424. A family walk to Sunset Park – sans jackets!

431. Jack picked a bouquet of camellias, hellebore, and rosemary and brought it to me.

442. Rereading The Shape of Mercy. Mick Silva at WaterBrook Press gave me my copy, and he managed to get Susan Meissner to sign it. The inscription reads: “Kimberlee – Live to love – Susan Meissner.” And yes, she spelled my name right and everything.

459. Sunshine.

460. Sunshine.

461. Sunshine.

473. An opportunity to write a guest post for Christine Sine’s Lenten series on her blog.

474. Writing brings me back to myself, back to the person I want to be, back to the faith I so easily abandon as I live my day-to-day life. Stories – the ones I read that resonate with me, but especially the ones I write – remind me who I am, who I want to be, what I believe, what I want to believe. I am so grateful for words.

481. The beautiful and encouraging article my friend Cathee sent me about artists whose genius only appears after sustained time and effort.

484. Read The Penderwicks on Gardam Street yesterday. It’s as delightful as the first book. A treat to read. And Jane Austen in-jokes for those of us in the know!

490. Cherry trees in bloom

499. Tea with toast.

500. Toast with Nutella.

509. Tim Dearborn’s sermon on Sunday was exactly what I needed to hear.

515. Jack composed his first rhyme last night. This morning he asked if I would write it down for him so he could copy it. Of course I could. And did. Here it is:

Ships
by Jack Ireton

Ships come. Ships go.
Some are big. Some are small.
Some meet others
that are tall.

My writer mama’s heart beats fast and proud.

517. Chocolate.

531. Dave (my editor at IVP) liked the guest post I wrote.

546. I think I know how to fix my novel. I haven’t been working on it on paper, but I’ve been working on it in my head, and this morning, it finally coalesced.

As promised, here’s the link to the guest post I wrote for Strangely Dim, the blog for Likewise (that’s the imprint my book is published under). All month they’re celebrating the Women of Likewise in honor of Women’s History Month. I doubt I’ll be making history any time soon (or ever), but you can read my post anyway.

Wishing you a blessed Lent,
Kimberlee

This year, instead of fasting from some kind of food (though my kids once again decided we should abstain from Girl Scout cookies during Lent), I’m going to do something really radical. I’m going to fast from blogging.

I know. Every speaker at every marketing seminar I’ve been to in the past year (and I’ve been to a lot – every other professional writers’ meeting I go to seems to be focused on marketing) would tell me I’m committing virtual suicide. So be it. If my blog writing has to die so my other writing can live, well, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

This is also an act of trust. I am trusting that whoever is out there reading my blog – and whoever you are, I thank you; I’m honored that you choose to spend time with me! – I am trusting you will come back in six weeks (Easter is April 4). I am trusting that my long absence will not mean starting over from zero readers come April. I am trusting that my other writing projects are worth the risk I’m taking.

I will not be a complete stranger these next weeks. I have three guest appearances scheduled on other blogs during Lent, and I’ll link to those as they go live. I may also post an author interview that’s in the works.

But mostly I’m going to ignore the siren call of the internet and focus on several other writing projects that have been whispering in my mind for some time, projects that I’ve locked in the basement because I don’t feel well, don’t have enough energy, don’t have enough time to listen to them. They’re getting loud down there, beating on the door for me to let them out. And so I don’t go totally crazy, I’m going to let them out and spend the next weeks listening to them, writing them down.

And I hope to come back excited and energized, ready for another year of blogging. (Yes, it’s really been a whole year this week since I started blogging.)

So. I’ll see you in Easter!

I read this book, which has no illustrations, to my 3-year-old daughter in one sitting. She kept asking for another chapter…and, no, it wasn’t bedtime or naptime. It was mid-morning, and she fell in love with this book.

Me, too.

I once heard Susan Patron, author of Newbery-winning The Higher Power of Lucky, speak at a conference, and she said the best piece of writing advice she’d ever received was to choose one book that she loved, a book she wished she had written, and type it up. She chose Sarah, Plain and Tall.

I can see why.

This is a nearly perfect book. (I’d say it is a perfect book, only I’m not sure there is such a thing.) I don’t think there’s a single misplaced word in the whole 58 pages. There’s certainly not a single misplaced image.

MacLachlan evokes her setting and characters clearly, simply, beautifully. She tells the reader almost nothing, and yet the pages are alive with the sights, sounds, and smells of a Midwestern farm in the mid-1800’s. They are alive with the feelings of the characters, even though emotions are almost never named. MacLachlan is a master of “show, don’t tell” and of “omit needless words.”

In the spirit of Susan Patron’s writing teacher, I thought I’d type up a few passages to share with you, so you can read for yourself some of this exquisite book (and so I can have these gorgeous words flow through my fingertips).

“I looked at the long dirt road that crawled across the plains, remembering the morning that Mama had died, cruel and sunny. They had come for her in a wagon and taken her away to be buried. And then the cousins and aunts and uncles had come and tried to fill up the house. But they couldn’t.”

“Sarah came in the spring. She came through green grass fields that bloomed Indian paintbrush, red and orange, and blue-eyed grass.”

“Matthew and Maggie came with their two children and a sack full of chickens. Maggie emptied the sack into the yard and three red banty chickens clucked and scattered. “They are for you,” she told Sarah. “For eating.” Sarah loved the chickens. She clucked back to them and fed them grain. They followed her, shuffling and scratching primly in the dirt. I knew they would not be for eating.”

“…at dawn there was the sudden sound of hail, like stones tossed against the barn. We stared out the window, watching the ice marbles bounce on the ground. And when it was over we opened the barn door and walked out into the early morning light. The hail crunched beneath our feet. It was white and gleaming for as far as we looked, like sun on glass. Like the sea.”

If you’ve not read this beautiful little gem of a book, I hope you will. Reading it is like finding a piece of perfectly smooth blue sea glass winking up at you from the sand.

3 Newbery books down; 86 to go. Next up: Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars (1971)

Here are a few things I noticed that made my heart glad:

65. Raindrops on the window and dripping from the branches of the fig tree.

69. Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck, illustrated by Mark Buehner–such a lovely story, so beautifully illustrated.

72. Once more, my morning cup of tea–which Doug faithfully makes day after day.

83. The evergreens marching along the ridge in the distance.

104. Mighty-O donuts.

118. My kids are still sleeping, so I have time to journal.

139. Kleenex.

140. No day lasts forever. They always, mercifully, end.

166. Insomnia. It means I’m up and writing at 5:02.

177. The Seattle Public Library.

200. The way both my kids mispronounce “breakfast.” Jack: breckfixt. Jane: beckfitst.

226. The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle

249. I finished writing my week of meditations on the lectionary for the 2011 Disciplines.

263. The shiny gloss of the knobs on my bedposts.

285. Bacon with breakfast.

313. Stewed prunes don’t taste as disgusting as they look.

335. Reading Winnie-the-Pooh to the kids–the real ones by A.A. Milne, not the dumbed-down Disney version.

353. I felt well yesterday.

364. Bread hot from the oven. Mmmmm.

389. Cherry blossoms.

411. Jane held my hand the entire time I was reading her “Beauty and the Beast” (from Berlie Doherty’s Fairy Tales collection).

421. It’s been a tough, even heartbreaking, week, for reasons I don’t feel at liberty to disclose, but even in the midst of dark and difficult times, God is near. We just have to keep our eyes, and our hearts, open, so we can see when and where and how He cares for us.

As we move into a new month, may each of us see the abundance of gifts and blessings that are our lives.

I’m sorry to say, my site has been hacked. You may find that you are redirected to one of several sites while reading mine. We are working to fix this (by which I mean, my computer geek/genius husband is working to fix this). In the meantime, you can thwart the hacker by disenabling JavaScript on your browser (go to tools/options or preferences).

Thanks for your patience!

Kimberlee

I am not sure Madeleine L’Engle’s book would have been published in today’s market. It starts very slow, taking three chapters to introduce all the main characters and raise a question: where is Meg’s father and why hasn’t he contacted them in over a year? The quest to find her father doesn’t begin till chapter four—page 56 in my version!

Now, I love this book, and I know the end is worth every word I read to get there. But someone who’s never read this book doesn’t know that. And from the (admittedly limited) feedback I’ve gotten about my novel, slow doesn’t hook. Of course, Madeleine L’Engle endured an entire decade of rejection when she tried to get A Wrinkle in Time published, so maybe slow didn’t hook in the 1950’s, either.

The thing is, I’m not sure how else she could have written the story. Dropping us into the middle of the quest to find Meg’s father might have worked to add more excitement right off the bat, but how to explain Calvin’s presence and Charles Wallace’s precociousness and the Missuses Whatsit, Who, and Which?

Some books are slow burners. They kindle a little interest at the beginning, introduce you to a character you want to know more about, raise a question or two that pique your interest. And then they slowly, slowly, flicker into flame until you get to the end, and there’s an enormous conflagration, and you realize with satisfaction that the fire started with that little spark and that it was, in fact, inevitable once the spark caught.

This is a book like that. It explores the nature of space and time and love and freedom, but it does so slowly, unfolding like a flower, at its own pace, in its own way. I like that—that it doesn’t try to be something it’s not (a fast-paced thriller, for instance), that it doesn’t conform to the “rules” that fiction is supposed to follow (there are, for example, several characters who make but one appearance in the story), that it, instead, reaches for something beyond those rules, for truth that can only be expressed in story, in this story, told this way.

Perhaps that is why this book ultimately won a Newbery—because it is true and beautiful and reminds us who we are and what we are capable of.

If you’ve not read this book and would like a free copy, I’m giving mine away. I warn you, though: it’s a mass market version that is hideously ugly in the way that only books printed in the 70’s can be. And it’s been well-loved (including a possible douse in the bathtub or some other body of water…). But it’s totally readable, and it’s free for the asking. Just leave a comment and Jack-the-random-number-generator will pick a winner. I’ll announce who it is next Tuesday.

2 Newbery books down; 87 to go. Next up: Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan

I am not one of those women.

In my humble opinion, pregnancy bites. Even an easy pregnancy like mine bites. The nausea, the heartburn, the nasty taste in your mouth, the chronic impaction, the sciatica, the exhaustion, the bloating, the stretching of every muscle and all the skin between your neck and your thighs, the way your body becomes this foreign entity with a mind all its own that slowly turns you into a pin-headed whale. I don’t know, somehow I’m just not feeling beautiful.

But the worst thing about pregnancy is the books it ruins.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I read A Prayer for Owen Meany. Half a dozen people whom I esteem had raved about it, and I decided to read it even though I generally don’t like contemporary American fiction (I know; ironic, isn’t it, for a contemporary American writing fiction…). Anyhoo, I’m sure Owen Meany is a good book, but I confess I can’t even think about it without feeling nauseated. What a waste.

Right now, for my book club, I’m reading Vanity Fair, a book I’ve wanted to read for years but never worked up the nerve to (it’s 698 pages with not nearly enough white space or a big enough typeface for a woman who wears bifocals), so I figured the accountability of my book club would force me to read it. I’m halfway through, and I can’t think about it without – you guessed it – feeling nauseated. I might finish it, but I doubt I’ll be reading it again, ever. Another waste of a perfectly good book.

So, in the interest of not ruining any more good books, I am hereby soliciting the titles of really bad books that I can read, books that are so bad they deserve to be associated with nausea. Anyone got a good (er, bad) one?

If I ever have to go to the proverbial desert island, this book will be in the waterproof trunk I pack. I do not even know where to begin to explain to you why I love this book, why I think everyone should read it.

But I’ll try.

First, I love the story structure. The first half of the book is comprised of four first-person short stories, each narrated by a different character, held together by short (and I do mean short) chapters about a state academic competition.

As the stories unfold, you learn that these characters are all tied to one another, that they are all on the same team competing for the state championship, and that they all have the same “lesson” to learn, though in vastly different circumstances.

The second half of the book has an omniscient narrator who recounts the team’s journey from school champions to state champions.

I know, I know. I’ve made it sound rather boring. It’s not. Even though you know from the first page that this team makes it to the state meet, somehow the story of how they get there is still suspenseful. I’m not sure how Konigsburg pulls that one off, but she does it beautifully and brilliantly.

Second, I love the characters. These are the kinds of kids I hope my children grow up to be: kind and smart and courteous and loyal.

I also love seeing these characters from multiple perspectives. Each of The Souls (the team members) narrates one of the short stories, so as a reader, you get to hear their voice, their words, their view of the world. In the other Souls’ stories, you see them from a different perspective. In the omniscient narrator’s portion of the book, you see them from the perspective of their teacher and coach, Mrs. Olinski.

Speaking of Mrs. Olinski: she’s one of the main characters of the book and we see much of the competition story from her perspective—an interesting choice in a book for young adults. But her character arc is not unlike the children’s; she has similar challenges to face and choices to make, which makes her compelling and likeable, even if she is an adult and a teacher.

Third, I love the way Konigsburg ties all the characters and all the story lines together. This is not a collection of interlocking short stories. It is a novel (with, admittedly, a highly unusual structure) because of the overarching story arc about the state academic competition and because of the thematic ties between that story and each of the four short stories.

I suspect that in most writing workshops, this book would have been torn to shreds. It violates pretty much all of the so-called rules for writing contemporary novels, especially for children. Lots of point-of-view shifts. Lots of flashbacks in big chunks. Lots of skipping around in the story’s timeline. Lots of understatement. All of which are no-nos. And yet—it works. It’s hard to imagine it any other way. Part of what makes it compelling and beautiful is its structure, its omniscience, its suspenseful dropping of one story to pick up another before circling back to the first, and its understatement. Though the story is woven together tightly on a surface level, its thematic unity reinforces and deepens the oneness of all the disparate parts.

Finally, I love that this book makes me laugh and cry. I love that even though I’ve read it before, I’m still swept up into the story. And I love the feeling of all-rightness I have when I finish it.

1 Newbery down, 88 to go. Next up: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1963)

Sounds right up my alley.

Or not. I guess maybe I don’t evoke the foreign environment of my novel perfectly. Or maybe I’m not delving into relationships with enough complexity. Not that you can tell that from the query or the first page that I sent. Or maybe you can.

Or maybe Agent #13 got 154 queries on the same day she got mine. Maybe she skimmed it. Maybe she had a headache. Maybe the query she read right before she read mine made her fingers tingle, it was that good, and mine sounded lame in comparison.

Maybe mine is lame. I don’t think it is. But what do I know? I’m just a writer sipping coffee.

Seriously, I sometimes wonder if I’m doing something wrong. I’m trying to play by the rules here, people, but the rules don’t seem to be helping me.

Oh wait.

I just remembered: Finding an Agent rule 101.26.4g stipulates that you have to send at least 35 queries and receive 34 rejections before you get an offer of representation. Well, hallelujah! I’m a third of the way there! (I hope.)