Girl Detective

It was a while back when I decided that I wanted to steer clear of the usual purview of Mommy blogs and instead focus on how to keep my brain engaged and learning, while also instilling a love of learning in my then kid, and now kids. Caitlin Flanagan’s recently published book, To Hell with All That, has re-ignited a lot of Mommy bitterness. A lot of copy has been spilled, so I’ll keep my remarks short.

There have always been jerks. And there have always been people, mommy and otherwise, who try to make themselves feel good about their life decisions by criticizing those who choose differently. Further, it is often a luxury of class (economic or intellectual) that enables folks to mount their high horses. (Akin to the phenomenon described in this article on urban sprawl; link via Arts & Letters Daily.) Finally, it is infighting like this that distracts us from real problems.

So I’ll offer some advice I struggle to follow myself:

Don’t be mean. To each her own. The only person you can know well enough to judge is yourself.

#21 in my book challenge for the year was highly hyped The Accidental by Ali Smith. The prose struck me immediately as more than usually challenging, though not in an obvious, arduous way. Smith worked some subtle hocus pocus behind the scenes. The book shifts among five points of view, four of which are told in third person, only one of which is in first person. Not only does Smith pull off five distinct voices, but also five distinct styles. I was indifferent to the book at first, suspecting it of being clever rather than good. It grew to a strong finish, and further thought on it has made me appreciate it more.

One thing that bothered me, though, was that the text of the book wasn’t justified. I wonder if this was done deliberately to unsettle, because it certainly did so to me. I never knew how comforting typesetting was until I experienced its absence in this book.

The topic comes from Carnival of the Couture, a project of Manolo the Shoe-Blogger. Each week fashion-minded bloggers respond to new topics. This week is hosted by The Bargain Queen. I haven’t participated before, but this week’s question was so easy to answer that I had to respond:

What is your best-ever bargain? Where did you find it, how much was it and why is it your favourite?

My best ever bargain was my wedding gown. I found it among the regular dresses at a Filene’s Basement in St. David’s, PA. (Not THE Filene’s Basement in Boston, MA, but one of the TJ Maxx-ish outposts.) The Filene’s price tag read $200, but the original was still attached. The dress came from Holt Renfrew, a Canadian department store. The original price was $1195.

It was a beautiful dress of celadon silk taffeta, with an empire waist, and a long-sleeved illusion bodice embroidered with sequins and pearls. I had been looking for a slightly unconventional gown for some time, but couldn’t justify spending thousands of dollars on what I’d found in bridal shops. Also, most of the colored bridal gowns were blue, pink, or champagne. I’d never yet found green, which suits me because I’m a redhead.

I took the gown into the dressing room, tried it on, then went out to the three-way mirror. Another woman there looked on.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “But where would you wear it?”

“My wedding,” I smiled back, somewhat dazed.

As I removed the dress in the dressing room, I looked for the tag. The designer used his name and last initial. They were the same as those of my fiance.

I took the dress to the register. The clerk said they were running a promotion. She offered me a scratch card for the chance to win an additional percentage off. I scratched off 20%, so my $200 dress only cost $160, and there was no sales tax.

I sped home and called my parents, friends and sisters. “You’ll never believe this!” I crowed. “I found a beautiful, unique dress, the designer has the same name and last initial as my fiance, and it only cost $160!”

It was truly the best-ever bargain.

For the third year in a row, Drake didn’t get the memo that it was Mother’s Day. He threw a monstrous tantrum before church. We did eventually get there. Afterward, as I was loading Guppy in the car and telling Drake to get in his seat, he ignored me and splashed in a mud puddle. Suddenly he yelled. “Fell in puddle!”

His pants were covered in mud. I had to finish with Guppy and hustle over to Drake, then remove his shoes, socks and pants. He rode home in his diaper. Here was the exchange in the car:

Me: Why did your pants get muddy?
D: Fell in puddle.
Me: Why did you fall in the puddle?
D: Didn’t listen to Mom.
Me: What happens when you don’t listen to Mom?
D: Bad things.

#35 in my movie challenge for the year was The Quiet Man, which was a pick of my husband’s off our Tivo’d cache. He enjoyed it more than I did. I found the Irish characters too calculatedly charming/drunk/whatever, and the Taming-of-the-Shrew-ish-ness of the story was more than a little troubling. It’s beautiful to look at, as is John Wayne as a young, tall, handsome man. But seeing Wayne drag O’Hara over miles to confront her brother over Wayne’s supposed cowardice had me staring in horror, especially as it was played for laughs. Additionally, the resolution, in which Wayne fights the brother, and wins back his bride, is both predictable and disappointing. Not as overtly sexist as Alfie, it nonetheless left the same yucky taste in my brain.

Please allow for a brief departure into “kids say the darndest things.” I try hard to be an un-mommy blog, and focus on books, movies and other things that I feel contribute to a thriving life of the mind, but occasionally things happen that I feel it would be remiss to keep to myself.

My husband and I were discussing possible candidates for the next presidential election. He named someone, and I asked, “Isn’t that person evil?”

Before he could answer, Drake chimed in.

“_I’m_ evil,” he grinned.

My husband and I paused and stared at him, mouths agape.

After he recovered, my husband said, “No, Drake, you are a force for good. Say, ‘I’m a force for good’”

Drake’s grin grew wider. “I’m evil, Dad!”

I shook my head and sighed. “He’s gonna be a Republican, isn’t he?”

#34 in my movie challenge this year was 13 Conversations about One Thing. Stilted and boring, with an intrusive score. I’d heard this recommended as an overlooked movie worth checking out, one that covered some of the same ground as Crash but better. I disagree. Crash was a flawed film, but I found it well-acted and not boring.

#20 in my book challenge for the year, Fall on Your Knees has been on my shelf since 1998. It was a recommendation from my friend Queenie, whose past picks (Alias Grace, Bee Season, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, The Intuitionist, Plainsong, among others) were both intelligent and entertaining. At 500+ densely printed pages in trade paperback, though, its size put me off. But since part of this year’s book challenge is to read those poor souls gathering dust unread on the shelf, I finally gave it my time. This is a big, juicy novel with lots of characters and time shifts and a secret that took me by surprise. I especially loved two characters–Materia and her daughter Frances–and couldn’t quite bring myself to hate some others, no matter how nastily they behaved. There’s lots of painful stuff, but there’s also lots of joy, and I enjoyed the time I spent with the Cape Breton family, and am now off to dig up my Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaac CDs.

One of the questions that has come up at most writing classes and conferences I’ve attended is, “What about self publishing?” Often the question is being asked by someone whose work has been repeatedly rejected by the mainstream publishing industry. Here is a good entry at Slushpile (via Bookslut) that discusses self publishing.

Repeated rejection does not have to mean that one’s writing sucks. Many famous writers have amusing rejection stories. Kate DiCamillo received hundreds of rejection letters before her Newbery Honor book, Because of Winn Dixie, was pulled out a slushpile and published. Jerry Spinelli, another Newbery award winner, waved a giant sheaf of rejections at a talk I attended. Turns out those were the ones in a corner of the garage that got overlooked when he purged the boxes and boxes of other ones, once he got successful enough not to need them as reminders.

Repeated rejection, though, might mean that one’s writing sucks. And if it does, self-publishing, or publishing on demand, is not going to improve the chances of getting published in the mainstream media, which is what nearly all writers want. It is simply going to annoy or embarrass people who have to listen to the writer go on about how the mainstream press doesn’t recognize genius but is only looking for the next big thing, blah, blah, blah. And it is going to give those people who do have a good and legitimate use for self publishing or POD stigma by association.

The sentence in the opening paragraph of the Slushpile entry sums it up well:

In the right conditions, handled properly, with realistic attitudes, self-publishing can be a viable business decision for certain people.

There are well-documented uses for self publishing and POD, particularly in niche markets. If a writer has a specific book that meets a specific need that either is very small or not yet recognized, then self-publishing can be a good way to meet the need forever, or to establish that there is a need to those who don’t yet recognize it. An example of the former is a writer whose book about a local wartime event was sold through the local historical society. There was a small, steady local demand. An example of the latter is the writer who commented at Slushpile about a series of Harlequin-type romances for gay men. Self publishing helped prove there was a demand, and earned a contract with a mainstream publisher.

But most writers, and here I include myself, should keep writing, keep trying to improve their writing, and keep trying to get that writing published by a regular publisher.

After I had my first child, I had to buy a bunch of new clothes because nothing fit. I was a size or two bigger, thicker in the waist, and larger in the chest due to nursing. Once I started exercising again, those post-partum clothes eventually became too big. But I saved them, figuring I’d need them again after Guppy was born.

Lo and behold, they were now too small. I am two or three sizes larger, with an even thicker waist. What to do? Revert to wearing maternity clothes? While I’ve done that a few times, some other things have worked.

Once I determine something doesn’t fit, I take it off the hanger, so I don’t try it and get depressed again when it doesn’t fit. Skirts with unstructured waists fit, since they can sit a bit higher than they used to. The only pants that fit have Lycra, and not even all those still work. The best tops are one that cover the waistband and don’t ride up.

I found a few inexpensive items at Old Navy and Target that should help until I can either buy for my new shape or exercise my way back toward my old stuff. (I’m not holding my breath for the latter.) I won’t win any fashion-forward awards, but I hope to avoid plumber’s butt and other behind-the-back, wince-inducing faux pas.

Old Navy Just Below Waist Jeans
Old Navy At Waist Jeans (online, but no longer in store)
Old Navy Tiny Fit Tees (tight but longer length)
Old Navy Long Layering Tank
Target Mossimo tank
Target Mossimo tee

I sent a copy of my novel manuscript to an editor last week. Printing a good copy of the novel took several tries and way too many sheets of paper. Here’s what I learned from my mistakes:

1. First, consult a reliable source for the recommended format for manuscript submission. There are many details, and they are not all common sense or intuitive. Don’t fret that there is more than one authority. Pick a recently published, reputable one (I used my Children’s Writer’s Market) and format before you print.

2. Run spell check. Then run grammar check.

3. Do an eyeball check of every page before you print. I found a paragraph break I’d missed, plus I had several chapters end at the bottom of a page, followed by a blank, wasted page. I eliminated those hard page breaks. I also adjusted the page formats to eliminate widows and orphans–hanging words at the end of paragraphs or hanging sentences at the top of a page. (There is no consistent definition of either, so both words encompass both things.)

4. Check to make sure you have an adequate supply of paper, several times that of your page count.

5. Do not mix paper stock; it looks sloppy and makes the manuscript unwieldy because the pages don’t stack neatly.

6. Print out the first five pages as a test to check things like page numbering, and other header/footer information, which can vary on even and odd pages. Confirm that your pages conform to the recommended format from your reliable source in #1.

This is not a quick process, or one that should be rushed. If you have done all of these, hit print. Then review the printed manuscript page by page to ensure it is correct. Then, and only then, send it out.

The cast of Battlestar Galactica, drawn Simpsons style.

Thanks to Blogenheimer, who sent me the link.

#19 in my book challenge for the year is the ubiquitously reviewed Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. He wrote three previous novels, the first and third of which were nominated for the Man Booker prize. Most writers do their autobiographical stuff first, and move on to more complicated stuff. Mitchell, whose previous three novels are both lauded and derided for their intricacy, saved his autobiographical bildungsroman for his fourth book. He and others have noted how unusual this is. The benefit to this method is that it’s a really well-written personal novel. The drawback is that it’s frequently so well-written that it ejected me from the narrative, which was told in what is supposed to be the voice of a 13-year- old boy in 1982 suburban England. Yes, the character is a poet, and yes, he has developed a complex interior life in reaction to his stammering problem. Neither of these, though, completely convinced me that certain sentences and certain insights were congruent with the 13-year-old narrator. For example, “Mr. Nixon, the headmaster, dashed past the doorway, emitting fumes of anger and tweed.” and “….the villagers wanted the Gypsies to be gross, so the grossness of what they’re not acts as a stencil for what they are.” It became clear as I read that Mitchell had set himself a difficult task, at which I think he partially succeeded–trying to write in the voice a boy who aspires to be a good writer, but isn’t there yet. In the end, though, I liked the book so well, and the characters in it, that I gave in and dismissed any quibbles that the voice wasn’t consistently believable. The book is the definition of bittersweet, veering between sadness and humor, with great characters.

Reviews, discussions, and interviews (strangely Seattle-centric links via Blog of a Bookslut):
Entertainment Weekly
CBC Canada
The Guardian: The Digested Read
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Times
Christian Science Monitor
The Stranger
New York Observer
Village Voice
The Book Standard
Seattle Weekly
The New Yorker

#33 in my movie challenge for the year was Thank You For Smoking. The main character is a tobacco lobbyist, and the conceit of the satire lies in his earning the audience’s sympathy, both within the film and in the theater. But my lingering impression is that it could have been darker and funnier.

#32 in my movie challenge this year was Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, about Timothy Treadwell, self-styled protector of grizzly bears. He and his girlfriend eventually got eaten by one. Treadwell clearly had some mental problems, and he is by turns endearing and annoying. A compulsive self-filmer, his footage makes up most of the documentary. Herzog is a gentle, non-sensational documentarian. While he disagrees with Treadwell, he takes pains to show the many aspects of a complex person. Interestingly vague are Treadwell’s dead girlfriend, whose family refused to participate, and exactly how Treadwell protected the bears, which he insisted he did during his visits each summer for over a decade. Most scary was the fervent description of the deaths by the coroner, who seemed to enjoy his job way too much.

#31 in my movie challenge for the year was Alfie, the original, with Michael Caine. I was surprised to see how good looking Caine was as a young ‘un–he looked like Jude Law does now, who starred in the remake. But his acting outshines his looks; he’s completely believable as a cockney cad. The women finally realize what a jerk he is, and he’s alone at the end of the movie. But neither of these is enough to redeem all the sexist yuckiness that went before. Dated and depressing, this gave me no reason to seek out the remake.

Our house came with rhubarb plants, which come up every year regardless of what I do or don’t do in the yard. I noticed one of our three plants (two of which are green; one is red) had begun to flower. Some sites say to remove the flowers, so while I was cutting I did my first harvest.

I froze the rhubarb last year, and found it unpleasantly mushy when I went to use it later. So this year, I used it as an excuse to make Nigella Lawson’s “Spring Lunch to Lift the Spirits” from How to Eat, which includes Lemon Linguine, Green Salad, and Irish Tarte Tatin.

While I appreciate Nigella’s “everyone can do it,” laissez-faire approach to cooking, I find her recipes sometimes hard to follow (recipes should NOT be written as prose) and a little sloppy (she directs you to taste _raw_ rhubarb and adjust for sugar?), so here are my adaptations.

Lemon Linguine (serves 4)

1 pound linguine
1 egg yolk (reserve white for Irish Tarte Tatin)
1/3 cup of heavy cream
1/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan
Zest of 1 lemon and juice of 1/2, plus more juice if needed
Pinch of salt
Freshly milled black pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons of chopped parsley

Bring 4 quarts of water to the boil. Add 1 tablespoon salt, then pasta. Cook pasta according to package directions, but set timer for a minute or more less than what the box advises.

In a bowl, whisk the yolks, cream, parmesan, zest and juice, salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Test pasta for doneness. Reserve a 1/2 cup of liquid; drain. Return to pot off heat, add butter and stir until melted. Stir in egg mixture until pasta is coated, adding liquid by tablespoons if it looks dry. Divide among plates, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Salad Dressing (my own, not Nigella’s)

1/4 c. oil
1 Tbl. white wine vinegar
1 Tbl. lemon juice
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. dry mustard
1 small garlic clove, minced

Shake to combine. Can be stored for three days.

Irish Tarte Tatin

2 lbs. rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 1/4 c. sugar

Topping (from Cook’s Illustrated’s recipes for scones):

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 cup whole milk

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees.

Place rhubarb in pie dish; pour sugar over. Whisk first 5 ingredients of topping together in large bowl. By hand, with pastry blender, or 2 knives, mix butter into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse meal with a few slightly larger butter lumps.

Make a well in the center of mixture and pour in milk. Working quickly, blend ingredients together with a rubber spatula into a soft, slightly wet dough. Knead dough a few times in bowl, then turn onto a well-floured work surface.

Pat or roll dough to 1/2 inch thick round. Place on top of rhubarb. Brush with egg white and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15 minutes. Lower oven temp to 350, bake for 30 more minutes. Remove from oven, let cool for at least 5 minutes. Nigella recommends turning it upside down, which will likely result in a burn, then serving with brown sugar and cream, or custard. I recommend cutting the top, spooning out the bottom, and serving with vanilla ice cream.

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I modified the brownie recipe I usually use. The results were well received. I also made Mexican Coffee that turned out pretty well.

During my pregnancy, I did a lot of baking, which I thought was part of the nesting instinct. Guppy is nearing three months, but the urge to bake has not abated. I don’t know if I’m still nesting, or if I am so enamored of baked goods that the desire for them propels me beyond my lack of sleep and zillion-long list of supposedly more important things to do.

Mexican Brownies

based on New Classic Brownies from Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies

FOR BROWNIES
8 Tbl. unsalted butter cut into 8 pieces
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, coursely chopped
1 1/4 c. sugar (can use light brown, white, or a mixture of the two)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
2 lg. eggs
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 Tb. ground cinnamon
pinch ground cayenne

FOR FROSTING
1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tsp. vanilla extract
(1/2 c. sliced almonds-optional)

Use an 8 in. square metal pan, lined across the bottom and sides with 2 strips of aluminum foil, spray with non-stick oil.

Preheat oven to 400. Position rack in lower third of oven.

Melt the butter and chocolate gently: in double boiler, in glass bowl over low-simmering water in small saucepan, or in microwave at 50% power. Stir frequently until mixture is melted and smooth.

Remove from heat. Stir in the sugar, vanilla, and salt. Check to be sure mixture is not hot, then add the eggs, one at a time, stirring until each is incorporated before adding the next. In small bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon and cayenne. Stir flour mixture into chocolate mixture, and beat with a wooden spoon until the batter is smooth, glossy and comes away from side of bowl, about 1 minute. Bake for 20 minutes, or until brownies begin to pull away from side of pan. Surface will be dry but inside will be gooey, so don’t bother with a toothpick test.

While brownies bake, prepare an ice bath: Fill a roasting pan or large baking pan with ice cubes and water about 3/4 inch deep.

When brownies are ready, remove pan from oven and set it immediately in ice bath, taking care not to splash water on brownies. Cool brownies in ice bath. (Medrich calls this the Steve ritual, and this step is critical in producing brownies that have a firm crust but creamy, fudgy center. You may use this method with other brownie recipes: bake for 20 min at 400, put in ice bath. I like the simplicity of this recipe.)

Make topping:
Whisk sugar, cream and butter in heavy small saucepan over low heat until mixture is smooth and comes to boil. Remove from heat; mix in vanilla. Cool 10 minutes. Whisk until thick enough to spread. Spread over brownie. Sprinkle with almonds, if using. Let stand until topping sets, about 1 hour. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and keep chilled.)

Lift foil handles and transfer brownies to cutting board; remove foil. Cut into 16 squares. Store airtight for 2 to 3 days.

One of the best things about the Loft’s Festival of Children’s Literature last weekend were the talks by editors. The festival had one headlining NYC book editor and several local book editors for smaller presses. Some of what was said was common sense, some of the common sense was stuff worth repeating, and some other stuff was good to know, because it clarified or contradicted advice in some of the usual children’s literature canon. One thing that became even more clear to me than previously is that children’s lit is a different thing than adult lit; the same rules do not apply.

Here, in no particular order, are some pieces of advice from various editors, some of which were repeated by all of them.

-Submit polished work, not early or partial drafts.
-Cover letters should be short and professional. No biographical info needed, no past publishing history unless it’s directly relevant, no marketing info for the book, no hyperbolic references to other work. A simple, Dear [Editor], Here is my work, Thank you, [Author] should suffice because it’s your writing that should speak for you, not your cover letter.
-Again, your writing is what should distinguish you, not the color of your paper or your font choice. Use white paper, 1 inch margins, double spaced, 12 point Times New Roman. Never a sans serif font, never all caps. No exploding confetti (I wondered if other people were reminded of Tobias from Arrested Development when that was mentioned.)
-Reseach the publisher and submit to one that is a good match for your work.
-Children’s publisher’s do not want to work with agents; they want to work with you.
-Picture book writers should keep their text short and relatively adjective free. The illustrations will do the work of adjectives.
-Unless you’re an author/illustrator, and a good one, the editor will pick the illustrator for a writer.

There was also a good panel of authors on agents. One had a good agent who had pretty much fallen into his lap, another had sought an agent at a huge firm who had not been a help, and two other authors had never had agents, but instead used a book lawyer as needed for contracts and other legal stuff. The concensus seemed to be that a good agent could help, a bad one could hurt, and a children’s author is fine without one.

I buzzed by the library after the festival to pick up a few books by the local authors from the panel. Drake is currently loving all of these:

The Best Pet of All by David LaRochelle
When Mommy was Mad by Lynne Jonell
Night Driving by John Coy

The Scotsman talks to David Mitchell, whose most recent book is Black Swan Green (link from Bookslut last month). What’s nice about the article is that it isn’t a dissection of the book, rather a conversation that includes it. There’s some good stuff on writing a novel from one’s life:

Black Swan Green does not traffic in veiled autobiography and wish-fulfilment.

“I kind of evolved a distinction between a personal novel and an autobiographical one,” says Mitchell, leaning forward on his elbows and speaking softly. “A personal one is where the protagonist and the writer have many things in common. An autobiographical one is where events and everyone around the protagonist or the narrator come largely from life.”

And the difficulty of writing in first person:

So, if you write a book in the first person, you can’t give any information to the reader that the protagonist doesn’t know - unless you smuggle it either through the narrator’s stupidity, or, in the case of Jason, this device of him not knowing what he knows.