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My birthday is next week. The little angel's is in a few months. She's not little anymore -- she'll be 14. So will this blog.

Everything I start to write I just select and delete. I'm not really sure what I want to say. It's a new year ... 2018. This year (next week), I will turn 44. My daughter in April will turn 14. My marriage in June will turn 17. 

God, the passage of time is relentless, isn't it?

We've started talking about when Lily ... I always had this grand plan of doing a great outing of her identity when she turned thirteen, but I'm almost a year too late ... the little angel's name is Lily Jane Arens ... will soon be driving and have an even greater level of independence ... of even when she will graduate and leave the house ... not because we want that to happen or because we're looking forward to it, but because it is actually going to happen, and if we don't prepare for it, it will catch us by surprise. 

I thought I would do this great outing, but it turns out that the world moved on while I wasn't looking, and she doesn't need my help at all. I got her Twitter and her URL reserved when she was born, and now it's possible that tech is outdated for her generation. 

Ha!

My daughter doesn't need me to shepherd her into the digital world. I thought she would, but she doesn't. Funny, considering my career trajectory. Nothing can prepare us for what comes next.

I'm all over but I haven't been here in a while and I think I might in fact be the only person who still reads this blog. If that's the case, ha, Rita, can you even believe you're writing this on the Chromebook you asked for at Christmas after getting jealous of Lily's light little device? Or that I'm still working on Parker Cleaves but no longer feel even the slightest trace of guilt that it's taking so long? That I no longer expect anyone will notice if I publish another book, nor do I feel too bad about that?

Who is this evolved individual who doesn't torture herself over lack of writerly accomplishment? Oh, me, the one who worked and worked for just such things and realized the world can still move on, no matter how much you hate that.

I come back to this space because it's still mine, as long as Typepad maintains its death grip. The app already stopped working about six months ago, so who knows what will become of Surrender, Dorothy when Typepad goes belly up. I used to save everything down once a month, but at this point, I'm a cowgirl. I'm all, "hey, I can create new words if the old ones go away." That is crazy. Who am I to not worry about losing past work? Who am I to believe my big fat brain can conjure up new ones if the old ones get flushed?

There is comfort and joy as a creative to trust you will make new words that will be just as good as the old ones. I spent half my life worrying I would lose what I had written. It has only been in the past few years I've learned to trust that there are more where all the old ones came from. My stories will just get better because they'll be informed by everything that came before, and more and more is coming before.

I started my career when I was half as old as I will be next week. 

I've been thinking about that girl I was then.

I've been thinking about fear, and career paths, and money, and making it work. I've been thinking about being hit by a bus or really bad cancer tomorrow. I've been thinking about what it will feel like when my daughter leaves home. 

I've been looking in the mirror and asking, what's next?

And I've realized, if I ever stop asking what's next --- shoot me now.

Since I last posted, I've had a lot of tumultuous change. Suffice it to say my car was totaled, among other things. I'm fine, though, and will continue to be fine, because I'm the protagonist in my own story, and protagonists with no obstacles are boring and nobody likes them. I'm so not boring this month!

Here's one of the reasons! I was chosen as the Missouri chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI)'s September featured author. This is a huge deal for me, as I love everything SCBWI does and so appreciate their efforts to provide education, networking and exposure for their members.

Here's an excerpt of the interview:

Where and when do you write?

There are two bits to writing – the actual writing and the thinking about the writing. When I’m really stuck somewhere in the physical writing, it becomes difficult for me not to think about it incessantly.

I do my actual writing in my local library one night a week after my day job. I usually bring my daughter along so she can do her homework while I write. I’ve tried writing late at night, in the early morning, on road trips, in cafes on Saturday afternoons, and I can’t focus unless I’m in the library and still relatively fresh mentally. This means I don’t get very far very fast, but thinking about writing a lot when I’m not actually in the library helps me to be very ready when the opportunity finally arises.

To read the rest, go to Missouri's chapter page.

Another reason! I'll be speaking at KidLitCon in Wichita, Kansas, in October. And I'm bringing my daughter to a conference for the first time. Moments. Come and see me if you're in the area -- I've seen the tentative schedule and it's fabulous.

Onward.

Last week I met with my trusted reader, my former thesis advisor, or the guy who I can hear say, "I liked parts of it" without wanting to kill him, about PARKER CLEAVES.

The nice thing about having a good reader is you have someone to draw out of you what you were trying to say (and failing to say) in the first place.

Sometimes I feel like it's pointless to try to write novels with a full-time job and a family, but really, it's the same task whether there are other things in your life or not.

At this juncture, I only really write once a week for an hourish on this novel. I write for work, I'm writing NOW, for God's sake, but that's different. This doesn't even make sense and I'm typing it on an obsolete app that for some reason is still on my phone.

However, I pointed out to my reader and to myself, I think about my books all the time.

Tonight I tried something new. I wrote out the 5-6 problems we identified. I numbered them. I picked (my energy being low) what I thought would be easiest to attack and started going through the ms dribbling sentences here and there like melted popsicles with the corresponding number. (Aided by visuals -- it was an already marked-up draft, so I had to highlight the dribble sentences literally in pink.)

I wrote until the iPhone duck quacked that the little angel's riding lesson was over and it was time to regroup at home for dinner.

I think I wrote maybe 300 words tonight. I'm sure this lame post is at least as long as what I wrote.

This is how it goes sometimes. You fight for the feedback, then you fight for the writing time, then the goddamn duck quacks and you're only organizationally closer to a finished novel.

But I still try. There's that.

Back in the lab again.

I spent the winter full of Library Tuesdays working on revising my second novel, THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, after realizing I hated it and it wasn't ready for query AT ALL. I ended up doing the usual cutting of 10,000 words and rearranged whole sections and considered dumping the entire thing because ohmygodIsuckatnovels.

It's a little short right now, but I'm at that point where I don't know what it needs to edge it into recommended length. And then there's that part of me that wonders why those rules even apply when so many people read books digitally and word count was probably made up by someone more looking for the sweet spot in printing costs rather than pondering how many words it takes to tell a good story. Then my mind goes into an existential crisis about the relevance of anyone's words long-term and it's time for a snack.

Last weekend while we were driving home from my MIL's house in Cedar Rapids, I elected to sit in the back seat, determined to make the final pass through my printed-out manuscript before I hand it off to a trusted reader. I didn't know what I'd find. Before I printed it, I moved so many sections around I wasn't sure if I'd need to write more connective tissue or what. It surprised me that so many scenes that I mushed together out of three or four little orphaned pieces chapters apart made any sense at all. Obviously I kept thinking she should really talk to her dad again more than once but didn't write enough in any one place to have a scene. This writing thing is stupid hard.

I've spent the past three years working on this novel. There are parts I really like, and then I'm certain if I read it in two weeks I'll actually hate it. I think right now there are maybe five good sentences in the whole damn thing. Tonight I'm going to the library to make the final corrections from the backseat and move a few more sections around, then I should let it steep for a few weeks before I read it again.

I don't know if I can bear to read it again.

But I don't trust myself to be even remotely right about anything when it comes to my writing these days. My daughter asked me if I liked revising, most likely catching a glimpse of my anguished expression in the rearview mirror. It's hard to explain. Do I like running, even when it hurts? Do I prefer to have run but hate the process? Writing is kind of like running.

I love it, I hate it, I'm ambivalent about it. Which means it's probably getting close to being done or thrown out.

It's been 17 days since I broke my right leg, and the healing clock starts over on Wednesday. That's the day they are going to put a plate and some pins in there!

I'm really trying not to think about this surgery too much because I don't like the idea of having things screwed into my bones, even if it does mean they'll heal properly and I'll be able to run again ... someday. Right now that day feels very, very far away, my friends. Right now even being able to leave the house by myself in a car feels unattainable ever again, though that's dramatic and I know it. Still, one of the fun things about being an adult is being able to get the hell away from other human beings if you want to because no one is the boss of you. Except ice. And snow. And crutches. And an aircast on your driving leg.

I spent the weekend vacillating between pity parties and rocketing myself around big-box stores on my crutches just because large, wide walkways are something I don't have in my house and they feel decadent. I never thought I would beg to be taken to Target just for fun without giving birth to another baby. It turns out if you want to recreate that longing for freedom breastfeeding induces, all you have to do is break your driving leg. Who knew?

I've decided to take a hiatus from working on THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES until after the good drugs wear off from my surgery. It's been nearly a month since I took a Library Tuesday, and I fully intend to demand someone drive me there for an hour coming up soon so I can continue to write. I was getting close to being done adding new scenes and ready to go for another scrub pass before my broken leg and my daughter's school break blew the doors off my best-laid plans.

Today, though, that, too, feels so far away. I know in the grand scheme of things this will pass so quickly, but six more weeks on crutches before I can even dream of putting weight on my right foot seems like a really long row to hoe at the moment.

At the beginning of the school year, I instituted Library Tuesdays. On Library Tuesdays, I and anyone in my family who wants to (or needs to) come with me heads out to the public library with novel-in-progress or homework or book in tow. I get there, I set the timer on my phone for an hour (longer would be nice, but I have to be realistic about how late I can push dinner since this is after my full-time job), I put on my headphones and I work on whichever novel I'm focusing on at the time.

This is my latest iteration of Project Find Time to Write. Last year, my husband traveled so much I tried instituting Saturday blocks of time for myself, even going so far as to put them on both my and his calendars, but life didn't cooperate. There were always family plans or birthday parties or something that cut into my writing time until I was never getting anything done and feeling more and more lethargic about fiction and guilty about not writing.

The year before that, I tried to have Tuesdays after dinner be my writing time, with my husband taking over bedtime duties for our girl, but then sometimes he had a late meeting and sometimes we ate late and sometimes I couldn't bring myself to sit at the same desk where I spend ten hours a day at my day job and write more.

The year before that, my daughter was still in ballet and I used the hour and a half of her classes twice a week to write, and that was kind of nirvana for writing me, but it was awful for parent me because she ended up hating ballet so much she cried every time we made her go. (Still, writing me was pretty sad to have that custom-carved two blocks of time a week dance away on little abandoned ballet slippers.)

In the eleven years since I became a working parent, I've tried so many things in the name of finding time to write. I've booked meetings with myself in abandoned conference rooms over my lunch hour. I've holed up in Panera for five or six hours at a time while my husband and daughter hit a state fair or lone trip to visit his family. I've written on six-hour roadtrips, headphones planted in my ears while my husband listened to sports radio and my daughter napped or watched a portable DVD player as she got older.

One thing that has never grown easier: finding the time to write. The location changes, but the struggle lives on.

After more than a decade of living this struggle, I've realized finding the time comes down to making  necessary changes in two areas: location and methodology.

One: I can't find time to write fiction at home. Some may find this unusual since I work my fulltime job as managing editor of BlogHer at home, but normally during my workday the only folks home are my cat and occasionally my husband, but he is also working and thus not trying to distract me. However, if I try to write on a weekend or weeknight, there is a child who would like my attention, please, but there are also a zillion other chores and events that must be squeezed into nights and weekends in order to keep the house from dissolving under a pile of trash or my child from walking around with her toes sticking out the ends of her too-small shoes.

Two: I can't actually write fiction on a computer anymore. I used to be able to pull out a laptop in the car or what have you, but I just don't have it in me now. After almost twenty years spent sitting at a computer for the bulk of my workweek days, the last thing I want to look at in my copious free time is another damn screen. So, I don't draft on the computer anymore. I type up what I've written after the fact, but I don't compose with a cursor these days.

My current way of separating out Library Tuesdays and my novel writing from the day job is to write longhand in a notebook preferably at the library but at the very least somewhere that is not my house where I am not surrounded by my family.

I've temporarily abandoned my third novel-in-progress to go back to THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, which I realized isn't done yet after seeing a pattern in query rejections and getting some insight from a novelist friend.

A few Library Tuesdays ago, I emailed the manuscript to my Kindle and went through the whole thing making notes, highlighting parts to cut and figuring out what sucked. Then I compared the Word document against my Kindle and cut 7,000 words and made a bunch of notes. Then I printed out the manuscript. And now I haul the printed manuscript plus my notebook and headphones to the library, pick a section I've marked to rewrite, elaborate upon or grow a new head, and write longhand for one hour.

When I first started doing this, it was hard to get to an hour. It felt like a chore. I questioned whether to abandon PARKER CLEAVES altogether. It wasn't until after I made those deep cuts that it started getting fun again and I was surprised when my alarm when off.

The hard part about writing novels on top of a day job (though I'm sure it's hard on top of any sort of life) comes, for me, in finding the pay-off. At first I thought the pay-off would be financial or in reputation. Then when neither of my first two books blew the roof off the publishing world, I thought the pay-off would be social, in that it would be give me something to talk about. Then I realized when I'm in the thick of it, I don't want to talk about what I'm working on at all. Finally, I realized the pay-off comes at the end of Library Tuesday, when I pack up my stuff and count up the new pages and realize that I am four baby steps closer to another finished, published novel.

It comes when I sit down to type what I wrote and think maybe it's a little better than what I cut.

It comes from looking at the stack of paper I just printed and thinking that even though it might be done yet, I did that, and I am doing that, and I'm doing that even though it's not my job to do it, and it's not my public's voracious appetite for my next work to do it.

I'm just doing it because like it.

Remembering you're doing something because you like it makes it easier to prioritize.

See you at the library next Tuesday.

It's nearly time again for the Young Adult Scavenger Hunt. (woot)

We have nine outstanding teams this season. I am going to be a part of #TeamRed. The Scavenger Hunt runs from March 29 through April 3 beginning and ending at noon Pacific Time on those days.

If you've never been a part of the hunt before, you should give it a try. It runs like a giant blog hop, introducing you to new YA authors and books along the way. There are tons of prizes including a grand prize for each team.

If you win one of the grand prizes you will get a book from each author on that team! For more information and to make sure you get hunt updates, sign up for news on the #YASH website.

You don't want to miss out on this fabulous and fun event, but play fast because the hunt is only live for three days.

I hope you are all as excited as I am!

THE HUNT BEGINS 3/29/2016!

Never give up. 

That is my philosophy. In writing and, it seems, in running.

I'm querying THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES and BELLA EATS THE MONSTERS.

I just signed up for the Kansas City Marathon's Half-Marathon. It is in OCTOBER.

That should be warmer, right? 

If I just keep trying, I will eventually succeed. Because that is how it works.