Jane Yolen's Blog, page 31

Interstitial Moment:

Dawn asked: "When do you know if (your novel is) really "done"? When do  you know if all the threads have been tied together? When is the time to send it out? And what kind of system do you have to organize your plot elements? Notebooks? Post-its on the wall? I'm curious."

Dawn–that is a question that comes up frequently at conferences. I may even have tried to answer it my journal once or twice before. The problem is that there is no easy answer.

John Ciardi said: "A poem is never finished...

Dawn asked: "When do you know if (your novel is) really "...

Dawn asked: "When do you know if (your novel is) really "done"? When do  you know if all the threads have been tied together? When is the time to send it out? And what kind of system do you have to organize your plot elements? Notebooks? Post-its on the wall? I'm curious."

Dawn–that is a question that comes up frequently at conferences. I may even have tried to answer it my journal once or twice before. The problem is that there is no easy answer.

John Ciardi said: "A poem is never finished...

December 19-21, 2009:

Coming up to the Solstice, where night begins to turn again to day, dark to light, the revolving world warms, but not soon enough for some. My fingers are toes are  constantly cold. I have my mid-winter sinusitus, back aches from hunching against the chill. I miss walking outside.

So go the early winter complaints. They will be a drumroll until spring. But I do love the snow, the fairylands etched in ice. I think Lewis was wrong about the White Witch's influence. We need the ice, the cold...

Interstitial Moment:

"You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you.

And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke."  -Arthur Plotnik, editor and author

Of course that is the GOOD editor, even the GREAT editor. But alas, in a career that spans 46+ years and 300+ books, I have occasionally known editors who only want to let the their own fire show through, or who leave the writer with heavier smoke than before, or who take out the fire extinguisher and hose the writer...

December 17-18, 2009:

My back seems to be good one day, terrible the next. I am going to physical therapy and water therapy and doing my stretching exercises daily, but I can never guess from one day till the other how I will feel when I wake up. Time for a new mattress, methinks.

Books: Scholastic sent me (twice) copies of an audio/book package of How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food. I worked more on the book with Jason, and am pleased with some of the poems.

Worked with an illustrator friend trying to re-kick-start...

December 15-16, 2009:

Okay, I will admit it. I was wrong about the shut down of publishing for the holidays. This is what happened in the past two days:

I sold three fantasy poems to Asimov's. PW gave a rave review to my upcoming fantasy novel, Except the Queen (go to co-author Midori Snyder's website In The Labyrinth to see it) and the SF Book Club  took the book as well as an alternate selection. The editor of The Emily Sonnets sent me the edited manuscript thoughtfully done), the assistant editor on Lost Boy...

Interstitial Moment:

In a listserve I am on (which I cannot name or quote because it is private) we have been discussing Author Notes and Dedications. And some of the correspondents have been suggesting that authors should not do lengthy Notes or Acknowledgments. After a few rounds of this, I wrote the following. Kudos to any of my readers who get all the references–or the majority of them.

As a writer, I can thank any dang person I wish. I can acknowledge the help I have gotten. I can mention my cat (if I have...

December 6-14, 2009:

Sometimes I get behind on this journal because there is so little to report. Sometimes because I am doing too much to find the time. Decembers are always a little bit of both. So here goes:

Books: I heard that my upcoming graphic novel, Foiled, has been chosen as a Jr. Library Guild book, which means the Jr. Library Guild will be purchasing a certain number of the sheets from the first printing and binding them in their own JLG binding. Always a great start for a book. It means the publisher c...

December 1-5, 2009:

Book News: I have received first copies of On the Slant, my photographic autobiography for the middle grades, first color xeroxes of Hush Little Horsie with the wonderful Ruth Sanderson's awwwww-inspiring paintings of horses and their babies.

Started a new picture book called The Mermaid Who Loved A Pirate which seems to be a rhyming Little Mermaid Meets the Dread Pirate Roberts/Long John Silver and girl rescues boy plus "The Keeper of the Eddystone Light" which I used to sing as a child at...

November 28-30, 2009:

In these quiet times after a holiday, ordinary folk spend time with family and friends, have a vacation, go to movies and malls.

But I use the days to be pro-active in writing and business stuff. So I sorted through five files of old book materials to send to the Kerlan, did some poetry, worked on the glossary for BUG, some more research for several books over the weekend, watched a little bit of mindless tv, read some more of LINGER, the sequel to SHIVER.

Then Monday it was doctor time...