Ruth Tenzer Feldman's Blog, page 4

Deconstruction and Reconstruction

It’s already June (how did that happen?). The construction crew is finishing up their work on the Janey II, which is supposed to have an official opening in “Spring 2015.” They are not going to meet their deadline.

Neither am I.

I am proud to say that I did put together a complete first draft in time for students at Portland State University to review a few months back. As I worked through those excellent comments (thanks, guys), I gave the draft to Viva Scriva to do their critique group thi...

Happy Cinco de Mayo, Ignatius

Cinco de Mayo. The fifth of May. The historian in me notes that the holiday commemorates the victory of Mexican troops over French invading forces in the 1862 battle of Puebla. The Mexican victory was short-lived, and it would be years before the governance of Mexico was back in the hands of Mexicans. With the French engaged against the Mexicans, however, France was unable to give strategic support to the Confederacy during the Civil War in the United States. Had the French done so, who knows...

Inspiration, Shine Down on Me!

Brick by brick, etc., etc. Does anyone out there remember the old expression, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”? Here’s an aside for the curious: According to the Web, the expression is a translation of a 12th century remark (in Medieval French) by a cleric in the court of Phillippe of Alsace, Rome ne s’est pas faite en un jour.

So, Rome took a long time. The Janey II is still getting built likely years after an architect first conceived of its existence, and Book Three is…chugging along. We’re no...

Sydney Taylor Book Award: Hidden

Welcome to another stop on the blog tour for the Sydney Taylor Book Awards, presented annually by the Association of Jewish Libraries. Pull up a chair and let’s hear from author Loïc Dauvallier, illustrator Marc Lizano, and colorist Greg Salsedo about Hidden: A Child’s Story of the Holocaust, the gold medal winner in the Older Readers category. Originally published in 2012 by Le Lombard in French as L’Enfant Cachée, the book was translated by Alexis Siegel and published in the U.S. in 2014 by...

While We’re Under Wraps…

I wonder what’s going on beneath those huge tarps on the Janey II. Surely they are not there just to keep the construction dry. What else is happening?

As you know from the last post, I’ve wrapped up the first rough draft of Book Three, and given all 69,000 words to a book editing class at Portland State University. Meanwhile, I’m doing four writerly projects:

critiquing submissions from the other Viva Scrivas;
honing my revising skills by reading Elizabeth George’s Write Away;
rereading my own d...

Getting Closer … 2,000 Edits To Go!

Here we are in 2015. The sign for the Janey II apartments still boasts the official opening in Spring. Look at all the windows they’ve put in! The place is really shaping up, at least on the outside.

So, what’s happening with Book Three? A lot. I wrote like crazy in December, which is why this blog has been comatose for weeks and weeks. The first very rough draft is done. DONE! Now I rest my Book Three brain and get some distance from the manuscript, all the better to revise it later.

The best...

Together and Separate: Identities

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, the Janey II building is under construction right next door to the original Janey apartment building. As you can see from this picture, there’s all-done Janey on one side and work-in-progress Janey on the other. Will they be identical? Probably not. I figure the blueprints are very similar, but the builders learned a bunch from constructing the first apartment building, and they’ll use that knowledge in building the second.

That’s how I feel about my comp...

Look Out Below!

Seeing as it’s the end of October in Portland, the rain is back. Nothing new there. But what is new on my street is this wooden canopy over the sidewalk, a neat way to stay dry thanks to the construction crew of the Janey II. There’s a lot of building activity on the upper floors of these apartments-to-be, and I expect the wooden canopy has nothing to do with precipitation and everything to do with protecting pedestrians from objects raining down from above.

Book Three has no such canopy. I so...

Inspiration that Takes Your Breath Away

How did it get to be October? No matter. The Janey II guys (yup, all guys as far as I can see) are working away. I am working away. They make their usual construction noises; I make mine.

But then one day last week, I heard a series of screeches that forced me to separate myself from my computer and rush to the window. OK, I didn’t HAVE to. I was ready for a break. Be that as it may, I looked outside at the Janey II crew. And there was this flash. You can see it in the photo, that bright white...

Messing with the Middle

Lay down steel. Pour cement. Repeat. The construction workers on the Janey II are getting up toward the middle of the building. And (ta-dum!) I am getting to the middle on my first draft of Book Three. They’ll have lots of interior work to do eventually, and I’ll have lots of revising. Still, Team J2 and Team B3 are both showing definite signs of progress.

But now our paths diverge. The construction crew aims to erect room after room and floor after floor with a certain sameness that works wel...