Susan Wise Bauer's Blog, page 22

In which I get to use the word "quotidian"

October has not been a good blogging month. In fact, I'm sort of been MIA.

But I'm still here and still writing…which is why I haven't had a non-Twitter post up. Writing, and having an off-the-grid contemplation/research week, and baking birthday cakes, and reading.

October is like that for me. It's the month when I draw breath.

I don't know why fall is more magical for me than spring; possibly it has something to do with spring inevitably turning into summer, the three-month space during which we live in a wet superheated sponge and are repeatedly attacked by biting insects. Fall, in Virginia, turns into winter, which is only occasionally unpleasant. (Although we're supposed to get weather patterns this year that will produce record ice storms, so I may have to eat those words.)

Or maybe it has to do with the fact that the month kicks off with the Virginia State Fair, which I've been going to since I was a 4-H'er in middle-school, and the Fair was the big event of my year. I still adore the State Fair. I love the way it smells: Italian sausages, cattle, sawdust and powdered-sugar drifts. I could spend hours examining farm equipment. I always come back from the State Fair with a burning desire to raise sheep.

Or maybe it has to do with death. (Bear with me.) Once you get to a certain age, there's more poetry in fall than in spring. Fall is about passing and ending; it's a wistful season, and what comes next is winter, harder frosts, bleaker ground, less life. But a long ways after (by which I mean April), there's life again. Not the same life that you said goodbye to at the end of October; something that's completely different than what you expected. Spring is all uncontrollable growth and unstoppable vitality. The kids adore it.

I like October.

In the fall I get absorbed by the quotidian; the daily details, the hour-by-hour responsibilities. The breakfasts and the stall-cleanings; the mornings verifying the exact location of medieval Iranian cities and the evenings spent walking the property line, posting PRIVATE PROPERTY, NO HUNTING OR YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED signs; the mulching and the meal-planning; even the math lessons and the SAT prep. In the spring, the quotidian annoys me. In the summer it exhausts me. In the winter, it depresses me.

In October, I think: The quotidian IS life, and for a brief time I'm enjoying it.

In my next post, I won't get to say "quotidian" at all.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-10-24

In the Star Alliance lounge at Heathrow, waiting to board my flight to Washington. Ready to hug the kids, kiss my dh, and eat some veggies. #
Home from the UK, contemplating the stack of mail that arrived last week. Why does no one but me open the mail? It is a great mystery. #
Contemplating 310,000 words of Renaissance history. I just know there's a storyline in there somewhere. #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-10-17

Getting ready to board a flight and depart for writing-intensive week…radio silence descending…see you in seven days. #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-10-10

Monday night football, mustard-honey chicken wings, homemade five-cheese ravioli w/fried sage. Now if Patriots would just get it together… #
Whatever genius designed the UVA parent interface appears to have decided that we don't really need to know HOW much we owe. Sheesh. #
I could design a better tuition and fees page for UVA in an evening, and I was an English major. #
This weekend will require the synchronization and organization of a major medieval military offensive. (At least I know a lot about those.) #
Sigismund, king of Germany 1410-1437: "Ego sum rex Romanorum et super grammaticam" ("I am the king of the Romans and above grammar"). #
DS19 home for fall break. House is happier now. #
Getting ready for a concentrated writing week. #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-10-03

Orson Scott Card, thanks for the shout-out: http://tinyurl.com/262fn3e. (Scroll down. It was a faint shout-out.) #
The day is cold, and dark, dreary/It rains, and the wind is never weary. (But we LIKE the rain, Mr. Longfellow.) #
Writing all day today. #
Drove through foot-deep water in five separate places on my way home last night. #
At the State Fair. LOVE the State Fair. #
Have been here ten minutes and am already dusted with powdered sugar (funnel cake + brisk breeze). #
At the pig races. Again. #
People wear the most extraordinary things to the State Fair. #
I may never eat again. #
FarmAid 2010: Willie Nelson and Dave Matthews singing Gravedigger. One of the times I wish I could talk in music instead of just words. #

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From PW: The Ol' Dead Dad Syndrome

I've been catching up on my back issues of Publishers Weekly and came across this column, which I thought I'd share with you. (This is an excerpt; read the whole thing here.) Ms. Sales is right on. Writers, take note.

The Ol' Dead Dad Syndrome

Why are there so many dead parents in kids' books?

By Leila Sales

Sep 20, 2010

I am a children's book editor. You might assume this means that I spend eight hours a day reading charming bedtime tales about bunny rabbits, but that is not true. I primarily work on novels for older children, and the "in" thing right now is future dystopias. So I actually spend eight hours a day reading about barren wastelands in which teens struggle against fascist dictatorships. Also, their parents are usually dead.

Dead parents are so much a part of middle-grade and teen fiction at this point, it's not even the "in" thing. It's not "au courant" or "en vogue." It's just an accepted fact: kids in books are parentless.

But I don't accept it, because you know what? It is not believable that so many kids are missing one, if not both parents. Slews of them! Hundreds! To quote Oscar Wilde, sort of: "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose a parent in nearly every children's book looks like lazy writing." (I assume that is what Wilde meant.)

What's so lazy about writing in a deceased parent? I'll tell you.

First, a dead parent is one fewer character to have to write. At their hearts, most novels are the stories of characters' relationships with other characters. Combine Wilbur's relationships with Charlotte, with Templeton, and with Fern, and you more or less have Charlotte's Web.

But creating all those different relationships is hard work, because they are complex and ever shifting. Having established how a protagonist gets along with her best friend, boyfriend, ex-best friend, piano teacher, and ghost who lives in the cellar, who really wants to add her parents into the mix?…

Second, there's the instant sympathy factor. It's challenging to create a fictional character who's likable despite his or her foibles. This becomes truer the more foibles you want her to have. If you want to write a character who's snarky, self-absorbed, doesn't respect authority figures, lashes out—basically, a teenager—then you need to give the reader some special reason to care about her.

Dead parent equals immediate sympathy. No wonder he's mopey and melodramatic. He's a half-orphan! For the first hundred pages of The Secret Garden, would you like Mary Lennox at all if her parents were still alive?

Again, I find this a cop-out….

Dead parents will always have their place in children's literature. If your book is set at an orphanage, then I would hope you include a lot of dead parents. Or if a book is about a teen coping with the recent death of her mother, then, you know, her mother should have recently died. But when authors omit parents for the sake of convenience, I take issue—as an editor, and as a reader. Because a convenient story is not the same as a good story.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-26

In Athens; just spent the evening climbing around Mars Hill. #Just back from swimming in the Aegean. I could see my TOES on the bottom. Not like Virginia swimming, where all you can see is the mud. #Someone is listening to very loud Greek rap on the street right outside our apartment. NOT better than the American variety. #Windy and dry in Athens; clouds of dust spinning on red ground, flocks of swallows high, high up. #In Athens airport, waiting for flight to Charles de Gaulle. Security was...

Scenes from Greece

We arrived in Athens Monday afternoon, on the almost-final leg of our trip (we're stopping overnight in Paris on the way back, mostly to break up the flight). I've never been to Greece before. First impression wasn't all that favorable, mostly because our luggage got shuffled off onto the wrong belt and we spent an hour hunting around the Athens airport for it (although technically we should blame that on Alitalia). But also because Athens is a big city, and dusty, and dry, and filled with ...

Scenes from Rome

Two days in Rome turned out to be just about right. Venice was right up Dan's alley; it was fun and imaginative and filled with tiny crooked paths. Rome was huge and crowded and noisy and filled with homicidal drivers. More to the point, when you're thirteen, you have a limited capacity for ruins.

He was fascinated by the Colosseum, and we spent our entire first morning there.

After that we'd planned to go see the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill, but by the time we'd finished lunch...

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-19

In Venice with dh and DS13. Spent night before last on a plane and last night on a train; Venice currently kind of fuzzy. #Could really get into this whole Italian "lunch + bottle of wine followed by nap" and "dinner + bottle of wine followed by sleeping" thing. #I just had real pizza with formaggio, fresh mozzarella, artichokes, and artichoke cream. #Took DS13 to international architecture exhibit in Venice; his mind is blown. #La Traviata at the Opera House in Venice last night, Rome...