I was driving to meet a friend for dinner when I heard a Robert Plant interview on the radio. I've searched in vain to find a transcript; I think it's lost to the winds of change.

---

I grew up on Led Zeppelin, as classic rock lives on in southwest Iowa today as it did in its heydey. Middle America is where time stands still for old-school rock and roll, as it does for mall hair and some forms of acid-wash jeans. There are places deep in the heart of Nebraska where I assume people are still pegging their jeans, similar to the Space Odyssey: a land where time stood still and perhaps the universe ceased to rotate for several decades. That, my friends, is western Nebraska.

Anyway, Robert Plant was talking about his creative process. He said if he listened to what people wanted him to be at this point in his career it would all be awful, that he had to create what he is now for himself. As I was driving deeper into Kansas and reflecting on my own tiny writing career, I thought to myself, wow, if Robert Plant has deep existential questions, then I am totally fucked.

But that's it, isn't it? This is all there is, for all of us, what we have in this moment. Lay down your swords, boys, this is who you are.

---

Today I worked with Laura Fraser on a session at BlogHer PRO all about putting together a book proposal, which I did for SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK in 2006 or 2007. The book came out in 2008. If I did today what I did in 2008 for SIFTW, I doubt it would have been published. If I did twenty years ago what I did for THE OBVIOUS GAME in 2011, I think it would've sold better. The fact is, the world turns, and the publishing world turns with it, and none of us really knows what's going to happen next. What worked yesterday won't work today, and works today won't work tomorrow. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Being a writer is more about the career than the book. Save yourself the pain and absorb that truth.

(I really wish there was a typed transcript of this Robert Plant interview. You're going to have to trust the paraphrase here.)

So the host was asking Robert Plant about his career (and what a career!) and Robert Plant was basically saying at this point he just does what he likes and who cares what the bastards think? (Again, I paraphrase.) That at some point, people have an expectation of you, and you have to decide whether or not to fulfill it.

I have no idea if there is an expectation of me other than what I set for myself. I'm guessing probably not.

---

Yesterday, I lost a notebook with all my ideas for my next novel on Southwest flight 699 from Kansas City to Phoenix. I've filed a claim in the hopes that my little notebook with owls on the cover has been found. The first thing I did when I got to my room was open a Word document and word vomit everything I could remember from the five-hour drive home from Thanksgiving into it. The idea is so weird anyone who finds the notebook and reads it might think I am crazy.

I'm a little crushed that I lost that notebook. I may have cried in the Phoenix airport.

And as I dried my tears, I thought of Robert Plant.

And I thought about what expectations I have set for myself.

---

Today in the BlogHer PRO session I admitted, once again, all my writerly failures. How many times I have been rejected. My ongoing search for a career agent. My many projects in all their various stages. Laura actually called me out and insisted I would do better to work my network, and I admitted to myself and to her that maybe I haven't asked more people that I know in the field to introduce me to their agents because

I

am

scared.

Even after two books, I am scared.

I want to be Robert Plant.

I want to get to the point where I make my own art, and I do not worry about where the cards may fall.

I went into the session with the hope that people would hear my part of the story and understand that the artistic gig, the publishing gig, is fraught with rejection. I would have nothing, absolutely nothing, published without the sheer force of my will. Nobody else has ever cared about it like I have.

You get up, you send more queries, you get critiques, you revise, you query again. And so on.

Thank you, Robert Plant, for reminding me that in the end, nobody cares about my art like I do.

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.

I'm in the writing valley right now, shopping some projects to agents, wondering what will happen next. I've been in this place of a different sort of work for about a month now, grinding along, sending out queries, sticking my nose weekly into my color-coded Google doc of victory and rejection. I haven't been writing at all except very sporadically here and of course for my day job. I've been reading and training for a half-marathon and watching the World Series and lying in my hammock soaking up the last rays of this unseasonably warm October. 

A few nights ago, I had one of those television dreams accompanied by smell and sound and touch. When I woke up, I had the seed of a new story. I wrote the elevator pitch in my writing notebook. I write ideas for books in there all the time, but this time was different. This wasn't just a phrase or a scene -- it was a story.

I haven't done any plotting yet. I haven't written down anything but those three sentences. I'm not ready. My head is still in the projects I'm querying.

When my agent was shopping THE OBVIOUS GAME, I forced myself to start THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES to distract myself from the waiting and watching and panic attacks, not because I really knew where I was going with it. PARKER CLEAVES started as a feeling I wanted to capture, and I hope my story wove around the feeling well enough to do its job as a vehicle. THE OBVIOUS GAME started as a series of stand-alone scenes I wanted to link together in a meaningful way to shed light on anorexia and bring hope for recovery. My process felt sort of Rubiksonian each time.

This story idea ... this is new. 

Since it happened, I've walked around remembering that I have something to be excited about the way I did when I first got engaged, first got pregnant. 

I have a story in my head! Will this keep happening? This is AWESOME.

The text came at 7 am, but I didn't see it until right before my girl and my husband were about to leave. 

"Dear parents," it began, and I knew what it was going to say. The rain outside poured down so hard it sounded angry: field trip cancelled.

Just a normal Monday. Nothing to look forward to. I met her eyes. She crumpled before me. 

As I listened to the frustration, disappointment and rage pour out of her, I thought how much I've wanted to do that in the past few weeks. Nothing in particular has happened, just the culmination of  several mountains that won't move no matter how hard I hurl myself against them. 

My husband told her about two field trips when he was a kid that were cancelled due to inclement weather. I told her about "All Summer in a Day," one of the first Ray Bradbury short stories I ever loved because of the moment the children realize what they've done to Margot, even though they really didn't mean to. I read it around my daughter's age. It was the beginning of my awareness that people can do awful things without meaning to, and they don't get a pass because they didn't mean to. You can mean to do all the good things and still screw up. And if you do, it's still your fault. And if it's your fault, but you're trying to be a good person, then maybe that means you have to cut everyone some slack.

And the world gets way more complicated.

She rested her head on my shoulder and I patted her silky red hair, wishing I could take away the rain and give her the gift of a school-free, field-trippy day, but I am not God. I don't control the rain. I couldn't even control her expectations. 

I saw the text too late to give her time to adjust. That's why the outburst came so fast and so hard.

Left to my own devices, I would've let her ride the day out on the couch, ease into the week in more of the manner her expectations expected. My husband, the more practical and old-school of the two of us, was having none of it. I retreated to my office and left him to deal with the crying child, grateful for once in his crazy traveling job he was actually here to dry the tears. 

Sometimes I need a break from drying the tears. I cry too easily myself.

My girl came home a little bit ago, wet and tired. 

It's still raining. I don't expect it will stop until tomorrow.

After I get above eight miles, my mind starts to wander. 

I've discovered while training for half marathons how much your mind can disconnect from what your body is doing. There are times when it's too hot and my legs are too heavy and my lungs are bursting and I feel my mind slamming on the brakes, ready to override my desires with heat exhaustion, if necessary, to make this crazy 40-year-old woman stop running in the heat.

There are times when my legs are fine and the euphoria sets in and the air is so awesome to breathe I want to stop and tell other people do you taste this air? Isn't this air unbelievable?

Lately the temperature's been dropping. My vision no longer gets swimmy on big hills. I don't have to press pause on Runkeeper and pant like a dog in the shade after a big uphill. And above eight miles, I have all sorts of crazy thoughts.

I just read THE INFINITE SEA by Richard Yancy. It's the second in a dystopian end-of-the-world series that does a particularly nice job of being a dystopian end-of-the-world series, in a similar way to Dexter doing a particularly nice job of being a good serial killer. Really entertaining and well paced plot but also gets the job done showing the uglier side of humanity: how we make choices, how we weigh one life against another.

Ever since I read UNDER THE DOME by Stephen King, I've been having trouble swatting flies. The metaphors have invaded Missouri.

As I run, all the latest books swim together in my head along with the plotlines of my own writing and my own life. I think (in my running-induced euphoria that can sometimes beget delusions of grandeur) that if only I could somehow write and run at the same time I could solve some proof of humanity simply by analyzing various forms of pop culture and running them against current events divided by the number of times the Gaza Strip has been bombed and squared by the population of China. 

That would be it: The answer to why we are the way we are.

It was probably around mile nine when I noticed a large bug ambling across the sidewalk in front of me. I wasn't sure exactly what kind of bug it was, probably a beetle of some sort, but it smacked of warm-weather bug. Not-gonna-survive-the-frost kind of bug. 

And it was really cold that day. 

I started stirring all the end-of-the-world dystopian plotlines and honestly wondered if the bug was contemplating whether or not this would be his last day on earth. Could the bug know about dewpoints? Frost?

I skirted around the bug, because if he was going to die, I didn't want to be the cause of it.

I wondered how high the oceans would have to rise to flood Kansas City.

The air tasted amazing.

And I ran on. 

Hello Everyone! It's that time again. We have less than two weeks until the YA Scavenger Hunt begins. I hope you reserved plenty of time for this one because there isn't just one team or two or even three. This time we have 6, that's right, I said 6 YASH teams which means more prizes, news, and fun for all you readers out there! So let's get started!

TEAM RED INCLUDES:

 

TEAM GOLD INCLUDES:

 

TEAM GREEN INCLUDES:

 

TEAM ORANGE INCLUDES:

 

TEAM INDIE INCLUDES:

 

TEAM BLUE INCLUDES:

  There are so many books here I don't even know where I would begin. I hope you all are as excited as I am! The YA Scavenger Hunt begins at noon pacific time on Thursday, October 2nd and runs through Sunday, October 5th. That means to get through the entire hunt you'll need to go through 1.5 teams per day!

Are you going to play? 

Today I'm over at Fiction Reboot|Daily Dose talking about how hard it is to write a believable teen character. Read it here.

Here I've spent the first half of 2014 thinking I could no longer run giveaways for THE OBVIOUS GAME on Goodreads because it was published in 2013. (The dropdown in the author tools area only give you options for the year prior to your pub date and the year of your pub date.) I was sad, because Goodreads giveaways are such a win/win. They are inexpensive for an author to run (you only pay for the books and shipping) and they provide exposure as each sign-up adds the book to the signee's to-read shelf, thus giving the author and the book exposure she wouldn't otherwise have had. Lately most of my dealings with THE OBVIOUS GAME have been either asking people to review it or answering emails from people who love people with eating disorders (in which really what can I say but, "Well, I wrote an entire book about what I want to say to you now, so maybe you could read that and then let me know if you want to talk more"). The answering the emails part is really hard. Really hard. But I am really glad I at least have the book to point them to.

And this is the part where I say, "Hey, if you've read THE OBVIOUS GAME, could you drop me a review on Goodreads and Amazon? It doesn't even have to be nice! Nobody likes everything." And then I follow that up by saying, "If you haven't read THE OBVIOUS GAME, mightn't you request it at your library, and if your librarian has trouble, she can contact me and I will get her the book with my author discount?" And then you might say, "But I really want to help you MORE." So of course I would smile sincerely and say, "Well, you could buy my book! Or even just share the giveaway so more people will know it exists." And then I burst into tears and throw my arms around you.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Obvious Game

by Rita Arens

Giveaway ends October 27, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

 

Enter to win

Here I've spent the first half of 2014 thinking I could no longer run giveaways for THE OBVIOUS GAME on Goodreads because it was published in 2013. (The dropdown in the author tools area only give you options for the year prior to your pub date and the year of your pub date.) I was sad, because Goodreads giveaways are such a win/win. They are inexpensive for an author to run (you only pay for the books and shipping) and they provide exposure as each sign-up adds the book to the signee's to-read shelf, thus giving the author and the book exposure she wouldn't otherwise have had. Lately most of my dealings with THE OBVIOUS GAME have been either asking people to review it or answering emails from people who love people with eating disorders (in which really what can I say but, "Well, I wrote an entire book about what I want to say to you now, so maybe you could read that and then let me know if you want to talk more"). The answering the emails part is really hard. Really hard. But I am really glad I at least have the book to point them to.

And this is the part where I say, "Hey, if you've read THE OBVIOUS GAME, could you drop me a review on Goodreads and Amazon? It doesn't even have to be nice! Nobody likes everything." And then I follow that up by saying, "If you haven't read THE OBVIOUS GAME, mightn't you request it at your library, and if your librarian has trouble, she can contact me and I will get her the book with my author discount?" And then you might say, "But I really want to help you MORE." So of course I would smile sincerely and say, "Well, you could buy my book! Or even just share the giveaway so more people will know it exists." And then I burst into tears and throw my arms around you.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Obvious Game

by Rita Arens

Giveaway ends October 27, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

 

Enter to win