Fresh From the Oven

This week, I began teaching Writing for Children: A Beginning Workshop for UCLA Extension. I haven't taught this course in 11 months.

What have I been doing in the meantime, you ask? I've been teaching Composition...and lots of it! I typically have about 120 students at a time, and I'm up to my ears in essays.

Beginning this course again has felt like bliss. The students are eager and excited. I know I'm going to get to read the results of eclectic, creative minds. This makes me happy. This also inspires me to get my butt in gear with my own writing. Day to day challenges and that mountain of grading facing me each day tends to put a damper on the creative process. I'm hoping that throughout this course, as I draw out my students' confidence and writing mojo, that I can also draw out my own.  I give all I can to my students; I don't think they can ever truly realize how much they give back to me in the process.

Tell me, what's filling your creative well these days?

Once, there was a girl who blogged.

She blogged once a week...

even more in the beginning.

She even named her blog

FRESH FROM THE OVEN

so people would know something yummy was coming.

She was also hungry

so this was a good fit at the time.

But now...

surrounded by composition essays

and boxes everywhere as she prepares to move,

this girl,

the one you used to know,

is seriously missing narrative writing.

She misses her blog.

She misses her friends.

She misses writing words other than

"How might you expand that thesis just a bit?"

So she's popping in to say "hi"

and wants you to know

she isn't gone.

She's reading.

She's lurking.

She's working.

And soon...

hopefully,

she'll find something especially witty

to say...

and when she does,

she hopes you'll be there

to wave hello.

I'm gearing up to teach my online course Writing for Children: A Beginning Workshop for UCLA Extension in both the spring and summer. I want to compile a list of recommended reads that would make Santa's Christmas list look like child's play. :)

Can you help? I'm looking for recommendations from board book through YA. If you'd be willing to post the title, author, and a short blurb (a sentence is fine) about the genre and why you love it, I'd be so very appreciative.

Thank you!

-Cathy

Like most of you, I read lkmadigan post yesterday...and I cried. I am not fortunate enough to know her. I cannot, like many of you, say I've shared a lunch or a cup of tea or a book signing with this lovely, loved, and talented woman. But I cried because her story, combined with too many other unexpected stories recently, has brought to the forefront for me the dual blessings and uncertainties in this life.

I wept yesterday, for Lisa's words in which she said that, although she would lay down her life for her child, she felt like now, she was the one "pulling the trigger." I am a mother. I cannot imagine the pain that brings her.

And so today, my thoughts are with her family. And my thoughts are of gratefulness--I am grateful for my life. I am grateful for my health. And I am grateful for the warm, swaddling comfort that friends, whether in person or online, can bring to us during times of need.

There is a movie called Life as a House. It stars Kevin Kline and is about a man who is dying. Before he passes away, he enlists his son's help to build a home. Together, as the framing goes up, relationships are tried and tested, and finally, resolved. The story is touching, moving, and requires a box of Kleenex. But for me, watching this movie last week was too much. I bawled like a baby. I bawled because the circle of life makes us all feel like helpless infants.

My mom has been having a health scare. She had her gallbladder removed and the doctors determined she has cirrhosis of the liver (she doesn't drink). They mentioned medication. They mentioned a transplant. But they didn't tell her yet how bad things are. They also did a liver biopsy. We should know the results tomorrow. But all it takes is one phone call saying there might be something, to send us into a downward spiral of memories and longings--wishes to turn back the clock, to stop time, to capture forever a moment, a smile, a voice. My mom is only 54 years old.

And so today, although I'm optimistic that this situation will be okay, I wanted to write because it heals me. Somehow sending your thoughts into the universe feels a bit like therapy sometimes. This situation made me examine some facets of my life I've been struggling with. I finally made some career decisions (to pursue college teaching from home rather than elementary teaching) and determined myself to stay present in the moment more.

And so now, as the twinkle lights on the tree remind me of so many years of Christmases as a child and prove to be a joyous yet painful acknowledgment of how quickly the childhood journey is passing with my own children, I take the time to sip my tea a little slower--I am thankful for my apartment, even if it's not our permanent home. I am thankful for the drawings taped to the refrigerator and the hand prints smudging the windows. I am thankful for my job that allows me to be available for my family. I am thankful for my husband and for my children, who are desperate to find their wings without first going through the caterpillar's stages.

I am thankful that I spent Thanksgiving with my mom and my sister. And I am thankful that, even though life demands too much of us sometimes, that I have cozy blankets and heartfelt friends and family to take this wild ride with.

Happy holidays to you and yours.

xo,
Cathy

So my Internet is down this week--meaning that I cannot connect to it from my house, although the router appears fine and my husband can connect from his laptop just fine. I can, however, connect from the library or Panera (if you know why this is and would like to chime in, I'd be uber-appreciative). Um, yeah. Not good for a writer/editor/writing instructor/job seeker.

So my treks to Panera have meant three things this week:

1. I'm able to log-in and get my "stuff" done.
2. I'm going broke on bread.
3. I'm going to need a new size of jeans soon.

Here's to hoping, on this Friday, that whatever freakish freak-out my computer is suffering at home will soon end and I'll be able to work where I'm happiest--on my couch, cross-cross applesauce style, with a coffee in front of me that didn't cost $3.95.

In other (less whiny) news, here's my Friday Five:

1. Today I am indeed thankful for free WiFi, which is currently my lifesaver.

2. I am thankful my little germ monkey daughter did not pass her cold germs onto me and that she is well and into as much mischief as ever.

3. I am thankful for friends who write just to say "how are you?" instead of waiting for me to write or call. It's nice to be on the receiving end once in a while.

4. I am thankful for the $6 DVD Take 20 On Teaching Writing I ordered from Amazon that arrived today. It was $45 on the publisher website. It features a group of writing instructor (mainly composition) who are asked a series of questions on tape regarding the teaching of writing. Love it.

5. I am thankful that I am typing this blog instead of sitting in a cubicle, tapping my fingers and waiting for the weekend.

"Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful  is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper." - Henry David Thoreau, from Walden


I was just checking out my friends' LJ pages and I noticed cartazon had titled her most recent post Autumn's Silence. The title was followed by a whimsical, antique looking photo, and immediately my stomach did that churn, churn thing that means one thing: write!

I was a sucker for nature writing in college. I so wanted to be Thoreau-like and hole myself up in a cabin deep in the Adirondacks. I wanted to wake in the morning, take a walk through the woods, and write about it for the afternoon. Even when I was in high school, I'd wait all year for the summer monsoon storms to hit Arizona. When they inevitably did, and when the lights went out, I'd light my mom's kerosene lamps and write longhand in my bedroom, imagining I was in a cabin somewhere deep in autumnal woods. I wrote about scent and taste and turned a summer storm into a milky, romanticized haze and an ordinary walk into an intoxicating, lotus flower (see Percy Jackson) adventure where my very bliss depended on nothing more than a random bird chirp or the site of a perfect dew drop teetering ever so gently on an emerald leaf.

My love for nature writing stemmed from my love of poetry. Nature is poetic by its very existence.And so today, while my daughter is home sick and while I'm anywhere but a cabin deep in the Adirondack Mountains, I think I'll daydream a bit and take a little stroll...perhaps through an English garden with tall ivy walls leading to an opening I have to crouch through. What's on the other side of that opening? A secret garden? A cottage? I don't know yet, but I'd surely love it if you'd grab a sweater (the air is crisp in my garden) and come along.

When I first started writing for educational publishers, I mentioned my love for cooking. Each time I asked for more work, I brought up the topic. Finally, after several years, I received a food-related assignment--four books about food! I've turned in two of the manuscripts so far, and I'm finishing my research for the third today.

So today, folks, it's all about hot dogs.

And yes, this food writing is making me hungry--on several levels.

It's making me hungry to fact-find. I've found some awesome information researching these books, and I wish the books had room to include them all. For instance, did you know that George Washington was fond of making ice cream?

It's making me hungry to write more nonfiction--my own nonfiction, combining prose and photography.

So tell me--what makes you hungry?

Recently, I read THIS blog by Nikki Grimes, which discusses novels in verse. Specifically, the blog discusses what makes a novel in verse authentic (is it poetry or just words strung together to LOOK like poetry?).

This made me think about my own novel in verse, Channeling Anne Boleyn. You might remember that I recently completed this novel for my MFA Creative Writing thesis. I'm currently revising the novel (third revision) so that it'll finally be ready to submit to agents soon. Besides tying up some plot holes, one of the major things I hope to accomplish in this draft is bumping up the poetic elements in my verse. The novel is free verse in its freest form, and yet I'm itching to add more metaphors, internal rhyme, acrostics, etc. In short, I'm itching to make this novel melt on the tongue like warm butter on a freshly baked biscuit. The book is young YA and humorous in parts, but there are serious undertones in it, and the potential consequences of the main character's actions are anything but funny.

I was lucky enough to have verse novelist extraordinaire, Lisa Schroeder look over a draft of my book. In her cleverly crafted, refreshingly honest comments to me, she mentioned some particularly lyrical lines in books that she reads when trying to make her own verse shine.

I also recently read All the Broken Pieces, by Ann E.Burg. If you haven't read this book, the language is stunning.

So while I don't feel as strongly as Nikki Grimes about poetic elements in free verse, I love what she said, and you can bet I'll be implementing a lot of it in my own novel as I revise.

I'm curious--what do you particularly enjoy (or not) about novels in free verse? What would you like to see in this ever-growing market?

It's school time again. My kids went back today. I've officially got a first grader and a fourth grader--I'm still trying to figure out how that happened. My first grader has no front teeth but now checks to make sure she's properly "put together" in the mirror before leaving a public restroom. My fourth grader got a hair cut that he's hoping will one day soon resemble Justin Bieber--he's been swinging his head to the side and hoping his hair will somehow grow enough to flop over his eyes, for months. Um, no Toto, we're definitely not in Kansas anymore. My kids are growing and they're growing quickly.

School time means new backpacks and squeaky sports shoes that are still white. It means sharpened pencils and decorated pencil boxes, lined paper begging to be used, and glue sticks that don't yet resemble globs of goo. It means fear and excitement all rolled into one, rumbling tummy ache. It means old friends and new friends and heartache and elation--often in the same day.

And so today, I dedicate my post to the moms and the dads who will hear the first day triumphs and defeats from their school-age kids--who will make cocoa even if it's 100 degrees outside to make a bad day better, and who will celebrate joy with hugs and laughter and maybe a game of Uno, even when the dishes need to be done instead.

And I dedicate this post to my kids--who wish on stars and who don't make fun of me when I pull them on my lap and tell them again about the day they were born.