ASJA meeting at Mechanics Inst

Pat invited me to a meeting of the ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors) - we're both not members but we shelled out $10 for the privilege of hearing two senior editors at two San Francisco publishing houses (unnamed here) reveal how writers can make use of new information and technologies on their route to successfully publishing, and publicizing, their books.

Pat's take on the evening as a whole was that they were making the situation seem a bit too rosy - it might be easier to publish as writers these days but definitely not easy to make a living. They had proposed that writers hire their own publicists at a relatively high cost to fill in the gaps left by the publisher's publicist when they move on to the next book. This sounds like a good idea but in practice not very feasible - sounds like it eats up the advance for the book quickly.

However - the meeting was interesting and was held in the Mechanics Institute, a very beautiful and historical building in SF on Post near Mont. BART. We went down the staircase pictured above, and peered into the library windows on each floor. It looks awesome and the library was open, but we needed member key cards to get in.

Best American Non-Required Reading 2005

Buy on Amazon!

Foreword by Mr. Eggers, with much stuff about 826 Valencia and the people who were on the editorial board for the book (more interesting to me now that I am trying to be on the editorial board for the 826 Quarterly) and Intro by Beck.
A lot of great stuff here - I recommend it - I liked "The Death of Mustango Salvajie" by Jessica Anthony, about a female bullfighter. And Al Franken has a piece here about his USO Tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, called "Tearaway Burkas and Tinplate Menorahs".

It was also fun to read in combo with "Firebirds" and "The Green Glass Sea" and thinking about writing for teens/young adults in general.

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, by Neil Gaiman

Fragile Things: Buy on Amazon

I just finished this a couple days ago and it is very wondrous indeed. It's been inspiring me to write more stuff of my own and just imagine (for example, the butternut squash that was sitting on our countertop for several days started to assume a sinister aspect in my mind - is it a visitor from the fairy world? An alien? Why aren't we eating it? What's up with that?).
Dave did bake it up yesterday and made a soup of it, it was delicious and hasn't harmed us (yet).

I'm not going to say anything about the stories themselves as they should be a surprise and Dave hasn't finished the book yet. Neil has a great intro in the beginning where he talks about each story/poem in the collection - his intro is much better than anything I could do.

Dave and I were lucky to see him reading in Berkeley, Monday, Oct 2. It was a surprise from me to Dave, and he was very surprised, although he had guessed it was Neil Gaiman that morning (of course I did not confirm and remained cagey. It was good that the event was at the Berkeley Rep instead of at Cody's, because I could honestly say when we were driving up there, "No, we're not going to Cody's!")

We didn't get to stand in line for a signing (and so didn't get our copy of Good Omens signed, as well as American Gods, etc) and didn't go to Kepler's the next day for the signing there, but I think it worked out well that we got our pre-signed copy.

FngKestral on Flickr went to both events, here's his/her pictures. The Kepler's event looked like a bit of a madhouse and Gaiman looked much more tired there. The above picture shows him exactly how he looked at the Berkeley reading we went to. We were in the front row!!!

Sitting behind us was Ellen Klages, whom we were eavesdropping on because she mentioned being a Nebula Award finalist. After Dave found out her name, we told her we would read her work, and when I googled her at home we discovered she is a friend of Pat's, and has co-written several of the Exploratorium science books with her and that Ellen has her first novel (The Green Glass Sea) coming out in the next couple weeks. (post to follow on that, although I did order her chapbook story "Time Gypsies" and can write about that). Ellen also has won a Nebula in 2005. I'm planning as well to get the Firebirds Rising anthology from the library, to read Ellen's story about a girl being raised by "feral librarians".

826 Valencia Tutoring Notes

Tutoring Esmeralda

I did not write this, but someone doing drop-in tutoring at 826 Valencia last year did, and I think she is describing one of the girls I worked with last Monday (this Monday I had a job interview).

The girl's name is Esmeralda, and I recognize her easily entertained nature, especially about spelling -- in this journal note she laughed and laughed at how she was spelling "butterfly" - "butfly".
When I was helping her (if this is the same person) - she got into a giggling jag when trying to spell Mississippi (she didn't need to do this for her homework, she was being challenged to do it by her friend who was already very adept.)

"Miss-iss-i-pipi (ha ha ha giggle giggle)" I think it was all the "pees" that got her going.

etc...
Until finally she got it - "Miss-iss-ipp - i !"

I just signed up to help some fifth graders come up with stories in their classroom next Wednesday morning, then to go over to Rockridge for my 1:10 appt.

Letters to a Young Artist by Anna Deavere Smith

Very inspirational and chatty book by Anna Deavere Smith, writer, actress, playwright, former Stanford professor and currently teaching at Yale!

Letters to a Young Artist: Buy on Amazon!

She's set the book up so that she is writing a series of letters to a young high school student, a painter named BZ who has "won a mentor" in a contest.
I want to take some notes on some of the memorable bits of advice below as I think I will bookcross this near the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland so that others will have a chance to read it (for free) also.

I actually have met Anna also, briefly when I was working in the office of the Dept of Drama at Stanford (under the incomparable Office Manager and all-around character, Athena, who should be the star of her own short story someday).
Anyway...I had answered the phone for Anna, took messages, put stuff in her mailbox, etc...and eventually got to see her play Twilight: Los Angeles (which is based on the LA riots) on my birthday for free as a comp play!
I had the weirdest experience concerning Anna's "fame" as an actress and also as someone who I actually "knew" - in the summer my sisters and I were driving back to Stanford from North Dakota and we stopped at a theater to see the movie Dave.
ADS is in Dave in a minor role, but still is onscreen for a good while, and I was totally frustrated because I knew I had seen her before and could not remember what other movie she was in.
When I was leaving the theater, it finally hit me.
This is Anna Deavere Smith who I've actually spoken to, in real life! I think this was the first time of just randomly seeing someone in a movie that I had seen first outside of movies and TV.
(I told this story to Karen from work on Friday night and she told a matching, yet opposite, story of seeing this gorgeous guy in the Gucci store, waving to him, and then trying to figure out why she knows him, since he had waved back and said hi. She realized that the guy had been Damon Wayans!)

Anyway.
I never actually took a class from ADS at Stanford, I sat in on her Interviewing class but didn't keep going with it. I think it looked more than a little bit scary and a lot of work. I wish I had taken the class.

This book is really quite inspiring just from its conversational tone - the letters are all one-sided, of course, from ADS to BZ, but she fills in the gaps for the other side, "So you say they're going to tear down your high school's painting studio and put in a biology lab? Fight back!"
and so on.

* Presence - example, Gloria Foster, the Oracle in the Matrix movies. Study photographs to learn about presence.
* "Being in it, and out of it, at the same time" - feeling as others is empathy - more useful and more important than sympathy, which is feeling for others
* confidence - determination sometimes even more important
* self-esteem "Be strong, be new, be you"
* discipline - example of Anna's swimming
* The Man - whoever has the money or whoever has the power to work out the money needed and the venue needed to expose your art - man or woman, etc.
* wow - she was a fat kid? hard to believe! She was terrible at jumping rope and so now is learning to jump rope to break some of those chains (perhaps I should take gymnastics or something...)
* procrastination - "active avoidance" - if she has something to do, she programs herself to do it so quickly that procrastination can't set in
* mentors - are different than teachers because you pick them, you seek them out
* from p. 87:

"I just got a call from my agent saying that there's a job for me on a television show called The West Wing. Have you seen it? It's written by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote a movie called The American President, which I am in. And the actor Martin Sheen, whom I adore (and who was also in The American President), is in it. I don't think I'm going to do the show... Do you like it? Have you seen it?"

* From p. 88:

" You're funny! You think I'd be a fool not to do The West Wing?"

* From p. 89:

"My publicist agrees with you, he's saying, "Get on that plane, and go to LA!!!" He says The West Wing is a big hit."

* Lots of advice here about feeling alienated and depressed. BZ apparently was feeling pretty alone at her school as a high school painter.

Game Developer's Conference, Pat, Ames, and Writing

Spent most of the afternoon on Friday with Pat walking around the Game Developer's Conference, apologies to Pat for this picture because I forgot to get a better one of her later on.
This is Pat listening/ talking to Ames and I after we sat down to have a beer after wandering around the show, and then Ames saw me and ran over to say hi.
This was such a fun conversation that I forgot to get my coat out of our company's booth before the booth was dismantled, and our studio head took it back in his car.

Pat and Ames found they share a love of wolf stories, which was quite cool! Ames and I were also inspired to write, especially to try writing in the morning although I meant to do that this morning (Saturday) but did not.
In riding home on light rail I found also that Pat and I have a similar attitude on the "adventure" of public transit: it's kind of a pain and a stress to get on and to the public transit, but once you're on it, you don't really get as stressed as you do when driving and you really feel when driving as if you could have controlled the situation if there's traffic, etc. But on transit, if it's late, it's late. Pat actually took BART to Caltrain, then Caltrain to light rail, to get to the show.

SunPath's early writing

I took a picture of this picture with my treo and there it is. It would probably look nicer if I used my other camera, but oh well.
I'm using the site "www.platial.com" to make a list of places I've lived, but don't have many pictures I've actually taken to put in there until getting to the California era.

This is my Treo wallpaper to inspire me to write more.

Women on Writing Conference, Pat Murphy

I am really jazzed right now because I just went to a "Women on
Writing" conference today and got to meet one of my favorite authors,
Pat Murphy. I did also get many other books signed and heard Janice Mirikitani but I want to give her her own blog entry after I have actually read her book I bought.

Here's the blog spiel I wrote here about Pat Murphy's book The City Not Long After...
Here's her
biblio/awards page
She is awesome!

I had finally found a copy of this book (The City Not Long After) in a
used bookstore after looking for it hither and yon(I hear a paperback edition is coming
out this spring) and so I emailed her since she lives in the Bay Area
to see if she would be signing somewhere since I now finally have a book of my own to sign, and she told me she would be speaking
and signing books at the conference, so I decided to go, especially
since it was on my birthday.

It was very inspirational, I had told her it was my birthday so she
actually brought another one of her books for me as a present (although I didn't take it because it was the collection of short stories that Dave gave me initially that got me started reading her work.) The workshop that she led was also very productive, I actually have a little germ of a plot that I did not have yesterday, as she led us through the questions she asks herself when getting started on a new writing idea.

It was so nice to actually have an extended conversation instead of my
usual tongue-tied talking at book signings, where I usually say only:
"Thank you so much for coming... my name is Solveig - yes, pronounced
Sol-vay...yes it is a Norwegian name...I really like your work.
Bye..."

It also turns out there's an additional connection in that we have some common interests in the game industry . . .

Talking Back: What Students Know About Teaching, by the students of Leadership High School with 826 Valencia

(not sure where you can buy this online yet but I am linking to the 826 Valencia store site.)
The Leadership High School class of 2004 had an assignment from their English teacher, Kathleen Anne Large, to write an essay that answers the prompt: "If you were to give a talk to teachers about education in the United States, what would you say?"

The students presented their talks to an enthusiastic audience of one, their teacher. Wanting to have their views heard by a much larger group, Large then contacted 826 Valencia, which provides writing tutors from the community (which may soon include me) to help kids with their writing and other school assignments.
826 Valencia not only provided tutors to bring these essays to publication quality, they also worked with the class's editorial board to publish the essays into this book.

This really should be read by everyone dealing in any way with high school and middle school education: teachers, parents, principals, other students, and so on.

I've always been fascinated by teachers in general but my feeling is that as a "starring" classroom teacher, I could not hold the attention of the room as some of my teachers have (Mrs. Langemo, Mr. Watterson, Mrs. Opdahl, Mr. Knodle, Mr. Beauchman, Mr. Goffe, Mr. & Mrs. Hieb for example) - so if i am going to be a pretty mediocre teacher - better to spend time working one-on-one instead.

One of my favorite essays is "Real Lessons" by Krystal Maxwell. Her writing is crisp and she has a very individual voice. I could see her with a monthly column. Perhaps in "The Believer" alongside the Nick Hornby column. Here is an example:

"Teachers might believe that class time belongs to them and not us, but I beg to differ. Where I'm educated, cutting class is easy and people exercise it like a guilty party pleading the fifth. Prepare a lesson for every class period that's worthwhile to my classmates and me because counting the dots on the ceiling is getting pretty old."

Also her closing, direct to teachers:

"You are as much my hope for the future as I'm your social security payouts. We're not here to test your patience and fight you; we only do that when we're bored. Take care of us. Nurture that one-tenth of our minds you're able to reach without forcing it into overdrive, and I promise you you won't regret it."

This book also made me think of the poem "Inscriptions" by Adrienne Rich (from Dark Fields of the Republic). This poem has 6 parts and is probably my most frequently quoted poem ever as I keep using pieces of it in speeches and so on:
This is a partial quote:

When does a life end toward freedom? grasp its direction?
How do you know you're not circling in pale dreams, nostalgia,
stagnation
but entering that deep current malachite, colorado
requiring all your strength whenever found
your patience and your labor
desire pitted against desire's inversion
all your mind's fortitude?
Maybe through a teacher: someone with facts, with numbers
with poetry
who wrote on the board: IN EVERY GENERATION ACTION FREES OUR DREAMS.
Maybe a student: one mind unfurling like a redblack peony
quenched into percentile, dropout, stubbed out bud
--- Your journals Patricia: Douglas your poems: but the repetitive blows
on spines whose hope you were, on yours
to see that quenching and decide.
--- And now she turns her face brightly on the new morning in the new classroom
new in her beauty her skin her lashes her lovely body:
Race, class . . . all that . . . but isn't all that just history?
Aren't people bored with it all?

Madeleine L'Engle: Herself - Reflections on a Writing Life plus a little Annie Lennox

I'm already getting ahead of myself on this blog, as this is Sunday and I think I finished this book on Friday (or perhaps even Thursday) - but I haven't had a chance to write about it yet.
Note that from updates on the Madeleine L'Engle site I saw that she is writing a book about Meg from A Wrinkle in Time in her fifties, but it seems unlikely this will be published, as it was already in progress in 1998.

This book is a great source of inspiration to me as a person and as someone who might be trying to write fiction someday. Madeleine L'Engle to me is one of the wisest people in the world. She is the author of the Time Trilogy (Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Wind in the Door) and many other fiction and non-fiction books, including Meet the Austins, A House Like a Lotus, and a set of autobiographical journals called The Crosswicks Journals - my favorite is The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, because she talks about the summer when her mother died and how hard it was (taking care of her, watching her decline, and so on).

In this book, Carole F. Chase has compiled several short essays/commentary from Madeleine on writing, faith, her books, and other topics, into ten sections.
Some of this material is from the Crosswicks Journals and other books mentioned above, and some is from workshops she gave in the seventies and more recently (these are all in the L'Engle collection of Boswell Library at Wheaton College.)

Reading these words is like sitting and having coffee with Madeleine right when your inspiration or faith that you can go on is lagging. It's really reassuring to read that she also needs to write every day (just like a pianist needs to practice every day) and to be reminded of the 2.5 years that A Wrinkle in Time spent going around to various publishers before it was finally published.
I just had lunch with a friend of mine who is working on a science fiction novel and much of Madeleine's comments and thoughts would be helpful to him - will send him the link as I bet he will just want to buy it.

Madeleine L'Engle and Annie Lennox
I am also a big fan of Annie Lennox, especially her new album "Bare" - and I was listening to this at the same time as reading this book. It's like having the combined wisdom of two wise older women (attention I always crave since I don't have a mother.)
The below song seems to fit into this inspirational theme even though the song and most of the songs on its album seem a little depressing:

Annie Lennox's Pavement Cracks
portions: (this song looks fairly depressing but notice she is "walking just the same" even though all this stuff is happening):

The city streets are wet again with rain.
But I'm walking just the same.
The skies turned to the usual grey.
When you turn to face the day

oh and love don't show up in the pavement cracks
all my watercolors fade to black
I'm going nowhere and I'm ten steps back
all my dreams are falling fast

where is my comfort zone?
a simple place to call my own?
cause everything I want to be
comes crashing down on me

Also I found this commentary from Annie herself on Pavement Cracks - I'm kind of happy about this as it seems to confirm my feeling about the song (that it is not really as depressing as it seems!)

Found at

Pavement Cracks: "Children have such an instinctive way of reacting to the world. They skip because they're happy. They delight in the moment - in the macaroni on the plate before them. We lose that freshness as we grow. Life knocks it out of us. Yet still, there's this miraculous capacity for new growth. In my darkest times, I'd walk with my head bowed, seeing only the cracks in the pavement slabs. But then I'd notice the weeds pushing up through them, like a metaphor for hope. All is not desperate. Change comes, even when it seems it won't."

Make Your Creative Dreams Real by Sark

This book is, as its subtitle says "A plan for procrastinators, perfectionists, busy people, and people who would really rather sleep all day.

It's really one of the most inspirational among all of SARK's other inspiring books - and has a lot more "meat" in it, as it is 278 pages long and includes many exercises as well as stories from people who have made their own creative dreams real.
SARK's info on "micro-movements" for those who have trouble getting large (or small) tasks done, is very helpful.