FAQ: "Is it likely that you'll ever re-open to unsolicited submissions?"

On a permanent, ongoing basis? No, probably not, because the manner in which projects are coming to me right now -- via agents, authors I already work with, and people I meet at conferences -- is keeping my submissions at about the right manageable level for me, one that's allowing me to get back to most people* and yet keep my lists filled. Also, everything I wrote in this post five and a half years ago is still true in my life now (including the fact that I need to scrub out my bathtub). (A different bathtub, I'm glad to say.) So this system is mostly working for me.

On the other hand, there's still an issue here, because (1) quite often I like projects that are not automatic agent-bait; (2) indeed, two of the projects on my list that are most stuffed with things I love -- Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich's Eighth Grade Superzero and Karen Rivers's The Encyclopedia of Me -- came to me first via query letter, which reminds me that there's gold in them thar hills**; and (3) not everyone who writes has the time, money, or geographic convenience to attend a conference at which I'm speaking, and it doesn't seem right that they should be shut out of the submissions process (nor that I should have to miss their submissions) because of these factors.

So I'm going to have it both ways. I'm not reopening to submissions full time, but on Monday, August 20, just under two weeks from now, I'll toss open the digital submissions inbox for anyone who wants to share. Instructions on how will be posted here that morning, and the box will shut again at 11:59 p.m. on Friday the 24th. Submissions will receive a form reply if they're not appropriate for me. If the experiment garners good stuff and isn't too overwhelming in numbers, I'll schedule another open period every six months or so. Here's hoping!
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* If you just howled "Then WHY HAVEN'T YOU RESPONDED TO ME YET?", then I am guilty and sorry, and you should probably send me an e-mail at chavela_que at yahoo dot com to remind me. This is why I'm not open all the time, honestly:  to minimize my guilt.

** Though both those ladies snagged excellent agents in the time before I signed up their books formally, it should be noted.

See This: "Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective"

The Guggenheim Museum in New York right now has an extraordinary exhibit called "Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective." Ms. Dijkstra is a Dutch photographer who takes large-format pictures of human beings at moments of change and transition, and their humanity is so much on display, so rich and beautiful and specific and true, that these single images feel like entire character studies. She specializes in pictures of children and teenagers, like this one above. . . . The instability of the way this boy is standing, his slightness and off-centeredness; the vulnerability established by his near-nakedness and his size vs. the endless sea behind him; his watchful gaze, not fully trusting or warming to the photographer -- and rightly, as she's caught so much of him; and the promise of the man inside him, learning how to look strong, how much of himself he should give away:  I find this image (and nearly every other picture in the show) both wonderful and heartbreaking in its ability to see and capture all of that. I want to read novels about all of her people.

The show included five video installations that likewise focus on individuals, in locations ranging from a dance club to an art museum, against simple backgrounds, so their actions and words speak for themselves. This one, for instance, "Ruth Drawing Picasso," was nearly six minutes of a single shot of a girl making her own sketch of a Picasso painting (this visitor-shot excerpt is just 42 seconds):

And as boring as that may sound, the film kept me fascinated for all six minutes, simply because it felt so wonderfully rare and fresh to do nothing but look at another human being for a sustained period of time, as Ms. Dijkstra does. More than that, Ruth doesn't seem self-conscious about being watched, as many of the kids in the dance-club videos do (and as I always do on camera); she sighs, draws a line, scratches it out, gropes for a pencil, looks around at her friends, looks up at the painting and down at her paper again, draws another line. . . . It's such an honest portrait of the creative process, and of a human being in general, that I felt my heart warm toward Ruth for all of her particularities, including those I recognized in myself. Thus the exhibition did what the best art (to me) always does:  It made me love the world more, and the people in it, in all of our vulnerable, pained, ephemeral glory, and made me feel thankful we're all here together -- with Ms. Dijkstra and her camera to capture us.

At the Guggenheim, Fifth Avenue and 89th St., through October 8.

"God Speaks..." by Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each, before he makes him,
then goes silently with him out of the darkness.
But the words, before each one starts,
these cloudy words, are:

Driven by your senses,
go to the edge of your longing;
give me clothing.
Shoot up like a torch behind things,
that their shadows, extended,
may always adorn me.

Let everything happen to you:  beauty and terrors.
One must only go on:  no feeling is the ultimate.
Do not separate yourself from me.

Near is the land
that they call life.
You will know it
by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.




Credit for introducing me to this poem goes to Jane Bishop of Park Slope United Methodist Church, who sang an arrangement of this in service this morning.

A Plot Excuse to Watch Out For: "But Then Where Would Have Been My Novel?"

A couple of weeks ago, in the course of work, I was thinking about the last line quoted here from Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers:

As she spoke she with difficulty restrained her tears; but she did restrain them. Had she given way and sobbed aloud, as in such cases a woman should do, he would have melted at once, implored her pardon, perhaps knelt at her feet and declared his love. Everything would have been explained, and Eleanor would have gone back to Barchester with a contented mind. How easily would she have forgiven and forgotten the archdeacon’s suspicions had she but heard the whole truth from Mr Arabin. But then where would have been my novel?

While I read Barchester Towers in college, "But then where would have been my novel?" has stuck with me through the years as a mark of a particular kind of book. Trollope means it in the sense of "What fools these mortals be!", I think, and also as a joke on himself and his characters:  If Eleanor had just been a slightly different kind of person, a little more melodramatic and a little less proper, then she would have acted in a way that would have allowed for the clearing-up of all misunderstandings, and there would have been no further drama for Trollope to write about. But because she IS eminently sensible and proper, the drama and the misunderstandings persist, and we have the pleasure of seeing them play out. This is fiction-writing of the highest order, when the particularities of highly specific and human characters drive the action, and then we readers don't mind having our attention drawn to the mechanics of the novel's continuation, because we believe so thoroughly in those characters and hence those mechanics.

But the phrase often enters my mind with a rather more negative connotation -- when writers have had to contrive a particular set of circumstances or made a character act in an out-of-character or frankly stupid way in order to keep the novel going or accomplish a particular plot point. Whenever there's a too-convenient conversation overheard at just the right moment; when a character refuses to have an obvious conversation with the person who could help him out or clear up all the mysteries, instead preferring to be silent, stew, or pout to a point beyond my readerly sympathy; when a writer introduces a new conflict or characters because clearly the original ones have been resolved too early or were just losing their luster, I think, Ah, you had to do that, Novelist, else Where Would Have Been Your Novel? What it means is that I don't believe in the characters' reality or I'm not charmed by the action enough to be pleased by this glimpse of the novel's mechanics. It can be a fairly easy thing to fix in editing:  Complicate the character or make me sympathize more with him/her, increase the obstacles or stakes (or invent better ones), integrate the new characters or plotline earlier and more smoothly, and the curtain will drop back over the Wizard and all will be well. But if WWHBMNism happens too often, or the situation it creates drags on for too long, then it becomes very easy for me to put the book or manuscript down. 

[The stewing-instead-of-the-obvious-conversation thing comes up a lot in children's and YA fiction especially, when the character believes something awful about him/herself or his/her mother or father or love interest, and there are various obstacles to asking or telling someone who knows the truth about it, and when he or she finally asks the question or reveals the truth at the climax, all is well -- and would have been half the novel ago if the protagonist had just spoken up then. Of course, psychologically, this is something that many of us do all the time in real life, preferring our warm familiar stewing to the possible shock of the cold truth. But it's such a common trope in children's and YA fiction that those characters and obstacles need to be really solid and believable if I recognize this is going on; and there needs to be some other interesting action besides this stewing carrying through the novel as well, so I have something to think about beyond "Talk to him already!"

Or alternatively -- and this would be interesting -- once that conversation finally occurs, it could turn out that all the protagonist's fears were justified, and the cold truth is truly freezing and awful and worth all the stewing the protagonist went through. Then he or she would be forced to rely on the other inner resources s/he gained during the novel to deal with that truth -- or collapse into a pile of fictional goo, I suppose (both of which might mess with the novel's structure, I admit). The additional thing that makes me impatient with situations where the protagonist doesn't speak up is my sense that I know already how that conversation will turn out, because children's fiction especially almost always goes for reassurance, for the idea that the monsters in the dark aren't real. If the book then surprises me and the monsters leap out, teeth bared, then clearly I'm the fool, which would be fresh and even delightful... Though I can't think of many books where this happens, adult or children's. (Can you?) And this may be my adult tastes and knowledge getting in the way of what would actually be satisfying to child readers, who don't have the same wide experience of fiction and might need the reassurance. That's always a predilection I have to watch out for as a children's book editor -- my adult know-it-allness vs. their newness to everything.]

In any case:  Writers, if someone challenges you on a plot or character point and you think plaintively, But I had to have that or the novel would have fallen apart, someone has seen through to your mechanics, which means that your novel is already falling apart . . . or its rivets are showing, at least, and straining with the machinery inside. Look hard at those joins and see what needs to be more real.

An Easy, Yummy, Low-Calorie Summer Dessert

I had somehow never heard of this before the July 2012 O, the Oprah Magazine, but boy, is it easy and delicious:

1.  Peel and cut a banana up into one- or two-inch chunks. (You'll want at least one banana for each of the people as you plan to serve, and maybe two for yourself.)

2. Put the chunks in the freezer for at least three hours.

3. Place the frozen banana in a food processor and process it until it's smooth, thick, and creamy.  (It will take several minutes.)

Voila! All-banana ice cream! You can mix in chocolate chips, chocolate sauce, nuts, frozen strawberries . . . I bet a little milk or vanilla yogurt would make it even creamier. And the article says this also works fabulously with mango.

A Common Sense Constitutional Argument for the Legality of Same-Sex Marriage in the United States

Most of this is pretty obvious (and/or was established by the Prop 8 decision in California), but I decided I wanted to write it all out for the next time I argue about it with someone from high school on Facebook. I am not a lawyer, clearly, and if someone with more expertise in civil law than I have can disprove these statements legally, please, don't spend your time leaving a comment:  The pro-Prop 8 lawyers need you, and you should get in touch with them instead.

1. The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

2. Because we do not have any officially established religion, whether Christianity or Hinduism or Islam or Shintoism or Wicca, our government's laws are not and should not be dictated by any religious laws or prohibitions.

2A. We have a civil government and not a religious one.  

Opinion: This is right and good for everyone, including religious people, because it enables multiple religions the freedom and protection to flourish, and also frees people to choose not to practice any religion at all. Certainly each religion may believe it is the only right and true one; but it must win influence through speaking to the hearts and minds of individuals, not through imposing its will upon everyone.

Opinion II: Do not bust out that the "Founding Fathers were Christian" stuff. Many of the Founding Fathers were Deists at most; all of them were well aware of the corrosive influence of religious and denominational wars in Europe (because, indeed, many of their ancestors came to America to escape those religious conflicts or persecution altogether); and if they did intend the United States to be governed by Christian law, for some reason they did not write it into the Constitution, which means it's not part of our law now:  "no law respecting an establishment of religion" is.

Opinion III: As I understand it, the Judeo-Christianist opposition to homosexuality arises almost entirely out of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, which declares "men lying with men as they do with women" "detestable" or "an abomination." While the exact translation of these verses is much debated, I think it's perfectly fair for Christianists and their fellow fundamentalists to use them to judge others' behavior . . . so long as they hold to that same ancient Leviticus standard in their own behavior, meaning they should not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material (19:19) or cut their sidelocks or beards (19:27), and women should be considered unclean and isolate themselves during their periods (15:19-33). [Ideally in this scenario, adulterers would be put to death (20:10), but our civil law prevents that.] Otherwise, these fundamentalists are being inconsistent in their application of the law. I do not see many non-Hasidic people, and especially many Christianists, abiding by these standards. 

3. While a marriage may be conducted under or ratified by a religious body, it has civil and legal ramifications regarding rights, property, and responsibilities.

3A. Therefore it can and should be regulated by civil law (and indeed, for heterosexuals, it already is). 

4. The Fourteenth Amendment reads, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" (emphasis mine).

5.  Right now, our federal civil law grants only heterosexuals the right to marry the people they love.

6. This means that gays and lesbians are being denied that equal protection of the law, and having their privileges abridged.

N.B. Two LGBT people who wish to be married love each other with the same strong romantic feelings as two heterosexual people who wish to be married. (Opinion:  I include this because the Biblical focus on sex often means that people opposed to this appear to ignore the love; and they should consider what it might feel like to have the government prevent them from legally uniting with the person of the opposite gender whom they love, and thereby gaining all the rights that marriage grants.)

7. As this is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, same-sex civil marriage should be legal.

8. No heterosexual person's rights will be infringed or marriage will be diminished or damaged by this.

9. As per the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, the government cannot and should not force religious bodies to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies. 

That is all. 

All-Blogging August (Plus Ask Me Anything)

This year has been a whirlwind where I've flown somewhere every single month, edited a bunch of books, ran a half-marathon, spoke at five writing conferences, attended three weddings, and started planning my own. It's been a lot of fun, but my dear and beloved blog has definitely been a casualty of this busyness, as I've barely been able to keep up with one post a month, much less the one a week I aim for. And that "dear and beloved" isn't sarcasm; I subscribe to E. M. Forster's doctrine that "I know what I think when I see what I say," and I've missed my opportunity to think out loud here.

But I am going to be home in New York for all of August! So I'm trying something slightly crazy for me:  posting every single day of the month. I want to catch up on writing about some great new books that came out this year, explain the specification experiment from June, talk about repetitions, do some Quote Files, recipes, and poetry, fulminate, ruminate, extrapolate. If you have any questions you'd like to see me answer about writing or publishing (or heck, anything else), please leave them in the comments or send them along via e-mail to chavela_que at yahoo dot com. . . . I can't promise I'll respond to everything, but I appreciate the prompts. 

Here is the best thing I saw today, just outside my building on my way to work:

A young man rides his bike on the sidewalk toward me and an older lady.
Older Lady: You should NOT ride your BIKE on the SIDEWALK! You're supposed to be on the STREET! Our traffic laws give you your own lanes -- on the STREET! 
Young Man, as he rides by: Okay, Officer!
Older Lady:  I'm not an officer, I'm a concerned citizen! SCOFFLAW!

In honor of this awesome lady with the admirable vocabulary, I challenge you to use "scofflaw" in a sentence.

Book of the Moment: GOLD MEDAL SUMMER by Donna Freitas

As I write this, five teenage American girls just spun, leapt, flipped, backflipped, somersaulted,  cartwheeled, rounded off, back layovered, front walkovered, kipped, pirouetted, cried, hugged, and stuck the landings on their way to a gold medal. It was extremely awesome. And I felt like I knew a little bit more about what they were going through on the inside, thanks to this book:

Gold Medal Summer is the story of Joey Jordan, a fourteen-year-old gymnast who's struggling to focus in the midst of a welter of distractions:  a coach who doesn't appreciate her style; a best friend who's thinking of quitting; a cute new boy who's just moved to town; an older sister who's a past National Champion (comparisons much?); and parents who aren't exactly Aly Raisman's. But even with all of this, Joey loves her sport and works hard at getting better at it, as she dreams of having her gold medal summer.

Donna competed in gymnastics herself until she was fifteen, and thus it's filled with true-life descriptions of what it's like to do a kip on the bar or tumble through a floor routine in a minute flat. It's also got a wonderful emotional heart about learning to stand up for yourself, even when it's scary, and believing you can accomplish what you want to do. It is exactly the book I would have wanted to read when I was ten years old and daydreaming about gymnastics -- all about friends, doing flips on the beach, and waving from that podium at the end of the day:  so spirited and fun and sweet, it can't help but leave a smile on your face. If you have the chance to pick it up this Olympics, I hope you enjoy it!

More acclaim:

• Rebecca Stead said of it, "This book is like a perfect cartwheel--immensely fun and satisfying."
• And (fellow former gymnast) Linda Sue Park said, "I loved the gymnastics in Gold Medal Summer, but I was even more impressed with the relationships."
• Donna blogged about the book and the Olympics for the Scholastic blog and did a great Q&A with NYMetroParents.
• And it was seen on the Today Show last week!
• You can hear a sample of the audiobook here.

 Buy it from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

A Second Specification Experiment

Longtime readers of the blog may remember this Silly Specification Experiment -- later discussed in Second Sight -- where I asked you all to watch a short video and then write a sentence or two describing what I was doing, with the results later analyzed here. Now I'm interested in doing that again, this time with a still:

The assignment:  Without looking at anyone else's entry, spending no more than ten minutes and 250ish words, and writing in your natural voice, describe this accumulation of objects, and leave your answer in the comments. I know the picture is dark, so I'll list the items included here (in no particular order) in case identification is useful:  a pepper shaker; a container of sugar and fake sugar packets; a doily; a glass votive with a lit candle; a mechanical pencil; a salt shaker; and a vase with a rose in it. How you describe, arrange, and elaborate on those objects in prose is entirely up to you.

As with the previous experiment, the hypothesis and rationale will be given at a near-future date; in the meantime, again rest assured there are no wrong answers here. And thank you to all who participate!

Two Programs that Keep the Internet from Eating Your Soul + Giveaway Winners!

"Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet." -- Zadie Smith's rules for writers

I worship Ms. Smith in all things (and she has a new novel coming this autumn -- hooray!), and I would gladly take her advice here. But I also need the Internet frequently for things that are still related to my job:  title and author research, fact-checking, Thesaurus.com. So while I can't disconnect my computer completely, there are two programs that I've found incredibly effective in helping me get away from the Internet and stay focused while I'm working; and I thought I'd write a little about them here, just in case you haven't discovered them yet.

1) Freedom. Download this and you can lock yourself out of the Internet completely for a set number of minutes. If you need to get on the Internet before the set time expires, you'll have to restart your computer. As the site observes, its effect is as much psychological as it is practical; you know you cannot be distracted by Twitter, say, and therefore it's easier to concentrate on the offline work to be done, because Twitter (and all of the Internet) is simply not an option. (The same software designer also has a program called Antisocial that will lock you out of social networking sites, but still access the Internet for research. It is Mac-only, however.) My author Lisa Yee is a proud user of Freedom, and she did a great interview with its creator last year.

2) Leechblock. Rather than being a standalone program like Freedom, this is a plugin for Firefox, which allows you to establish set periods of time during which you cannot access certain favorite sites. It's fairly easy to override your own blocks, though, unless you use the advanced lockdown, at which point it will actually kick you OFF these sites at the set time and then keep you from accessing the override. For instance, I have it set that I can't use Twitter after 10 a.m. on weekdays, so if I'm typing a tweet at 9:59 and the clock ticks over to 10, BOOM -- Twitter is done for me till 12:15 (I let myself look at it again on my lunch break). The fact that it imposes the discipline on me makes it even more useful than Freedom, which requires my active thought and will to quit surfing.

Someday, we will all be Zen monks of writing and time and thought management and not need programs like these. (And writers, if there are any other programs your fellow procrastinators should know about, please leave them in the comments.) Until then, I am grateful to the software purveyors for making these programs available, and I wish all of us the best with our work.

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The winners of the giveaway from my last post are Eliza T, GraceAnne, Clifton, Diane, Darshana, Pat Zietlow Miller, Jen, and Tina Radcliffe. (They were selected randomly by my fiance, after I ordered him to give me eight numbers between one and twenty-eight and he obeyed. We still don't know where we're going on vacation.) Winners:  Please e-mail me at chavela_que at yahoo dot com with your addresses and any title preferences you might have, and I'll try to get the galleys out this week.

And you know what? I never picked a winner for this giveaway back in February! James just picked the winner here too, and it's DustySE. Dusty, send my your address likewise, and I'll send you a real book. Thanks to all for participating!