket of jeans.

It is great. Writing feels stretchy, available, pliable, patient. Other days, sentences must be worked, tinkered, picked up, puzzled, moved and refitted--constantly. And that is fun. That is a worked, wrought kind of fun. This is a sugared, clean, snap into place sort of fun. Both are valuable. I have to write every day, not just on those days. But sometimes, when the writing feels oddly cornered, and the puzzle pieces want to cook a bit more before they are willing to fit, you really wish the day were painted in Tiffany blue.

Wow

Yesterday was amazing! I have always felt a bit pressed up against the candy store window of the bloggy world. I would read people posting back and forth and interacting with each other, discussing books and histories and writing and publishing and think: how do they find each other?

And so I would write. Sometimes I would sheepishly post something on Facebook and then encourage everyone not to read it. I am not a big status posting person but more of a 'please take that embarrassingly awful photo of me down right now sort of person'. I admire the status posting people. I admire the bloggy posting people. I admire the people with enough courage in their passions and interests to fearlessly put it out there. Until yesterday, I was certainly not one of them.

Tina who owns Java Kai in Hanalei: "Priya, aren't you writing a blog?"

Priya: "Um. Erm. Uh. Noise. Noise. Sort of."

Not good.

Then yesterday I did it and ventured into the bloggy world ready to have no one show up and... it was wonderful! People were kind, encouraging, friendly and responsive. Funny thing about the candy store is that you are not wrong to stand outside and want to be inside. The candy tastes really really good.

Um. Erm. Uh. Noise. Noise. Of course it might have been a fluke and no one might come back....

Friday Book Blog Hop

Fridays and book blog hopping seem to go together don't you think? Especially with the fantastic book blog hop is hosted by the wonderful Jennifer at Crazy-for-Books.com. She has friendly, well informed, helpful bloggers who post their fascinating blogs, a warm, generous site and square dancing books with feet for her book blogging icon to welcome you in. i don't think you can beat smiley faced, square dancing books with feet.

This was the first week I boldly listed this blog as "old" as I now have more than fifty followers--yipee! I am no longer writing for just my mom and the five animals--although they are still a wonderful and responsive audience.

In other book=y news I am again reading The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morten. I shamelessly put it down and forgot about it when I switched handbags two weeks ago. I left it in the lovely green bag my mom gave me that has been setting off every security alarm in Los Angeles--I think the trouble is in the fancy, heavy duty, magnetic close? Now I am using a more utilitarian and much less fancy canvas bag from Whole Foods. But now I have put Kate Morten's lovely second novel in it and it is much classier.

I am also reading Roald Dahl's Matilda (for my ten year old student), Gone With The Wind (for my sixteen year old student), and six different research books for The Second Novel. Not sure why I am squirrely about discussing the subject of this novel. Maybe it is really the same process as when I was writing the first one. Last time around I did not admit to writing it for the first year I was writing. It was too out of focus, too un-fleshed out to talk about. Maybe this is the same?

The good news is I am nearing the fifty page mark. This seems to be the neighborhood where characters sort of shake themselves out and tell me exactly what they will and won't: eat, wear, walk, read and say. This one will only write letters in the morning. That one likes to smoke in the bath. Good.

Unexpected Things

So I was watching The Sound of Music--I have a serious weakness for old musicals, Meet Me in St. Louis for Christmas, Gigi and Easter Parade for spring, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers anytime and My Fair Lady for dresses--and I heard lines that I never quite heard before. I am not wild about 'My Favorite Things'. I love the goat song, the tea, the jam, and my grandmother's favorite, "Climb Every Mountain' but not the raindrops on roses. Maybe it is just too familiar--brown paper packages, whiskers on kittens yadda, yadda. It isn't that I don't love those things it is just to peachy and creamy, sugary cutsey in places.

And then I listened this time. Kurt, yes I know their names, shouts out, "A good sneeze' as his favorite thing. A good sneeze is good. And not cutsey. So listened to the whole movie and several times I was stopped by a line more sardonic and adult than I was expecting. Funny what happens when you switch your ears on. Good writing turns up in the weirdest places.

Rules

So the Guardian published a, now very well known, "Ten Rules for Writing" article this year. They actually published it right on my birthday and distracted me for most of the day which was no bad thing as I have a tendency to panic and dwell on birthdays. The night before my 30th birthday I decided I had to read everything I had ever wanted to read and enjoy my dwindling twenties as much as possible. I read. I walked. I stayed up all night. And then I fell asleep in a corner of the living room at 930 pm at my own birthday party the next day. Brilliant.

These rules for writers have played in the corners of my imagination sandbox for the last couple of months. They are brilliant rules from brilliant authors: Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Zadie Smith, Esther Freud, David Hare and other giants. And the rules are all terrific.

Some are simple: Ian Rankin, "Write lots." Ok. Some are more complicated: Rose Tremain, "In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it."

Umm. What about historical fiction where the ending is more fact than fiction? Or is the creative element in the fiction the when to stop of it all? How to truly earn a creative arc when it is already dictated to a degree? But then, Rose Tremain often writes historical fiction. Later she says, "If you're writing historical fiction, don't have well-known real characters as your main protagonists." That ship certainly sailed.

I would write, catch myself committing some terrible transgression, cleanly breaking of one of these rules--there are lots of them--and then stop writing. But in the stopping writing I was breaking another golden edict. And then I decided to just put them out of my mind and not think about them. Wow. That doesn't work.

It was only this weekend, when I was helping my wonderful student finish his Senior Project (about the process of writing and reading of course) that I got it. I have rules of my own that I instinctively keep. All these other rules are fantastic and some are fantasticker than others and so have been adopted into my mental lexicon of writing commandments but some are just fantastic in a stop, smell the flower and keep walking kind of way.

And then of course I found a fascinating interview with one of my favorite author's, Sandra Gulland that I am about to listen to and I am sure will undo all these helpful mental acrobatics. Um, Zadie Smith, "Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet." Must remember to keep that rule.


The Guardian:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one

Sandra Gulland: http://www.myinnerfrenchgirl.com/

Friday Book Blog Hop

I love the hop! Crazy For Books (http://www.crazy-for-books.com/) hosts a wonderful weekly event where readers, writers, reviewers all come together to go hopping round the blogoshere visiting book blogs.

Last week I found blogs about brilliant historical fiction, young adult fiction, sci fi urban fantasy fiction, blogs reviewing fiction, blogs about writing fiction, blogs about reviewing, reading and writing fiction. It was a fun, fun hop down the rabbit hole with a really good flashlight, trusty white rabbit and street map sort of day.

And people found me! Friendly, encouraging, outgoing fantastic, people! Love the blog hop!