Will You Write Us All This Book?

I don't get political on this blog, not because I don't care, but because I have such strongly held views that it's hard for me to be mature about them. But for this week's Thursday News of the Absurd Will Someone Please Write This Book Inspirational Moment (TNoftheAWSPWTBIM), I have a request.

This coming Tuesday, go vote. Go vote before then, if you can. I don't care for whom, I just want you to do it. There will be long lines, maybe hours long, and bad weather and you don't have child care. I know you don't live in a swing state and you think your vote for President won't count. I know the government's corrupt and last election it seemed like entire boxes of votes went floating away on the Atlantic. I know you have deadlines and gas costs and a head cold and...

Vote anyway.

Wait, I'm not done. I don't just want you to vote. I want you to think about it. Most of us are pretty sure about our presidential choice. Think about it anyway. Make sure you are voting with your own mind and not the minds of your news anchor or your pastor or your friend who's a lawyer and seems to know a lot about these things. If you need help, try here or here or here or even here. Read about the issues that are important to you, and then choose based on knowledge and on what you really want, not on fear or on rumor.

And when you're done deciding who you want to be president, or if you just can't decide, well, who do you want to be your County Clerk? Honestly, our local elections probably far more directly impact our daily lives, and yet we know so much less about them. So find out. And choose wisely again.

Wait, there's more. Help someone else vote. Make sure your elderly neighbor has a ride. Offer to trade child care with a friend. Bring coffee and umbrellas to your polling station. Pass this post along, if you think it will convince someone.

And if the lines are long and the machines are confusing and you're not sure whether voting straight party ticket will nullify your vote for president* or whether you need a government issued photo ID** then do something. Talk to your local election board. Offer to hold someone's place in line. Educate the people around you. And vote anyway.

Imagine that on Tuesday, we live in a country where almost all of us think carefully and hard about who we want making the decisions that will reverberate from our living rooms to the ozone layer. Imagine that for just a second, we forget about all the reasons we can't make a difference and everybody votes, like you dreamed it happened when you first learned about it, with everyone's heads down on the desks raising a hand in second grade and the teacher counting the votes and declaring the winner.

Will you please help me write this book?


* This has apparently been an issue in some states. To make sure all your votes count, don't vote "straight party ticket" or whatever it says; select each choice individually.
** You don't (in Michigan -- check your state's .gov site for more info). You will, if you don't have one, need to sign an affidavit stating that you are you.

I Got Plenty of Nothing

Remember when I tried to convince you to write a novel in a month? I talked about how fun it was, and how I was doing it, how all the cool kids were, how it would make you feel good?

So I sat down today to ask myself the kind of deep questions we writers ask ourselves before we begin our novels. Important questions the non-writers amongst us may not understand, like, "What the heck am I going to write about?"

And the answer that came to me, gift-wrapped and practically written already, was, um. Er. Maybe? Nah.

I got nothing. Nil. Zilch. Zippo. Boomslang.

I'm going in blind, people. I don't have a character, a setting, a plot, or a clue. I've toyed with my post-Olympic Athenian adventure, or the kid whose grandma's a serial killer, but basically I'm starting from scratch without a recipe.

The funny thing is this: I was going to write about how terrifying that is. But really, it's not. I'm thrilled. Imagine it: ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. Makes me downright giddy.

So. Ideas?

Bottom of the Ninth

In which I explain why I love baseball, and why your writing should mimic it.

The Phillies played the Rays on Saturday night in Game 3 of the World Series. The score was tied until the bottom of the ninth, when Carlos Ruiz came up to bat. The bases were loaded. Now, Carlos Ruiz is not a great hitter. And he'd already hit one home run in the game, so odds were he was done. Carlos Ruiz is also slow. He's so slow that Tampa pulled one of their outfielders into the infield to keep him from getting a hit. This is like your older brother and his friends letting you play, but yelling, "Bring it in!" whenever you come up to bat. There were Rays players all over the place. So what were the chances of him hitting the ball and making it to first before being thrown out? Zero. He had no chance.

And get this: the reason the game is tied? Ruiz blew it with a throwing error earlier in the game. So he already feels bad.

Also, there was a ninety minute rain delay, so by the time Ruiz gets up, it's almost 2:00am. Everyone's exhausted. And soggy. And they have to play again Sunday.

The pitch comes and Ruiz makes contact. He hits this bouncing, slow-motion dribble down the third base line. Evan Longoria, the Rays' third baseman*, charges the ball. The guy on third is sprinting for home. Carlos Ruiz is chugging to first. Longoria fires the ball towards home.

And 46,000 fans scream. 46,000 fans who sat through rain and delays and a bad call by the umpire and their team blowing the lead, and they're all still there. Philadelphia hasn't won a sports championship of any kind in 25 years, but there they all are, screaming.

Because in baseball, there is always a chance. You can't leave. You can't turn off the TV and think, "They'll never come back." Because time can't run out and the team that's ahead can't kneel for three downs or play keep away around the court. They have to keep pitching the ball. So you just never know. You have to stay standing up and screaming.

Why am I telling you all of this? Two reasons:
1) I'm a baseball evangelist.
2) This is what I want you to no, seriously, just try this week. I want you to make your book like baseball. I want you to look at your story as a whole. I want you to print it out or lay it out on the computer so you can see every page. Now tell me: in which scenes are your readers going to be standing on their seats, praying and holding hands and screaming? In which scenes is Carlos Ruiz at bat and fans all over the world stop breathing? Circle those scenes in green, or decorate them with stars or do something to celebrate them.

Now, in which scenes are your readers going to sit down? When will they go get another hot dog? Cross those scenes out. Seriously. You want your readers refusing to pee because it would mean putting the book down. Don't give them a commercial break, and don't ask them to stick around for hours after your climax, watching your team run out the clock.

Sometimes we get so caught up in making sure our plots work, making sure our readers have the information they need, that we forget to leave them breathless. So this week, I challenge you to make sure every page of your book finds me tense with anticipation, and screaming on my seat because, like baseball, I just never know what. might. happen.

Oh, and I know. I didn't tell you what happened. You can read it here.

* no relation to Eva

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?

We the People Hate on Texas

Welcome to this week's Thursday News of the Absurd Will Someone Please Write This Book Inspirational Moment (TNoftheAWSPWTBIM).

From UPI:

Nevada man's "micro-nation" bans Texas goods

"A man who declared his own nation in Nevada says his wife's recent move to Texas led him to ban all the state's products from "Molossia."

Kevin Baugh, 46, of the Dayton area, who 10 years ago declared himself ruler of his 1.3-acre micro-nation that also claims his two adult sons as citizens, said the defection of his soon-to-be ex-wife to Texas led him to outlaw all Texas-related items from the land under his rule, the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal reported Monday."

Okay, first, this is the best post-break-up ex punishment I have ever heard. If the Mighty Thor ever leaves me, I am placing an embargo on all goods from his state.

Second, what if Mr. Baugh, or someone who did something similar, had another child besides the adult sons? What if he had a twelve year-old daughter who was just starting at her middle school? What if he made her sign up as a foreign exchange student?

I don't want angsty; I want a funny but touching middle grade novel, like Linda Urban's A Crooked Kind of Perfect. Don't make fun of the dad. Play with the possibilities for the kid. Imagine parent-teacher conferences. Imagine bringing a boy you like home to meet your dad/president of your sovereign nation within the state of Nevada. Imagine explaining to a friend's parent why you can't eat the Texas grapefruit she is offering.

Who will write me this book?

How to Use Jacqui's Room

I'm still new enough to this bloggy business to be amazed when someone besides my mother visits Jacqui's Room. It charms me to no end when people I wouldn't expect* tell me they've been here. "You should comment!" I tell them.

Then the other day, I was talking with a friend and I mentioned Jacqui's Room. "You should come by," I told her.

"Oh, I've never been to a blog," she demurred. "I wouldn't know what to do."

I remember feeling like that. I remember someone inviting me to join a group blog, with a bunch of well-established bloggers. I started poking around others' blogs, never staying for more than three minutes because I was sure they could see me. I was positive everyone online knew each other and if I commented, the response would be, "Who is that?! Get out!" or that I would break some invisible blog rule, some unspoken (or spoken before I got there) online social code, and I would look like a major fool and they would all be able to see through my secret identity and know just who I was and they would laugh and laugh.

Basically, I thought the internet was like middle school.

Turns out, it's not. I can't SEE you, beyond your IP address, and trust me, it means nothing to me. I don't know both most of the people whose comments you see, beyond the fact that they visit here and leave comments and I go and check out what they have to say sometimes. And, nobody here is going to laugh if you comment; I'm so happy whenever anyone does all I can do is beam thanks. So it IS kind of like middle school, I guess, only you found the kind of dorky, secretly coolest crowd.

I told my friend all this and she didn't believe me. So I thought I should make it easy for her. Thus, I bring you:

The Jacqui's Room Manual: Instructions For Daily Use

1. Type "www.jacquirobbins.blogspot.com" into the little rectangle at the top of your screen.

2. Read today's post. Laugh, ponder, or weep salty tears of exhilaration, as appropriate.

3. Decide to throw me a bone respond. Click on "Post a Comment" at the end of the post. A new window will open up. Do not be afraid. Peruse the hilarity others have left. Don't be intimidated. Type your comment into the big box. Might I suggest, "Dang, woman! You are the funniest person ever!" or "Thank you, thank you, for changing my life so drastically for the better with this simple idea!" Other readers also seem to enjoy telling me what foodstuffs they spat out upon reading my work. When it doubt, you can always say, "I wuz here."

4. At this point, the computer will ask you to type some letters as you see them. This is to make sure you are not a robot. If you ARE a robot, email me and we'll arrange something.

5. Now it gets tricky. Remain calm. The directions ask you to "Choose an identity." If you aren't sure, click on "Anonymous." That way you can be, well, anonymous. If you want me to know it's you, sign your comment (back up in the box) as in, "Holy cow! I can't stop laughing! Love, Your old piano teacher."

6. You can preview your comment by clicking "Preview." Or you can click "Publish." Go ahead. Take a deep breath and do it. Click!

7. Oh my God!!! Your comment didn't appear!!! Where did it go?! Do not panic. I must approve all comments before they appear. If yours doesn't have bad words in it, or try to sell me something, it will undoubtedly pass and should be up soon, as I check for comments several times each minute throughout the day.

8. Sit back and say goodbye to your productivity. Then email everyone you know and tell them what fun you had in Jacqui's Room. I mean it. Go tell them.


* the dad of my best friend from high school, my son's day care teacher , my cousin -- hi guys!

Flashback: 1977

In which I invite you to embarrass yourselves.

Okay, this is just fun. Jay Asher, author of 13 Reasons Why, posted his senior pictures this week and challenged other young adult authors to do the same (thanks to the formerly-very-big-haired Fuse #8 for the link).


I have a pile of ten boxes in my living room. My senior picture is buried in one of them. So, here I am, at age 5-6, when I might have been enjoying picture books like the ones I write now. I'm on the right, in the fashionable short-sleeved cable knit sweater and green turtleneck. The dazed-looking toddler is my sister, whom you'll meet in a later post. Check out our sweet color block shag rug!

So, now I want to see all of you, when you were the age of your readers. Who's brave enough?