Who can help me find these things?

Attention Jacqui's Room reader(s):

I need your help finding something: July.

Like the whole month. I lost mine, apparently, because it's almost over and I can't remember what I did with it.

I mean, from the looks of this blog, you'd think I hadn't posted in two week, when in fact, I have been posting brilliant and hilarious items TWICE DAILY.*

I looked in my bag of marbles and it turns out most of them are lost too.

It's a household wide problem. Yesterday, I listened to Tink and Destructo have an extended argument entitled "Uno: are we or are we not playing with a full deck?"

In other news, I heard an all too familiar thumping and scratching sound in my attic this weekend.** Is it possible a new generation of flightless pigeons is out to get me?! Did they not read this blog last spring? Or do I now, in addition to everything else, literally have bats in my belfry? I will keep you updated.

* In my head.
** No joke. All three of these things actually happened this week. This is my life.
*** Photo from 826michigan's Liberty Street Robot Supply and Repair Store website. You can buy loose screws there, if you don't have enough already.

This is My Space

Not MySpace. My space.

Remember my closet office last summer?

It looked like this.

At least, I think it did. I never really went in there, except to pry open the door, huck something inside, and slam it shut.





Then, I decided to "fix it up" and it looked like this:
Oh, I was so excited then. But eventually, everybody including me went back to using it as a dumping ground and every time I went in there I was assaulted by the mess and the visual reminders of the to do list and aak! Get me out of here!

But writing was like pulling teeth and I was getting to hate my coffee shop. Plus, it's not like the rest of the house wasn't a constant reminder of anything else I could or should be doing. I started dreaming of hotel retreats. I made plans to move into my friend Sharon's tree house. I Googled the (exorbitant) cost of sheds and wondered how to heat them in winter.

Instead, I went mad. I took everything out of my office that didn't have to do with writing. I put it all in the living room. I recycled and trashed a bunch of crap. Then I blew half my latest royalty check on The Chair I Have Been Coveting. And now, ladies and gentlemen, behold. My space.

This is the same view through the door as those other pictures. The desk is around the corner, like this:














I am in love.

Not coincidentally, I wrote many, many words this week.

To the nines

Remember when I got all giddy about 08/08/08? Well, today is even better. Not only is it 09/09/09, but it's also my birthday. Hurrah!

(does silly birthday dance)

Yeah, I still love my birthday like a seven year old princess, because how many other days are ALL ABOUT ME (at least in my mind)?

There shall be raspberry-picking and jam-making and me-worshipping today; you can bet on it. And I will be demanding slobbery toddler birthday kisses and lanky seven year old birthday snuggles.

And, of course, there will be this:*






















Wow. That is like cake porn. I keep re-reading this post just so I can drool at it. Mine won't look that good, but if I lived in St. Paul, I would go right now to Café Latte, on whose website I found this picture, and I would point to my computer screen and say, "That. I want that." And then I would eat it all with a glass of skim milk. And then I would rent a room at the lushest hotel in St. Paul and I would collapse into my featherbed without brushing my teeth and I would sleep until next Friday.

My Status: A Morning in the Life

Jacqui is offline.
Jacqui is trying to sleep.
Jacqui's son posted a note: "MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA!"
Jacqui is turning off the baby monitor.
Jacqui's cats have sent her a "pawful of litter to the face."
Jacqui is fine I'm up okay?!
Jacqui blocked the application "Morning Breath."
Jacqui is trying to pour milk into a sippy cup without opening her eyes.
Jacqui is reading Richard Scarry's THINGS THAT MOVE. Again.
Jacqui is no longer part of the group "People Who Shower Daily."
Jacqui is a fan of caffeine.
Jacqui wonders if kids can OD on frozen waffles.
Jacqui is even if they're organic?
Jacqui is no longer a fan of winter.
Jacqui refuses to accept responsibility for the fact that it's freezing and you have to wear a coat.
Jacqui's daughter posted the note: "25 Random Things I Have to Touch When I Am Supposed To Be Brushing My Teeth."
Jacqui should have left ten minutes ago.
Jacqui's children are no longer members of the group "People To Whom Jacqui Is Speaking Nicely."
Jacqui is pulling her son out of the driver's seat.
Jacqui's daughter is not attending the event "First Five Minutes of School."
Jacqui is snabblefrug.
Jacqui is a fan of day care.
Jacqui is wracked with guilt over that snabblefrug.
Jacqui is practicing deep breathing.
Jacqui should be writing.
Jacqui is the Queen of Text Twist.
Jacqui just has to do this one more thing.
Jacqui is staring at the blank page.
Jacqui has nothing to say.
Jacqui is no longer a fan of her novel.
Jacqui is fine just write something already you loser.
Jacqui wrote a whole page.
Jacqui wrote three more.
Jacqui is writing.

A Room of One's Own, part deux

Remember my office? Remember how I excited I was about it? How I promised to clean it up? Hmm. Let's just say it got to the point where I would just crack the door, toss junk inside, and slam the door before anything fell on me.

This week, though, it was suggested to me by the guy from that show Clean Sweep a very wise friend that clutter in one's work space is a sign that one is terrified of the novel one is supposed to be writing not taking one's work seriously. Obviously this person has access to my internet records doesn't know anything.

I worked and worked. I bribed Destructo with all the masking tape he could eat and we worked for two hours. And voila!














I know. But look at the clear desk top! I sat there for two hours today and wrote and wrote and wrote. Baby steps, people.

What Jacqui Needs

Christy was playing on Google and it sounded like fun. The idea is to waste as much time as possible type your name and the word "needs" into your search engine and to list the first ten things Google thinks you need. It helps to share a name with the Home Secretary for the UK. Here are mine.

Jacqui needs
... to open her mouth and sing.
... to talk to the sisters.
... vitamin D.
... maximum friend time.
... to turn 13 or more or gain 305 more Werewolf points to reach the next level: Fire Werewolf! Jacqui should get out there and bite some people!
... to take a long hard look at herself in the mirror.*
... eye drops to help her vision.
... to get out more.
... someone to sing her praises.
... to be whacked.
... to feel herself at one with others, not just a reader of the small print but part of a whole which might include Hyde Park.

Obviously, one is much, much better than all the rest. From now on, you can all refer to me as "Fire Werewolf!" And yes, that includes the exclamation point.

* Interestingly, this one led to a blog called Novel Mum and a post by another Jacqui also screwing around on Google. Oh, the wonders of the internet. Do you think she'll be my friend?

The Sensational Weirdo

In which I explain why some of you saw my superhero name briefly this weekend.

It was bad enough when The Mighty Thor and I sat down at the Golden Compass website to discover our daemons. Thor got a snow leopard. Sweet, eh? Yeah, mine was a raccoon. Dissatisfied, I took the whole thing over. Raccoon again. So my daemon, my alter-ego, the reflection of the inner Me, is a rat in a mask.

Sunday, I was revising avoiding dishes screwing around on the internet and came across the Superhero Name Generator.* And got this:

Your superhero name is...
The Sensational Weirdo

Sigh. The Sensational Weirdo. It's so true, I fear. And I was laughing so hard I hit "publish" which makes me both weird and technically unqualified to blog. Double sigh. At least there is chocolate. Oh, wait. I ate it all.

*Someone linked me there. I can't remember who. If it was you, I'm sorry not to give you credit.

From Alison to Zari

In which I reveal the depths of my childhood dorkiness.

Oh, the things I have found this week! My parents moved recently and sent me this:

17 boxes full of stuff from my childhood. The pile includes all my old books, every card anyone sent back RSVPing to my Bat Mitzvah, and a box I haven't opened yet which my sister has labeled "Jacqui: Toys From College."

Tonight I reached randomly into the first box and found treasure: my Names Notebook. For three years, I kept track of every single girl's name I could think of or came across. I wrote them all down in a black composition notebook, one letter of the alphabet per page, like this:

There are 568 names in here, starting with Alison, ending with Zari, and passing Efraziti (which I have to use in a book someday) and Moon Unit ("as in Zappa!!!" I wrote), though not including Tinkerbell or her actual name. The cool thing is that I'm not positive why I decided to keep the Names Notebook, but I have a hazy memory that it was so that I'd have names for characters someday, if I ever, gasp, got to be a real, live author.

Now, you may be thinking, "That's not so dorky." Just wait. Peruse briefly that first page where I have invented 45 punny names from "Idy Testchew" to "Bo Nannah." Now flip to the almost end of the notebook. No, not the last five pages, on which I seem to have written and solved long division problems involving fractions, apparently just for fun, which I then circled and numbered in order of difficulty. Go to the Z names, and then turn one further, which brings us to this:

Yup. That's a dated running record of how many names I'd collected, including a key to the symbols I used to codify the words by spelling, uniqueness, and gender ambiguity. It's updated almost every time I added a new name. Note my excitement at 500. Yup, that says, "Let's party!!" Twice.





Don't laugh. At least I know my dork cred is legit. What you got?

And if you need names for your NaNoWriMo characters, you know where to come...

EDITED TO ADD:
Concerned I might either out-dork him or run off with Cindy (see comments) The Mighty Thor (failed Eagle Scout) admits: "You know how Boy Scouts have merit badges? I was unhappy with the merit badges that existed, so I made up 50 of my own. I designed actual badges for them and painted them onto cardboard circles so I could display them. These extra badges included such achievements as "Illuminati" (for playing the board game Illuminati well), "Communist" (where you learned a lot about Karl Marx), and "Calculus" (self-explanatory).

Oh my. Do we deserve each other or what?

A Room of One's Own

Um, have I mentioned that we just moved? Oh, I did? 100 times? Sorry. Well, one of the many great things about the new house is that I HAVE MY OWN WRITING SPACE.

I was at a Michigan writers schmooze at the fabulous Shutta Crum's house this weekend and we talked about the ways in which we tell our brains it's time to leave the real world behind and begin writing. I use music. I choose an album or make a playlist for my iPod that reminds me of the tone of my book and I listen to it every time I write. I am very trainable in Pavlovian ways, so soon, whenever I hear that music, I get into my "writing space," even if I'm in the library or the kitchen or wherever.

But to have one's own room, like Virginia Woolf, in which to close the door on the chaos and the chores and to be a Writer. Yum. Check out Woolf's space.* Can't you just see her sitting there, scratching out bits of Orlando and gazing out the window?

Now, I too have a physical writing space. I can just open the door and step inside and be filled with creativity, inspiration, and focus. Come with me a minute. Here we go, I am opening the door and stepping inside. And I see this:










Okay, it may need some work.

How do you get in the mood?

* The Guardian's series on writers' rooms is great procrastination/inspiration.

Jacqui's Weekend To Do List

1. Completely rewrite ending of novel*
2. Unpack everything I own
3. Finish last 200 pages of The House of Green the Seven Gables.
4. Invent and post creative, insightful, hilarious response to The House of Green the Seven Gables
5. Remove poison sumac from new back play yard
6. Babyproof new house**
7. Sell old house
8. Run three miles
9. Make homemade potato leek soup

I am not making this up. Sigh. Marvel at my realistic expectations for myself.

Going to peel potatoes. See you Monday.

* Yes, it's true. I talked to my agent this week. She insists the ending be "legally plausible." She is SO PICKY.
** Ha. Captain Destructo here. Me interrupt blog to say ha ha ha to that. As if. You try. Me can knock baby gates down now. Me can break cabinet locks. Me eat poison sumac. Mwa ha ha ha.

The Magic of the Eighth Day of August

In which I reveal I am sort of a math geek and eventually get to something related to writing for kids.

I love numbers. I love numbers and I am actually quite good at math. There. I said it. This is not something cool to say amongst writers anywhere. But I confessed to some folks this week and it felt so good to be outed I want to shout it from the tree tops.

"I love numbers!"

Today is 8/8/8. Sweet. I can't remember what I did on 7/7/7, but I remember 9/9/99 was my birthday and that was also sweet. 9/9/81 was my tenth birthday and I was already so excited to be turning DOUBLE DIGITS and then my number-loving Grandma Myra pointed out that it was also, oh. my. god. SQUARE ROOT DAY.* Number bliss.

On 8/8/88 I went to a Crosby, Stills, Nash and maybe Young concert with my friends.** We talked about it for weeks, about how great the concert was going to be and how beautiful and life-changing and important, and given that this one concert might change the very core of who we were just by having been there, how cool it was that it was falling on 8/8/88, this day that had to have some extra magic in it by virtue of its 8-ness. So at 8pm on 8/8/88, we were standing on chairs and singing along at the top of our lungs and, yes, it was magic.

And this is where I get into writing for kids. It was a concert. Did it change my life, really? No. But I thought it might, and so it was important to me, so important that I remember it vividly 20 years later. From an adult perspective, life is long, this is one concert, the eights are just numbers, just a date. But to my teen self, the concert was life itself.

It is easy to remember the magic of early childhood, the caterpillars turning into butterflies that just might be fairies magic that my daughter Tinkerbell sees everywhere now. It is harder, I think, to remember the magic that stayed with us as teens. I mean the magic that filled every day, every interaction with IMPORTANCE, the magic that let us fall in mad, passionate, heart-wrenching love in a week, the magic that made it possible for one concert to seem like if I missed it, the rest of my life would have a hole in it. As writers for kids of any age, we must respect that magic and how real it is. And our books must be full of it too, even when it seems "unrealistic" to our sadly magic-lacking grown-up selves.

I am moving today, not very far away, but still, it's a change. And I have just enough of the sense of numbers magic still in me to be happy it's today, because maybe the numbers symmetry will lend us some magic in the change.

Happy 8/8/8 everyone.

*because 9 times 9 makes 81, in case you didn't catch it.
** This was obviously after my poser punk phase, when I was experimenting with hippie.

Happy Fourth of July

In which I panic.

I was born for summer. I grew up in Florida swimming in the Gulf of Mexico year round. I was a happy camper counting the days until school ended and I could go back to the lake. I was a teacher, still counting the days until summer break. Now I am a writer and I work in my little hole and never see any other humans* or the sun, but I still love summer.

I love summer so much that I am always a little sad on the Fourth of July, because, people! June is over already! And I haven't had a good picnic or re-learned to play tennis or eaten a bomb pop! We barrel towards fall and I don't even have good barefoot callouses yet! We haven't played in the sprinkler or made homemade ice cream! The strawberries are gone, people, and I NEVER CANNED ANY JAM. We are stuck eating store bought jam until the raspberries come in and -- Holy cow, look! I see a yellow leaf on the oak tree outside! Soon the leaves will fall and the wind will blow and I will be cold cold COLD and fighting the kids to get into winter clothes and spending time I could be writing looking for a freaking missing pink Dora mitten. And my bike will sit rotting in storage. And my skin will fade to transparent. And I'll spend early mornings scraping and shoveling and swearing and wondering for the 500th time why two people who NEED sunshine like plants need, well, sunshine ever decided to move to Michigan instead of to somewhere like San Diego where I wouldn't ruin all summer panicking about not having summer.

Wait! What am I doing blogging? What are you doing reading this? We are all, all of us, yes that means you, too, Captain Destructo, I don't care if you're not done napping and are already sunburned, we are all going outside RIGHT NOW to play. Summer is almost over, Tinkerbell; put DOWN that book. You can read when fall comes. Go play. PLAY already, I said. Mama is going to sit here and drink this iced coffee and be hot and love it. Aaaaaah.

Happy fifth of July.


* Except the Bearclaw coffee guy.