Of Mice and Madmen

Well if it isn't one thing, it's another.

On my last wilderness trip a mouse caused a ruckus in the middle of the night.

This time there was a bonafide crazy (and/or drunk or drugged) person wandering round the tiny Mowich Lake campground (at Mt. Rainier)  in the middle of the night with a large, silent dog. He would yell indecipherable but angry-sounding things, sing loudly, then disappear into the woods behind the campground with his dog to do who knows what.

Then he would go silent for a while only to re-emerge from the woods and walk back to the parking lot.

And we were all trapped there, about 40 of us, at the end of a 17-mile gravel road with no ranger in sight. Alas, Dave was not with me or I would have felt much safer. Why you should have seen the way Dave took charge and masterfully dispatched the mouse from our tent! I know he would have done the same with the crazy/drugged guy had that guy menaced me, which luckily he did not.

I heard him drive off around 1 a.m. and only then fell into a troubled sleep, feeling very vulnerable in my little tent with the rainfly off so I could see the moon, which shone like a spotlight all night long.

The trip - a day hike to glorious Spray Park - got better after that, if also more mosquito-ridden. The Mountain was out in all her glory, as were the glacier lilies, Indian paintbrush, and many other flowers I swear I will someday learn the name of.

In writing news, there is not much, except that I'm slowly, steadily working on the second draft of the children's novel I wrote last November. I imagine it should be finished in about 20 years.I'm also archiving, in PDF format, every damn thing I've ever written or published which is a rewarding project because it makes me realize - wow, I actually HAVE been a prolific writer in the past (even if I don't feel that way now).

The idea of doing an inventory of all my writing came via the brilliant writing teacher Priscilla Long, whose new book about writing I intend to purchase soon!

Also, my friend, colleague and writing coach Waverly Fitzgerald, wrote this provocative blog post about favorite children's book for the Hugo House blog that mentions me. I'M FAMOUS!

Midnight Mouse Emergencies in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness

A few updates from SparklyLand:

My poor pug Snuffy has only just recovered from all the explosive action around here on 4th of July. Next year he is going on DOGGIE TRANQUILIZERS.

Dave and I took a fabulous backpacking trip to Pratt Lake (left) in the the Alpine Lakes Wilderness over Independence Day weekend.

Highlights:

• It took only 45 minutes to get to the trailhead from home. Yay, easy-to-acess Cascade Mountains!
• Wildflowers abounded, misty and dew-laden, all along the lakeshore trail.
• A mouse breached our tent in the middle of the night and Dave bravely chased it out while I cowered in my sleeping bag. (The mouse had apparently been pooping and enjoying various snacks in the tent for quite some time before it woke up Dave; I slept right through the ruckus. And yes, I KNOW you should never store food in your tent. I'm a professional hike leader, for crying out loud! I decline to discuss why the food was in our tent - suffice it to say, it will never happeng again. And thank God it wasn't a bear.)
• It poured down rain most of the night but our tent kept us dry despite the hole the aforementioned mouse (nicknamed"Rhoda") put in it.

In other news, I'm continuing to work quite steadily on my next novel project, thanks to my great writing coach Waverly Fitzgerald. Yes, even writing coaches need writing coaches, didn't you know that?  

Toodaloo for now.

Rebecca

By my next birthday, I will be more organized

What a wild and kahrazy birthday weekend!

Here are just a few elements it included, in no particular order.

• Chocolate spice cake with whipped cream
• Dancing at the Little Red Hen
• Teaching two classes at Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century
• Cleaning the kitchen floor on hands and knees
• Eating a most delcious "French Dip" sandwich made of field roast at the Georgetown Liquor Company
• Getting handcrafted birthday cards from my niece and nephew to "Ant Becky"
• Strolling around the festive Ballard farmer's market

I also went to to two excellent classes at Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century and learned a lot. For example:

• I give up way too easily with submitting my work. In  the class taught by Priscilla Long, she said she submitted 300 times last year. (Out of those 300 submissions, she got 11 publications).
•  In the other class, teacher Wendy Call said she submitted her work 100 times.
• Priscilla l suggested keeping an extensive inventory of everything you've ever written. She pointed out that very productive, famous artists have a habit of doing this, and that it's a way of "respecting" your own work.
• Wendy tracks all her time down to the last minute and has very concrete writing goals that she sets at the beginning of each year.
• She plans how she will meet these goals through every month of the year and spends 90 minutes every week just prioritizing to make sure she's on track with those goals.

 Phew. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I learned, essentially, that I could be way more organized than I am. Of course I knew that already but it was nice to get some really concrete tips as to how to do it.

And now...on to the "earning a living" portion of my day.

Photo from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Celebrity obsessed author hard at work

I clearly have an obsession with celebrity.

For one, my favorite Web site is Go Fug Yourself. Next, since BreakupBabe, I've written drafts or partial drafts of at least six other novels, and four of those are celebrity-themed in some way.

There is, for example, the story of two adolescent girls and best friends who are in a rock band together. The experience, naturally, tests the limit of their friendship (2006). There's the one about the woman who has a son with a guy who later becomes a famous rock star and the rock star comes back to meet his son fifteen years later (though the son has no idea who is father is) (2008).

Oh yes, and let's not forget the one about the barista with the cute stoner musician boyfriend who become an "accidental" celebrity when she stars in an ad campaign put on by her mega-Starbucks-like coffee (2007).

There's more where that came from too.

As you can see I've been quite busy since the publication of my roman a clef. It's not like I've stopped writing or anything. Au contraire.

It's just that...well...I can't explain how my own writing process works. One of these days the right celebrity-themed story will come along again, and so will the right way to tell it - as long as I keep sitting myself in this chair day after day.

If not, I will just have to console myself with being another Harper Lee or Ralph Ellison or other such genius who produced only one perfect book in their career. Wink wink. (I am winking so you understand that I understand that To Kill a Mockingbird will, of course, never quite compare to the sweep and literary perfection of BreakupBabe.)

Anyhow, I know I missed Day 10 of Blog Every Day Month and for that I profusely apologize to all two of you who might be keeping track.

Happy birthday BB!

I just realized we're coming up on BreakupBabe: A Novel's  fourth birthday. A celebration of some sort is in order I think! Hmm...what should it be? It needs be special for my only child and should definitely involve hot but inappropriate guys. (HBIBs).

I'll have to see what I can come up with. Maybe a party in which we get all Breakup Babe's HBIBs together. Silent But Deadly Boy, Alt Country Boy, Indie Rock Dad, Cute Train Boy, The Charming Canadian, The Doctor, The Propagandist...(and so many more).

Where are they all now, I wonder? At least four of the above are married now. At least two of the married ones have kids, or so I hear.

But I'm sure they look back with fondness from their diaper-filled domestic bliss on their days as Breakup Babe's muse. When the music played, the good times rolled, the cocktails were drunk.

And, of course, when the secret blog entries were written: celebrating their commitment-phobia, mocking their manhood, drooling over their dashing good looks...and so on.

What does it say about me that...

...despite being an obsessive reader, that I have never mastered the art of using a bookmark?

Sure, sometimes I turn the corner of the page down (if I'm not reading a library book, which I often am).

Most often though I waste valuable minutes trying to find my place even though the simple act of using a bookmark would save me this agony.

There is some parallel with my life here but I am not quite caffeinated enough to articulate it.

In other news, I recently met Ray Pompon, with whom I'll be speaking at Richard Hugo House's upcoming writer's conference.

He did a very cool, inspiring thing, which was to take a novel he'd written and turn it into a well-written, page-turner of a web comic - basically teaching himself to draw in the process. Check out his site!

OK back to the business of making a living, which today involves writing gazillions of blurbs about watches.

xo
Rebecca

May is Blog-Every-Day Month

You know what? I miss blogging.

Once upon a time, I blogged with great regularity. It was such a revelation at the time, too. After years of struggling to get published only here and there, all of a sudden I could publish EVERY DAY if I wanted to.

With the click of a mouse, I had actual readers. And you know the rest of the story.

I will always love the Internet for the way it helped me recover from my broken heart AND become a famous, bestselling, published novelist.

I don't think I'm quite done with ye olde Internet either. I miss having readers that I talk to on a regular basis. (Although I did recently publish this article on MSNBC - did you see it?)

So, just for one, I hereby dub May to be "Blog Every Day Month." Maybe, just maybe, by blogging every day, I'll discover my Next Big Topic.

Or maybe I'll just bore you to tears.

In other news, I'm going to be talking at a conference at Richard Hugo House next month called Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century; get the details here! I'll be talking about -- what else? -- blogging.

P.S.- Did you know you can download BreakupBabe onto your Kindle? Yeah, you CAN! And naturally you should. BreakupBabe began life in the digital world; it's very fitting that you read about her that way too.

P.P.S. - Last night while teaching my class "Hot Chicks of 19th and 20th Century Lit," I had the very pleasant revelation that I am a direct descendant (writing-wise) of Dorothy Parker. Have you ever read A Telephone Call? I recommend you do that right now via that there link. And tell me that Rachel, aka BreakupBabe, is not part of a lineage of utterly neurotic female characters, pioneered, in part, by the brilliant Mrs. Parker.

Funny, I did that A Telephone Call as a monologue in my 7th grade drama contest, long before I had any idea what it meant to sit by the phone waiting for a telephone call from some guy who never called you! I'm sure I could do it much better now.

Toodaloo.

Rebecca

2010 Starts with a Bang

Happy 2010 everybody! The year has started off with five extra pounds and a lot of work flowing in. Whoohoo!

But work will just have to wait, because on Tuesday, we're off to visit Eric and Valerie in their yacht in La Paz, Mexico (the place where Loser was once bitten by a sea lion, ha ha).

I'm trying to lose those pounds, naturally, so as to look good in the bathing suit I'll be wearing 24/7. Dave is busy figuring out how to create a margarita-mixing station that he can attach to a snorkel.

Seriously though. It has been too long since I've had a sunny vacation. And I think I deserve it after the financially precarious slog that was 2009. Oh wait, I guess I did go biking in Finland. And kayaking and skiing in British Columbia. And backpacking in the Cascades. And mountain biking in Eastern Washington. But never mind about that.

(As you can see in the photo above, I was backpacking practically before I could walk. Back then, apparently, I actually managed to look stylish in the process.)

I need a REAL vacation. Like the kind where you get tan and snorkel with sea creatures! And stay with your long-lost friends on their yacht! After that I have a packed-full Hugo House class to look forward to, in which I will propel 15 eager students toward the goal of writing a draft of a book in six weeks.

Plus a blogging class in March and a whole bunch of other stuff that I can't think about now because it's time to go buy some sunblock and unearth my summer clothing. After January 19th, however, I'll return to the realities of a Seattle winter and start working in earnest.

Things I Have Done in November: A List

I will have you know that I have already put three whole holiday gifts in the mail, which is very organized, don't you think?

I also completed a novel for National Novel Writing Month while tackling a high-stress, all-consuming editing project.

Additionally, I watched many episodes of Big Love. There's just something about immersing yourselves in the trials and tribulations of a polygamist family that's a good antidote to stress.

I taught a day-long blogging workshop at Richard Hugo House, one of my favorite places in all the world. It was a good class but it made me I realize I prefer longer classes where I get to know my students. (Speaking of which I have one coming up in January, so check my web site for more info!)

This week, for the first time, I also met the high-school students that I'll be co-leading to Morocco this summer. That really energized me after being cooped up in my condo for a month with my gassy but adorable pug (posing above with his special commemorative pillow) editing until I was cross-eyed, and indulging in too much polygamist soap opera. They seem like an amazing and accomplished group of kids and I think I will learn so much by being involved with them, and with this project.

And last but not least on this *spine-tingling* list, I went on the first ski of the season at our old favorite haunt, the Cabin Creek Sno-Park.

We had the exhilarating little ups and downs mostly to ourselves since no one else was out there on the day after Thanksgiving. It was very satisfying when Dave wiped out trying to pass me on a hill; I only wish we had a video if it.

In the good old days, we always skied there with our dear friends Eric and Valerie, who recently sailed off to the southern hempishere on their boat (along with their intrepid cat, Miette).

Sailing all the way from Seattle to La Paz, Mexico, they've braved huge swells, storms, broken sails, and whales that actually attacked a boat in their regatta on the way from San Diego to Baja! You can read about their adventures here.

Meanwhile I'm trying to be patient until my own next big adventure...and trying to remember that LIFE ITSELF is an adventure even if it's feeling dull because I haven't been to a foreign country in FOUR WHOLE MONTHS.

Ahem. Have I convinced you yet?

Happy National Novel Writing Month!

Darlings! I hope you had a fabulous Halloween!

I an on Day 2 of National Novel Writing Month and keeping up the pace so far. It will be tricky as the month wears on and I start a new job. But I'll take that as it comes!

If I can write a novel on the beach in Mexico, like I did during 2007 Nanowrimo, I can do anything. (Because believe me, it's not easy to write in a lounge chair in the tropical sun with a Corona in your hand. It's much easier in a cafe in rainy Seattle when you're hopped up on caffeine and surrounded by depressed, pasty people).

I'm writing a brand new story that I can't tell you about quite yet but have tender hopes for. Meanwhile I have various personal and travel essays in the hopper which I hope you will see someday soon. Once someone realizes what a GENIUS I am and publishes them.

This is one of those periods, folks, where I just try to keep the faith. Yes, it feels like forever since I was last published. Yes, I endure horrible fits of jealousy over writer friends who seem more prolific (and profitable) than I. I question my career path all the time. Yet every single day (almost) I write. And I beat down the stupid voices that tell me I'm a loser and ask me why I bother and tell me to just give it up already and take a job where I might actually get a paycheck.

So! To all you writers out there who might be despairing: fine. Go ahead and despair. For a little while. Then start over again tomorrow with a strong cup of coffee. And tell the voices to shut the eff up while you get to work, even if its only for 10 minutes. Or just keep working anyway even if they DON'T shut up.

Because, believe me, they will haunty at you for as long as you let them. And look at it this way: at least you're not being forced to wear a male stripper costume like my justifiably angry pug Snuffy up there.

Or - and here's a novel idea - take one of my upcoming classes! Then we'll laugh and suffer together.

Happy November.

xo

Rebecca

Fall Foliage and Circus Dreams

Hello from underemployment land!

Things are getting a little kah-razy around here what with the lack of regular employment lo these last many months. This economy, however, is forcing me to open my eyes wide to all kinds of possibilities, that, in my laziness, I hadn't considered before.

Why in the old days, I could shoot off a mediocre resume into cyberspace and I'd have a high-paying job instantly. Usually with my fleshy old sugar daddy, Geeksoft.

Nowadays even Daddy Geeksoft doesn't want me! So for the first time in years I've really been looking around at what's out there (Food services worker with the Ringling Brothers Circus! Language instruction coordinator with the FBI!) and thinking about what I might actually do for a living (until my book *bursts* onto the bestseller list or I finally crank out another one, which I'm working on, don't worry, it's just taking a while OKAY?!!).

And you know, it's kind of refreshing to see the wide world of jobs out there! And to imagine myself doing something other than that mind-numbing work I've done for the last ten years to support myself. Even if all the ones that appeal to me are abysmally low-paying. But, like I always say: "Do What You Love and The Money Will Drain out of Your Bank Account."

I've also been - gasp - actually working on my resume for the first time in years. I mean, of course I revise it all the time, but I haven't really WORKED on it for a long-ass time, if you know what I mean. Because I haven't had to! It's been so easy up til now.

And though it practically killed me at first (I wouldn't have survived the process if it weren't for a gargantuan maple bar from Top Pot Doughnuts), the revisions have actually made me see MYSELF as a better employment prospect.

Why did you know I received an AWARD from Amazon.com from my creativity and initiative during those brief months that I was incarcerated there? Yes I did, thank you very much and I forgotten about that until I put it in my snazzy new resume!

(I am also getting much help from a career coach, who I highly recommend if you are in the market).

Anyway, enough job-related drivel. I got some classes coming up, yo, that you might be interested in. Check them out here!

I've also been getting out and about in the mountains and spent a gorgeous two days up in the Cascades FREEZING MY A*S off a week ago. The foliage was splendiferous, the views were poetic (see photo above), and the temperatures dropped to FIFTEEN DEGREES during the night.

I was prepared with a warm sleeping bag but still had to put on every layer I had with me when I went to sleep (at 7:45 p.m.), including:

• long underwear bottoms
  
• down pants
  
• two long underwear tops
  
• fleece shirt
  
• down jacket
  
• gloves
  
• two pairs of wool socks
  
• wool hat UNDERNEATH a fleece balaclava that was cinched around my entire face (nose included)
  
• chemical heat packs on my hands and chest

I'm probably forgetting something but you get the picture. With all that I was STILL kinda cold. Not to mention I pitched my tent at such an angle that my head was pointed seriously downhill most of the night, which, along with the cold, made for many disturbing dreams.

At least when you're battling the elements you're not thinking about your stupid resume, your credit card balance, and whether or not it's a good idea to run off with the circus (as a food service worker).

xo
Rebecca

Self-Pitying Rant du Jour

Grr. Only with the help of a very strong latte on (top of two cups of strong drip coffee) have I been able to dig up my usual optimism today.

Let's just say there has been more than the usual amount of rejection lately, what with getting FIRED from my last band and getting SHUT DOWN by ye olde Geeksoft for a job for which I was way overqualified and only sort of wanted anyway, and by the way paid utter CRAP.

(P.S. Yes, that's my pug Snuffy. When you work at home, you take a lot of pictures of your pug wearing glasses.)

Oh, and the band? Let's call them "The Old White Guys" cause that's what they are - especially now without the younger, perkier additions of me, Dave, and the drummer, who also got fired because we "couldn't put music first in our lives." Seriously, everyone in that band is like 60+ and playing tired old classic rock covers. I AM MEANT FOR BETTER THINGS!!

So it's true, I was stretched way too thin and not putting any time into the music, even though I wanted to. Thus my rock star career is currently on hiatus as I do a little soul searching but never mind. I SHALL RISE AGAIN. SO EFF YOU OLD WHITE GUYS AND GEEKSOFT. JUST YOU WAIT.

There. I feel so much better. With another five lattes, I might feel even better.

SAY. You'll indulge me for a minute if I point you to an article about me and my book from 2006, when I was briefly FAMOUS. I just discovered in my so-called "files" the hard copy of an article from King County Journal that is no longer available online, and was thrilled to see myself not only a giant photo of myself on the cover of a pullout section of the but also to see a giant photo of myself on top of Mt. Rainier on the inside. Yay, me! Those were the days.

And, to top it all off (no pun intended), it was much bigger than the photo of Hannah Montana, who was the subject of the next article. Ha ha ha hahhahah. EFF YOU HANNAH MONTANA.

I just scanned this sucker and put it on my web site so that we can relive 2006 in all its glory! Enjoy! (But be warned. It's a PDF. You'll read it anyway. WON'T you?)

Return from Vacation Alive - Check!

I am back from a week of paddling in the Canadian wild! Tan, rested, raring to go. We kayaked for five days in 80-degree weather: lounging on white sand beaches, paddling protected aqua waters, drinking red wine from our beachfront campsites while watching the sun go down.

Oh, there was mouse poop and banana slugs and snakes, but compared to last summer's Alaskan grizzlies, they didn't disturb me at all. Starfish and sea lions were our main animal companions on this sun-dazzled journey in the Broken Group Islands off west Vancouver Island.

We did, however, have on exciting wildlife encounter. Here's a snippet from an article I'm writing about it; you'll just have to wait until it gets published to read it all! (And if you haven't ready my article about last year's Alaska paddle, you can download it in PDF format here).

I’d just put down my book and pulled my sleeping bag around me when a loud noise broke the silence of our coastal campsite. Crash! Snort!Indeterminate rustlings!

“What the--?” Dave sat up straight. He peered out into the night through the door of our tent but his headlamp didn’t make a dent in the blackness. My mind groped at possibilities. My heart launched into a rock and roll beat. Deer? Wolf? Escaped prisoner in a murderous rage? Bear?

Now it's back to the grind (granted my "grind" is rather slow these days) but also to the dreaded MOVE. Yes Dave and I are moving back to my condo in Queen Anne for long, boring reasons I shall not go into.

Just pray for us, that's all I can say. Hope that there is not a repeat of our dramatic meltdown of the last year's move, which involved me topless and sobbing in a heat wave throwing bottles of household cleaner at Dave. (Although if there is a repeat this year, we really hope to catch it on video).

xo, Rebecca

The Summer Sun Has Made Me Loopy

Greetings Earthlings!

I have been most busy being underemployed and enjoying Seattle's precious summer months in our beautiful Olympics and Cascade Mountains where I enjoy taking bad photos of wildlfowers and wandering knife-edged ridges.

Oh yes, sometimes summer bothers the h*ll out of me with all its demanding sunshine but lately I LIKE it. Maybe because Dave's mom has a house on Lake Washington and I get to lounge on the grassy beach watching the yachts go by, pretending like I'm rich and famous even though I'm a downwardly mobile professional, albeit one with a cleaning lady.

Or maybe it's because I'm currently not lonely and therefore not in one of my melancholy states of mind which is not to say I'm MENTALLY WELL-ADUSTED because then what kind of writer would I be? (Underneath that dorky "Seattle Sombrero" lies a tortured mind. I swear it.) But moving on...

Coming right up on Monday night at 5:30 p.m. is my long-awaited class at the Seattle Public Library called "Blogging for Beginners."

If you never saw me play the part of Helena in a "Midsummer Night's Dream" (sixth grade); if you didn't catch my small but pivotal role as the Russian duchess in "You Can't Take It With You" (eighth grade) if you failed to wintess my small but pivotal role as Amaryllis in "The Music Man" (senior year of high school) or God forbid failed to see any one of my million piano recitals when I was a kid or my rock debut at the Crossroads Mall or my on my SMASHINGLY SUCCESSFUL west coast book tour (all except for Bellingham, where no one laughed, and San Franciso where hardly anyone showed up, and - oh never mind), NOW IS YOUR CHANCE!

Or maybe you'd rather go have a pomegranate mojito at El Chupacabra on Greenwood. Cause if you did I would *totally* understand.

Viva la Cheap Wine and Poetry

Last night was the first time I ever appeared at--and went to--Richard Hugo House's Cheap Wine and Poetry series (brainchild of brilliant Brian McGuigan) and all I have to say is this:

Get there early next time!

The place was packed. Not a seat was to be had by 7:05 p.m., five minutes after it was supposed to start. I have never seen Hugo House so full of people having a good time. Thanks mostly to the recession-busting $1 glasses of wine and free admission.

Sure, we readers were talented too. And funny! I knew from the moment wisecracking Nicole Hardy stepped on the stage that I could not afford to be any less than endearingly hilarious.

So I read two selections from "BreakupBabe" that got lots of laughs from the cheap-wine-lubricated crowed, and selections from two earlier novels called "We Shall Never Part" and "A Life to Love."

Never heard of them? That's because I wrote them in sixth grade--during which time I actually produced three novels in the space of a single school year. (The third, "Roxana's World" was simply too depressing to read from, since the protagonist's mother dies and the girl is shipped off to an orphanage and then an insane asylum, where she dies a raving lunatic. Yeah. I was all melodramatic like that back then.)

Those went over well, especially the "A Life to Love," which is about a girl who gets in a horrible horseback riding accident in which she gets bucked off a wild filly and then bitten by a swarm of rattlesnakes. She thinks she will never walk, much less ride again, but she survives, recovers, and her parents even buy her her favorite horse, "Huggy Bear." Here is the ending:

"Lanna and Huggy both lived to a ripe old age, spending their lives together in blessed happiness. A love between a girl and a horse."

For some reason everyone in that novel has these 50-style names like "Lanna," "Ray," and "Audrey." Whereas the other sixth-grade novels are very gothic and British in tone, with sadistic middle-aged spinsters with names like "Miss Nebbins" who torture the (always-twelve-year-old-female) parentless protagonists in various ways.

I had a great time all around, despite the cheap wine hangover this morning. And for once I dressed up, which was good for my self-image. (Of course the dress was bought in a thrift shop years ago for about five bucks. But it still works!) Not so long ago I was always mincing around town in cute slinky outfits. But these days my uniform is dog-haired covered pajamas, or, for variety, a dog-haired covered black turtleneck with baggy green corduroys.

Last night, wandering around Capitol Hill in my pointy-toed boots, peeking into Victrola, where I spent so much of time (and so did the protagonist of my novel) I felt almost like, well, Breakup Babe. In a good way.

BreakupBabe's Book Pick: Twilight

OK so I am three years behind the curve or whatever but I loved Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)!Perhaps even more so because I had a horrible cold when I read it and so wanted to do nothing more than lie down and get lost in another world (even though that other world happens to be the unglamorous town of Forks, Washington, where I have spent my own rainy days and nights, although who knew it was the ideal place for vampires?).

I consumed the first volume in less than 24 hours and the second in just a little more than that. Having recently been immersed in Donald Maas' Writing the Breakout Novel and seeing him speak on the same topic, I could totally understand why this novel hit it big.

The heroine is unswervingly strong and decisive even when what she's doing is stupid (i.e. falling in love with a vampire). She's very self aware and self-deprecating but also larger-than-life -- braver and more self-sacrificing than we could ever be. A bit sickeningly self-sacrificing but never mind that. (Maas calls forgiveness and self-sacrifice the ultimate traits for the protagonist of a breakout novel).

Also, the stakes are high -- another thing that Donald Maas harps on as being crucial for the breakout novel. Bella, the protagonist, risks her life every second that she's with the guy she loves. (Breakup Babe could relate to that, only she was just risking her self-esteem--not her life--with every Hot But Innappropriate Guy that she dated.)

It's plain old good storytelling and it's only mildly annoying that Stephenie Meyer just up and started writing this thing one day out of the blue with no years of slaving away over unpublished manuscripts, writing classes, etc - and the reason it's only mildly annoying is that she seems so damn nice that you just can't dislike her.

Wanna Buy Some Stuff?

I have discovered a great way to ride out the recession AND clean out my basement: sell all my crap on Craigslist! It's absolutely brilliant. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Maybe because there wasn't a recession and I wasn't unemployed and I used to be the kind of person to hold onto stuff I haven't used in 25 years but no longer!

Here's a list of stuff I've recently sold and plan to sell:

An overpriced nightstand I bought with my icky ex-boyfriend who had tons of money and in fact I think he paid for it and guess what, I made the $85 profit!

A bike trailer I haven't used in nine years

Pots that haven't seen a plant in them since the new millenium

The flute that last saw tongue action in the 80s

My "classic" Canon cameras

Etc etc.

Of course it would help if I could actually find my flute but I'm sure it's down there somewhere with all the letters from the 80s that I'll probably never read again and my journals from 7th grade that I'm keeping because they'll definitely be worth tons of money someday. Unless I get REALLY broke in which case I'll try to sell them to unsuspecting sucker as collectible literary memorabilia, haha.

xo
Rebecca

Crazed Fan Harasses Jane Smiley Lookalike

I totally forgot to mention a fun story from the San Francisco Writer’s Conference…and that would be how I kissed up to Jane Smiley, heaping praise on her like a lovesick fan, only to find out that…

She wasn’t Jane Smiley.

No, she was someone who looked very much like Jane Smiley – tall, blonde, willowy, with an infectious smile -- minus about 10 years and the gigantic glasses that Smiley is always sporting in her author photos. (Photo courtesy of the Seattle Times)

But who was I to know? The other conference volunteers that I was having coffee with at the time told me she was Jane Smiley. Since she had been a keynote speaker at the conference earlier that day, I assumed they had seen her speak and knew what they were talking about.

We were hanging out in the Peet’s Coffee in Grace Cathedral, on the top of Nob Hill when I made my sycophantic overture to the Ms Smiley lookalike.

(And yes there’s a Peet’s Coffee in Grace Cathedral, only it’s under the cathedral, next to the gift shop, so it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. At least it's not a Starbucks.)

My companions had just assured me that it was Ms. Smiley herself who was ordering coffee and so I marched right up to her and started telling her how much I wished I had seen her speech earlier that morning; how good and “inspiring” I heard it was; working my way up to how I loved her novels A Thousand Acres: A Novel and Horse Heaven
and how one day I hoped to be as brilliant (and maybe as rich) as her, when she gave me a blank look.

“What speech?” she said. She had been smiling and nodding at me up til then and I was thinking gee, Jane Smiley is so nice. “Do you mean…my pitch to the agents?” The tall blonde woman looked confused. At which point I realized it wasn’t Jane Smiley at all but a conference attendee who had been pitching her heart out to agents all morning, hoping, just like me to be a brilliant, best-selling novelist like Jane Smiley one day.

Then I told her about the confusion and we had a good laugh.

I still wish I had heard Jane Smiley's speech, however!

Fun Facts from the San Francisco Writer's Conference and More...

Greetings all from me and Snuffy! Hope your February is looking springlike like it is here in Seattle, WA, where the bitter cold and snows have momentarily receded.

I was just down in the Bay Area volunteering for the San Francisco Writer’s Conference, and wouldn’t you know, the weather was worse there than it is here. Which was fine because mostly I was indoors for the conference and then suffering from a horrible cold so had little use for the outdoors anyway.

I learned a lot of interesting things and met some great people at this conference, as well as getting a few of my burning questions answered. Here are some fun and not-so-fun facts I picked up:

• Only about 50% of books are actually sold in bookstores today; the rest are sold through alternative channels
  
  
• Most fiction manuscripts submitted to agents are boring and predictable because they don’t have enough FAILURE in them
  
  
• Your “numbers” (that is, how many copies you’ve sold) stick to you like “toilet paper on your shoe”

My favorite speaker was agent Donald Maas; his wife Lisa Rector kindly gave me some advice as did agent Kimberly Cameron. I also met the author of the book Surviving Five Daughters, who was charming and fun, and refers to his daughters in conversation as D1, D2, D3, etc.

I did think there was an overemphasis on the business side of writing and publishing, and would have liked to see more talks devoted to good old-fashioned craft. That’s why I liked Maas’s talk – even though he was talking through one of the chapters in his excellent book Writing the Breakout Novel - and the material was familiar to me already. I liked his talk because it actually made me focus on my story instead of stressing about my "web presence" or how I can get my "numbers" up before I'm entirely wrapped in toilet paper.

His theory about breaking out as an author is that it’s not about how big your publicity budget is that makes your book a bestseller, but word-of-mouth generated by readers--and that you get that word-of-mouth by writing a book with larger-than-life characters going through conflict where the stakes are very high and where unexpected twists ensue.

Sounds easy, right? Especially when you read his book and he lays it all out for you. Then you try to actually start constructing a high-stakes plot with larger-than-life characters. And it's so effing hard! It’s like my piano lessons when I listen to my teacher play all kinds of cool honky-tonk riffs than even shows me exactly how to do them and I go home inspired and excited. But when I try to do them myself they don’t come out right at all and I feel even clumsier and more unskilled than before, especially when the more I practice, the worse I seem to do them.

But if I have faith (or even if I don’t) and I persist even just 15 minutes a day I eventually get better. And that’s how it is with writing too. If you’re feeling discouraged, just trick yourself into writing 15 minutes a day. Because the hardest part is sitting down at your computer. Once you actually start, you’ll want to write much longer than 15 minutes. And once you get in the habit of sitting down every day to do it, it gets harder not to do it than to do it.

Anyway. I digress.

In BreakupBabe news, for those of you Seattleites who would like to support your local businesses, you can find a copy of my novel at Balderdash Books in Greenwood! And soon at Lemon Meringue Boutique, also in Greenwood.

You’ll also be able to see me read at Cheap Wine and Poetry at Richard Hugo House on March 26. And no I’m not actually reading poetry! I *hope* to read something from the new novel! You know the one that’s full of colorful characters that you can’t stop reading and won’t be able to stop talking about – once it, er, finally gets written.

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for. You can read my Alaska Airlines article about paddling in Glacier Bay here (warning: this is a PDF file). Remind me to tell you the real story behind this trip sometime -- you know, about how we got stranded, almost drowned, feared for our lives 80% of the time, etc etc. Plus, don't miss an update about my upcoming blogging class!

(Wait - I forgot one little thing. Recently I met someone who had downloaded my book onto a Kindle. It was a very cool thing to see; the Kindle was super-sleek, felt good in my hands, and the text was easy to read. And that's all I have to say about that. Except that I would love to have a Kindle and maybe one day I will actually be able to afford one.)

How to become a writer when you grow up

Greetings Earthlings! I hope you have finally recovered from holiday bloat and that 2009 is speeding along smoothly. Soon we will all be another year older and deeper in debt but for now, enjoy!

My busy January is in full swing. Coming up next week the second class of my six-week Hugo House class and a panel discusion at Hugo House on Friday January 29 (see the details here!).

I'll also be appearing at a career fair in Seattle's lovely south end. Wherein I'll be standing in a booth dispensing advice to children who come by and ask what it's like to be a writer.

Child: How can I become a writer when I grow up?

Me: First you must undergo years of post-college angst as support yourself in a variety of humiliating jobs. Then you waste a lot of money on graduate school. Next you finally start to write but face much rejection. Then you get horribly dumped by a cheating weenie, which propels you 1)to go on antidepressants, and 2) to start a blog and then write that novel you've always dreamed of. Get an expensive author photo taken; go on an expensive book tour; sleep with a a lot of inappropriate men. Revel in the oh-so-brief spotlight, then and lapse back into obscurity while you struggle to do it all over again. More questions?

It appears too, that the boyfriend and I might have found a new band to play with. It's too soon to say for sure whether this could be a long-term relationship but we "jammed" yesterday in a garage in Woodinville and were enthusiastically invited to join the band and pursue the rock star life on the Puget Sound festival circuit -- i.e. Taste of Tacoma, Bite of Seattle, Flavor of Federal Way, Tang of Tukwila, etc.

In other news...I have officially launched the blog consulting arm of Rebecca Agiewich Incorporated-o-Rama this week. (Well all except for putting the "offical" information about it on my "official" web site which shall officially happen soon.). If you have friends in the non-profit or small business world who need to get on the ball and leverage the power of blogging -- send them my way!

And if you missed my appearance on BlogTalk Radio a couple weeks ago, DON'T DESPAIR. You can still check out the archives and hear my awesome advice on how to get over a breakup (hint: it involves lots of sex) and what my top five breakup songs are.

xo
Rebecca

Deadlines are a writer's best friend

Hello from sunny, freezing Seattle. My car is still sitting under a foot of snow, while I walk everywhere in this bright, bitterly cold world.

Alas, I am supposed to get in my car tomorrow for a three-hour drive to Mount Rainier where I'm working with the park on a *super cool* *top secret* (not really) project. After months of trying to set this meeting set up, I cancelled last week because of abominable weather and predictions of the WORST STORM OF THE DECADE.

Miraculously, we managed to reschedule the meeting for tomorrow, and now...the news is predicting DIRE FREEZING TREACHEROUS weather. Which, of course, for anyone in a state used to snow would be no problem but here in Washington we Seattleites stay home at the merest hint of the "s" word.

Oh well. Mother Nature has her own ideas. My *top secret* project -- to help Mt. Rainier launch an artist-in-residence program -- will just have to wait a little bit longer.

Meanwhile I have been working very hard on the article about my kayaking trip that will be published in the February issue of Alaska Airlines Magazine. It's amazing what a deadline and a strict word count will do to galvanize you. I had been slaving away on that article since SEPTEMBER, writing draft after horrible draft, which is what always happens when I don't have an actual deadline or assignment.

Then - glory be! - I got the assignment and suddenly I whipped that thing into shape. I wouldn't have been able to do it without my writing bible, however, a book called Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction by Jon Franklin. Not only does this book break down story structure for you and give you bomber formula for outlining, it also describes in detail the different types of narrative in any given story or article and how they should be used.

It made me understand, for example, how in the *climactic* scene where Dave and I *face down* a *ravenous* grizzly in our camp, that I can't tell the reader how I feel but must SHOW it.

Oh. Wait. I should know that already, shouldn't I? Well it's a lot harder than you might think to show rather than tell. There's only so many times you can talk about your "heart pounding" to show that you're effing terrified (which happened about every five seconds on that trip).

Anyhoo. I'm proud of the article. Most of the travel articles I've written have been newspaper-style pieces, and while the writing is just fine, I don't dig very deep. I do believe I took a step forward with my writing. Even if there are still some cliches that need to be weeded out. (Those are harder to avoid than you might think as well). In fact, I do believe I actually used the phrase "untamed wilderness."

Eh. Whatever.

As I've been writing about Alaska, I've been dreaming of Mexico. Hawaii. Warm. Places. Mmm.