In 1998, I moved to Kansas City from Chicago in search of a new start. In 1999, I enrolled in the graduate writing program at the University of Missouri -- Kansas City. I kept working full time, and it took me four years to complete a two-year program ... four years of nights and weekends spent absorbing a novel a week, my short stories and poetry, detailed analyses of the merits or not of some other writer's work. 

Whenever someone asked me why I was doing it, I replied it wasn't for my work, I just wanted the degree.

I lied to myself.

I was afraid I couldn't make it as a writer, and if I told everyone I was going back to school to get better at it, then of course they would expect me to fulfill on that expectation. At the time, I'd been writing since third grade but had only had a few poems published here in there in the sort of chapbooks short on white space and long on printing margins. And also? The writing program itself was quickly shattering my confidence.

Advanced degrees will do that. You might be a big fish in the little pond of high school or even college, but when you get into a masters program, everyone there is paying dearly in money and time to accomplish something -- and they might be better at it than you are.

My ego took a huge beating. I had never undergone a serious writers workshop before -- the kind in which you turn in your short story and then sit there, silent, taking notes, while everyone around you describes what they liked and hated about it. They always started with the encouragement, of course, and I appreciated that, but I was eager and remiss to get to the part that would actually improve the work -- the critiques. And, they were sort of brutal. At that point in my writing career, my skin was translucent, it was so thin. I couldn't even handle criticism of my grammar, let alone my characters or plot. I held it together in class, usually, but the drive home would be clouded by tears. The worst part? The classes were at night, so they always ended at nineish or later and I would go home and be up until midnight contemplating my writerly sins.

Then I'd get up and go to work and if anyone asked, I'd tell them I just wanted to be a better writer, even if it never went anywhere.

And that was a lie.

Last Friday, I was gratified to spend a mind-blowing day with a bunch of truth-tellers at BlogHer Writers '11. 

Beginning Thursday night with the opening reception, I talked to writers who were being completely honest with themselves: They wanted to write a book. They wanted to succeed. They were prepared to own that, with all the fear of rejection and potential social humiliation that might come of it. It wasn't a huge group -- around 200 or so -- and I got a chance to talk to probably a third of them over the course of the day. My biggest takeaway? 

Stop lying to yourself. 

Stop telling yourself you don't really care.

Stop telling yourself you can't handle rejection.

Stop telling yourself you'll only try until a certain date or some other arbitrary deadline.

Stop telling yourself you can only achieve success by one path.

Stop telling yourself it matters to your friends or family if you don't hit it out of the park immediately.

Stop telling yourself you have no platform, nothing to share.

Stop telling yourself the only book you have in you is based on your blog.

Start listening to writers like Kathy Cano-Murillo, Jean Kwok, Ann Napolitano and Dominique Browning who shared their roads to success, bumps and all, and realize it's never painless, it's never easy, and it's always worth it.

Start believing in yourself (a command delivered to me by someone I was supposedly mentoring, ouch, when I fell back into I'm-an-imposter patterns out loud, eek).

Start setting smaller goals: 500 words, one query, one scene outlined. Move forward every week, no matter how tiny that move might feel.

Start surrounding yourself with positive people and other writers.

Start reading everything you can get your hands on and noting what you like or don't like about that writer's style.

Start scheduling time with yourself to work on your craft. Schedule it like it's a meeting or you won't do it.

Start saying "when" instead of "if." Success comes to those who are relentless in their pursuits.

Start telling yourself the truth. In my case, the truth is this: I want to be a published novelist. I wish it were enough for me to be a published anthologist, but it's not. So I'm taking the next steps.

I left on Saturday morning having spent a lot more time alone with my thoughts than I normally do at conferences. On the plane ride home, I took a lot of notes for the next novel and made lists of how I could support the one I'm currently querying. It occurred to me if you had told 1999 Rita walking into UMKC's registrar's office for the first time I'd be doing that on the way home from speaking at a national writing conference, I would've punched you for getting my hopes up. Back then, I was afraid to hope.

Funny how the world works.

October 23, 2011: The first time my daughter said, "I hate you."

Somehow I made it until second grade, seven and a half years without hearing those words. I knew it was coming, the closer she got to tweendom, the faster and harder the attitude came, and these past few months have spawned a love of pop music and a need to wear fashionable shoes, and I knew it was coming.

Today she and a neighbor friend got in a fight, and I said the friend couldn't stay for dinner. Even though I'd said she could an hour earlier. Even though I'm not sure my girl even wanted her to stay. The friend burst into tears and I dug in: "If you two are going to fight, the day's over," I said, despite their protests, despite their cries of agony. I only had one child for many reasons, and one of them is this: I don't break up fights.

On the way across the street to walk the friend home, she said, "I hate you." Quietly. But not under her breath. And though I've been expecting it all these years, my skin tingled and my stomach twisted.

We deposited the friend at home and I deposited my girl in her room to ponder her sins. And then I went to the sink and stood, washing cupcake pans and crying as though my heart would break.

Beloved rubbed my shoulders as he passed by.

"I know this is part of being a good mom," I sobbed. "But it sucks so much."

He rubbed my shoulders again and left.

We made up less than an hour later. She's an impetuous seven. I told her how much it hurt me while knowing that I couldn't appear to be the destroyed mother, that I had to be the locked door. Children need boundaries. Children need something strong to rail against. The worst thing I could do for her is to let her manipulate me because she hurt my feelings.

I know this.

But this, October 23, 2011, is the first day my daughter said she hated me.

And I'll never forget it.

Hello friends! I hope you're having a super week. I'm going off the grid for a few days so I thought I'd leave you with this weekend roundup a bit early. Enjoy! Also, a couple of fun media things. I've been meaning to share that a cute little picture of me, Laurel, and Violet is included in the October issue of Parents Magazine, along with a quote in an article on 10 healthy cities for families (Boston ranked #2!). And yesterday I was honored to learn that I was named to the Top 50 Twitter Moms of 2011 list at Babble (and #1 for most likeable...how sweet is that?). Thanks Babble, and definitely check out the rest of the women on the list -- I know many of them and they are truly awesome!
Now, on to the picks for this weekend!

1. A harvest festival in Beacon Hill.

2. Join the pumpkin party at the Boston Nature Center (BYOP or buy one on-site).

3. A quintessentially fall tradition in Boston.

4. Enjoy the pretty at Acton Open Studios.

5. Rock out with Bari Koral in Brookline.

6. Or for classical music lovers: the Boston Youth Symphony (known as GBYSO when I played with them back in high school) is playing this Sunday.

7. A good pick for Berenstain Bears fans.

8. A Halloween romp in Easton.

9. Celebrate the Mystic River.

10. A haunted playground in North Reading.

11. Critter inspired festivities at Boo at the Zoo.

12. A great pumpkin fest at the EcoTarium in Worcester.

And if you'd like to pick apples and pumpkins or get lost in a corn maze, check out this roundup from last week.

I admittedly tend to shy away from plastic toys, but we recently caved and bought the Perplexus Maze Game, which Laurel couldn't stop talking about after learning about it from classmates. And I have to admit that this game is ridiculously fun. The 3D sphere comprises one long, convoluted maze track including three different entry points -- so, for example, you don't have to start at the beginning if you've already mastered section 1 of the maze. Following the maze requires careful rotation and keeping your eye on the ball.
The maze manages to be challenging (I'm still stuck on track section 2) yet doable (Laurel has already figured out track section 2), and the cognitive psychologist in me wonders whether the lasting enjoyment of this game relates to the fact that you're so concentrated on the track as you rotate that you rarely look at the big picture -- meaning, the maze always seems to look new and different when you approach it. Battery free and super fun for all (even baby Vi likes coming over and rolling it around on the floor...I think the sound of the marble rolling around inside appeals) -- it's a fantastic toy for home and travel.

Today's post is in response to Addy's writing prompt, thank you, Addy! 

Changing seasons means the holidays are coming. What are your plans, hopes, fears and dislikes for that time of the year? Do you make resolutions or just watch everyone else break theirs? Will you have a neighborhood celebration this year? Too many questions?

I like parties. Thus, I like the holidays, even though I always shrug them off immediately after like a wet coat. (I have been known to take down my Christmas tree first thing in the morning on 12/26 if I am close enough to it.)

The thing about holidays: they make you realize another year has gone by. And yay! Right? I mean, you're still alive! Consider the alternative! But at the same time I get bittersweet and nostalgic, which I hate. Hate? Here's why: If you focus to much on how great things were years and years ago, you miss out on how great they are now. I find myself getting really nostalgic for when I was a kid instead of focusing on making my daughter's holidays ones that she'll be nostalgic for later. I have to remind myself this is her childhood. These are her memories. Get out of your head, Rita.

The holidays, now? Are not about me. I don't sacrifice my whole life for my child, but holidays? Yeah. Sort of do. I'm okay with it, because from the minute that little redhead appeared in my life, life has been different. I can try to tell myself it's not, but yeah, totally is. Before I had a kid, did I consider 8 pm to be crazy ass late to be out, driving, on a road?

There's not as much downtime. Not as much money. Not as much freedom. Initially I felt sort of sorry for myself because of that, then a few years rocketed past and I realized how much life there will be on the other end of this childrearing business when she's off in her own apartment calling and asking how to boil water and I'm finishing work and looking into a full evening of Whatever the Hell I Want. (That does seem unfathomable now, as I type it.)

So I will subject myself to lines and crowds and uncomfortable sweaters and too many cookies and TV specials I've seen 1763 times in order to give her something to be nostalgic about.

I had a fantastic time experimenting more deeply (i.e., beyond the IKEA runs I've used the service for in the past) with TaskRabbit as the Boston spokeswoman for their Do More. Live More. Be More. campaign. I shared my mid-month recap a couple of weeks ago; below are my thoughts now that the campaign has come to a close. Also, read on for a discount code so you can give TaskRabbit a spin!

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Here are the 6 general buckets I planned on working on at the beginning of the campaign:

Purging. Well, I still haven't gotten around to this one in a big way, partly because I haven't had a chance to go through my basement, and partly because I unloaded a bunch of Violet and Laurel's outgrown clothes at Isis and Family Swap Day when I was changing over their wardrobes for the season. I will keep this on my TaskRabbit to-do list because I still want to lighten our household load!

Pickups. I cannot say enough how fantastic TaskRabbit is for pickups, particularly since we are a one-car family and I almost never have the car during the weekdays. The service has proven handy for random pickups (e.g., drugstore, hardware store) as well as more specialized runs (e.g., birthday cakes, CSA). Last week I also experimented with using the service to pick me up at home and drop me off somewhere; it ended up being a little more expensive than a cab, but was definitely more pleasant!

Event planning. I haven't needed event planning help since Pivot (during which TaskRabbit was insanely helpful) but I'm planning a baby shower in early November and probably will use the service to help me take care of various things.

Household. As I mentioned in my mid-month post, almost all of Jon and my household to-do's cannot be outsourced. However, I was thrilled to be reminded by Rookie Moms Heather and Whitney (who participated in the same campaign as the Bay Area spokeswomen) about using TaskRabbit for yard work. I cannot believe I didn't think of this earlier! We don't have a huge yard, but weeding and general upkeep has completely fallen to the wayside since Violet arrived. I'm totally going to post to have someone take care of that! Probably in advance of the baby shower I'm hosting.

Travel. I haven't yet used TaskRabbit for travel errands but I have a couple of trips coming up and will probably use them last minute to help me square up on logistics. Or better yet, to deliver a few surprises to Jon and the girls while I'm away.

Virtual assistant. As I mentioned mid-month, outsourcing work matters is hard for me, but the other week I gave it a go and had a rabbit do some data entry and research for me. It was fantastic and I will totally do it again. I also like Heather and Whitney's idea of hiring a rabbit to distribute promotional postcards. Since I operate Boston Mamas on a shoestring I don't take out ads or anything like that. So this would be a fun "small budget" way to help get the word out about my site.

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Concluding thoughts:

This outsourcing experiment has been really fantastic, and I'm grateful to TaskRabbit for asking me to be a part of the campaign. It's also been great to see how far TaskRabbit has come. When I first tested out the service, I was a very happy customer, but since that time, they have added a lot of features to improve the interface. Some of my favorites:

No cash needs to change hands when rabbits need to be reimbursed for purchases. This was a concern back when I first used TaskRabbit for IKEA runs because understandably, not all rabbits were psyched about plunking down large sums on their credit card for someone they didn't know. Now, all purchase reimbursements are handled on the TaskRabbit system. (So, the rabbit still needs to pay the expense, but they will be guaranteed reimbursement because task assigner's billing information is stored securely on the site.)

You can now set up tasks to recur. This has been handy for our CSA pickup as it saves on reposting time. (You also can repost previous tasks individually and update details.)

You can hire favorite rabbits to take care of tasks. I love this feature as it allows me to give first dibs to my favorite rabbits. What can I say, I'm loyal.

Similar to a coffee punch card, you can earn a free task for every three completed tasks. Sweet!

In short, I think TaskRabbit is a fantastic service for anyone who needs help with, well, anything. As an entrepreneur and a mother of two, I've found it particularly helpful to both lighten my load so I can be a happier, more engaged parent/wife/person in general, and also because the reality is that as someone who runs multiple businesses, it's often more time and cost effective for me to outsource small, not that complicated projects during time where I can work on large billable projects for clients.

Finally, I wanted to note that every single rabbit I have met through TaskRabbit has been courteous, on time, and really nice. To date, they have delivered on what I have asked them to do in every instance. Rabbits to the rescue, indeed.

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So, want to give TaskRabbit a spin? Of course you do! Use code PAL2676 to receive $10 off your first task. Happy outsourcing!

I hope you enjoyed the gorgeous weekend! Ours was full of fun stuff like soccer, play dates, baking (to celebrate our oven finally being fixed we made pumpkin bread and spinach pie...yum), and a stellar dinner at Oleana to celebrate my birthday. So. lovely. Meanwhile, I hope you're gearing up for a fantastic week; here some fun event ideas, spanning Halloween festivities, theatrical spectacle, nature exploration, relaxation for the whole family, water sport, and a pick for parents of girls. Enjoy!

Image credit: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This post was written in response to Alexandra's writing prompt from Friday. Thank you to all who responded to my blog block request for prompts. I love them all and will use them when I get blocked, thank you!

Alexandra wrote: If I could, if I may, I would love to ask you to write something for us, telling us we can do it. We can get that book done. We can write. That's what I'd wish for.

Floodgate: opened.

A few people emailed me last week to ask if I am abandoning my young adult novel, Empty Plate. I'm absolutely not. I already wrote my horrible, unpublishable first novel. I believe in Empty Plate. But I'm at the point in the querying process in which it's not fun anymore. When I mentioned this to a few mentors, they all said the same thing: Keep querying, but start your next book.

I resisted. I'm a linear person. I like things to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I don't even like to read more than one book at once, let alone try to write more than one. Here's what I wanted to happen: I wanted to write Empty Plate, get an agent within three months and a publisher within six, a hardback, a paperback, a movie option and an award within the following two years. THEN I wanted to start my next book.

Go ahead, finish laughing. I'll wait.

But that's the dream, right?

Guess what? It didn't happen that way.

I've been sort of moping around lately because it's no fun to sell stuff, at least in my opinion. At this point, I still want to go the traditional publishing route, so I still need an agent, and I can tell from the feedback I'm getting at this point it's a matter of finding the right person. The feedback is no longer about needing more plot in the first fifty pages or having too many characters introduced too quickly or having too much exposition (these were real earlier comments from agents). Now it's more you're a fine writer with a good platform, thanks for the look, but it's just not right for my list. Which is good, actually.

I'm looking for the right person to love it in the way it deserves to be loved, in the way that I love it. I may never find an agent to love it the way I love it, and if that happens, then I have two choices: I can go with a new self-publishing or hybrid publishing model -- and there are more and more of them out there that are interesting to me -- or I can try to find an agent to love my next novel, sell that and then when someone says, "Hey, do you have anything else?" I can say, OMG, I just happen to have a finished YA novel AND a picture book, what do you know? Because I have also heard stories of that happening. I've heard all kinds of stories about nobody caring about a book and then the author has a commercial hit and all the sudden his or her backlist is hot, hot, hot. (Cut to the depressing part about publishing being a business.)

Alexandra wanted me to write something for her, for you, for anyone reading this blog who wants to hear she can do it.

Here it is, my friend: You can do it. But (and here's where I struggle so much to take my own advice) you really do have to do it for you. If you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror at the end of your life and say, "I may not have done everything I wanted to do in life, but dammit, I wrote a novel," then you can do it. I'll get to how to go about that in a minute, but feeling that motivation is the first, best part. If you don't have the fire in the belly, you probably will never finish your novel. And -- here's where I have to take my own advice -- you'll never write more than one. It can't just be fire in the belly for that book, it has to be for writing, your own writing.

I forget that important truth all the time.

In the midst of querying Empty Plate not being fun, I had lunch with a friend of mine last week who is a nationally emerging fine artist. We were talking about process and I was telling him about the feedback I've had initially on Empty Plate and how it has changed and how for a while I got paralyzed not knowing whom to believe and growing afraid I'd edit something that was good into something that was a Frankenfuck. I lost my way for about three months, really lost it, then a former professor of mine stepped in and started giving me very granular, very concise critiques that helped me refocus on what I wanted the book to be. It's a far better novel now than it was when I started and better than it was at the beginning of summer, and it's at a place where could it be better? I'm sure it could. But I like it like this. I am ready to call it good. And my friend said knowing when to stop is a hard thing for any type of artist.

Then he said something more important: Sometimes you also have to do it because it's fun for you: You have to have the confidence that fun for you is also good enough for the world. You have to believe that what you think is good is what is good and then convince others to agree with you. And that takes juegos, you know? It totally does. As he was talking I was remembering the movie Pollack and sort of nodding my head.

But there's more: In order to break those rules you have to prove you really did understand them in the first place. In order to begin anew, you have to have already mastered the rules way of doing things.

He started talking about a painting he'd done in which he had warm images and didn't use cool shadows (which I guess is important, though I know nothing about art). And then he made the girl's hair purple and a line on her face blue and BAM it started to be really fun because rules, schmules. I saw the painting hanging in the wall of a gallery and also a version of it is on the cover of drawing pads.

I pointed out that works for him, it's showing off, in fact, because he's such a stunning realistic artist that he can make an oil painting look exactly like a photograph, so you know, the blue, that's just laughing in the face of everything, that's why people like it. And he challenged me to find my purple hair. Write the next novel the way I want it just because it is fun for me. To be good enough to break the rules.

I needed that kick. I needed it bad.

I started crying on the way home because I do want Empty Plate to see the light of day very much. And I want to write something just because I think it's fun. I desperately want to be that good.

But there's a part of me that is terrified to do that because I still feel like a writing imposter all the time, like my successes are not enough to be considered worth it, like if I haven't made the NYT bestseller list then I'm not really a writer. And you know what? If I made the bestseller list, I know me: I'd say I hadn't been on there enough consecutive weeks. It's me, and I can make life really painful if nothing is ever good enough.

Don't be like me. Especially as a writer -- there's enough rejection in the process, God knows -- don't build it in by doing it to yourself.

So I'm starting again, another project, and this one's for fun. This one -- screw rules about exposition or showing and telling or the timing of narrative arcs or dialogue versus description. This time I'm going to see if I'm good enough to throw in purple hair without destroying the girl's face. I'm going to try to be patient with myself and let it take as long as it takes instead of trying to complete a timeline like I did with Empty Plate. (I gave myself a year to write and a year to find an agent and I am approaching the end of that timeline, so, well, now I've just made myself miserable over a completely arbitrary self-imposed deadline -- you see how great that is? Yeah, it's not so great.)

Enough about the why, here's a little about the how. Breaking the rules doesn't mean having no process at all.

I'm going to try to have some fun. You can do it if I can do it, because I am truly my own worst enemy.

Right now, I'm reading a ton. I'm eavesdropping. I'm getting out of my house and talking to friends, especially creative friends, as much as possible. I'm paging through books I love and trying to remember what I loved about them. I have a new notebook just for this novel and I'm carrying it around, writing down every great sentence, every memory of an interesting time, sometimes just one word I want to use, fragments, bits of news stories, anything I might want to bake in. I have no idea what the next novel is about, though I have an idea for a theme. 

I will do this for a few weeks until I have the theme down. Then I'll create three acts and try to figure out what the main event is in each act. I imagine novels as movies in my head. It's my process -- yours may be different. Then I figure out 3-5 scenes for each chapter. I start with ten chapters per act. All this changed a million times during the writing of my first horrible unpublished novel and with Empty Plate. 

When I'm ready to write, I schedule two-hour blocks of time with myself, usually from 8-10 pm after the little angel has gone to bed. I put headphones in my ears with the kind of music for the time period I'm writing in (Empty Plate was set in the nineties, so there was a lot of stuff I grew up with on my headphones). I start writing out the scenes I imagined in my head. I try to get ten pages in that two hours, very rough, not good, just barfing out the plot. 

I don't reread, I just go from the outline, barf, barf, barf, until I have the first draft.

Then I start paying attention to the stuff you're supposed to pay attention to. With Empty Plate I made a pass for each narrative arc, then a pass for character development, then a pass for good sentences, then five thousand more passes of just complete freaking out.

This time I hope to make a pass for do I fucking like it? Not will they like it?

This time I hope to write more to please me. I am pleased with Empty Plate, but it took probably way longer to get there than it would've had I just cared more what I thought. 

Sleep Is for the Weak was a completely different process, as it was an anthology and there were twenty-five people in addition to me. I'm doing a mentoring session on anthologies next week at the BlogHer Writers Conference and maybe will talk a little more about that here or there in the future -- anthologies are less interesting to me at this moment in time than novels, but I certainly learned a lot about them, too.

The point is that you can do it. Do you want to do it? Why do you want to do it? And will you be able to make sure you're still having fun? Don't lose sight of that. I have lost sight of it in the past six months, and that's too bad.

I think half of this gig is knowing when to start as well as when to stop.

As part of Momversation and Ragú®'s Mom's the Word on Dinner Program, I recently chatted with Daphne Brogdon and Caroline Murphy about grocery shopping with kids. I've embedded the video below for your viewing pleasure (it's about two and a half minutes long) and would love to hear whether you find family outings to the grocery store super helpful, utterly exhausting, or somewhere in between. Feel free to weigh in below in the comments or over at the Ragú® Sauce Facebook page (where a very lively convo is brewing!).
http://player.deca.tv/player.swf?embedCode=c3MHV2MjqBDJKq8mZNtI9AD7i2qV1HgD&version=2

Note: This video was produced in partnership with Ragú® and Momversation's Mom's the Word on Dinner Program. You can find out more about the program and join in on the conversation at the Ragú® Sauce Facebook page.

Image credit: digitalart via FreeDigitalPhotos.net