play date

Today didn’t go as planned. After another spectacular day in Chicago, I thought I would spend today writing and instead I was curled up in bed with a hot water bottle. I’m almost at the end of Season 6 of Schitts Creek and that means I’ve only written a couple hundred words when I was supposed to write at least a thousand. But tomorrow’s another day and it was still a pretty great week. We closed on the film deal and I did write over three thousand words on Wednesday; I did some solid research for the novel, shared my ideas for the book’s cover with my editor, and I signed up for *three* online theater workshops! Last weekend my friend told me about the memorial her kindergarten students created for Breonna Taylor. Yesterday while in Chicago I found the memorial and saw their sweet messages. It had been vandalized but the tributes were still legible, the sun was shining, other children were playing nearby and came over to share their favorites with me; one gathered up a bouquet of artificial flowers and another pointed to a drawing of a gerbil. Do they understand what police brutality is? I was a masked woman with a camera and yet they totally forgot about the need to social distance and/or not talk to strangers…and even as I tried to step back every time they drew close, it was hard. I’ve missed being around kids and it was refreshing to see them being so carefree in spite of the state of the world. The memorial was set up at the base of a monument to the first president of Czechoslovakia, represented as a helmeted knight on a horse. I was paying attention to every detail because I’m trying to see the city as Jaxon might—a nine-year-old boy from Brooklyn visiting Chicago for the first time. The Gothic buildings on the University of Chicago campus would probably look like castles to him…he might be amazed to learn that the Ferris wheel made its debut at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. I strolled through the serene Garden of the Phoenix and imagined Jax walking the same paths with a baby phoenix in his pocket. Should I mention the Breonna Taylor memorial in my novel? So far I’ve included the fact that the Japanese pavilion adjacent to the garden was burned by bigots following WWII. Can I mention anti-Japanese prejudice without also talking about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war? Can I talk about the history of fires in Chicago—the Great Fire of 1871, the Red Summer of 1919, uprisings in the 1960s and 2020—without mentioning the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb? For now, I’m letting myself put everything in, knowing that some references won’t make the final cut. It’s about striking the right balance…just enough magic and just enough reality. There’s *so* much history in the city, and a friend hipped me to this self-guided tour book that highlights the contributions of Chicago’s Black women. Today I signed up for an architecture boat tour on the day before my birthday (two weeks away!) and I almost bought a ticket to the holiday light show at the Museum of Science and Industry. Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving so I’m moving into holiday mode. This coming week is packed with online gigs but it helps to know I have days set aside that are dedicated to exploring the city. Writing Brooklyn into my books wasn’t hard because I lived there for two decades, but I’m new to Chicago. A few day trips won’t make me an expert on the South Side but I hope Chicago kids will still appreciate seeing their city featured in Book #3.

If you’re free on Tuesday, join us for our session at the Boston Book Festival; on Thursday I’ll be part of a panel on “In Between Reads” for School Library Journal‘s Day of Dialog. I’m recording a few other talks that will be available later this month. And somehow I will find a way to write a thousand words a day!