Free-for-All

8 Random Links

Posted on by Beth Hull

Some of the way-cool places I’ve visited in the past couple of weeks:

Clark Little Photography: some awesome photos of Hawaii sent to me by Pat Kahn.

Get Genrefied: Verse Novels: an introduction to verse novels, with some excellent recommendations both new and old. Pointed out by Helene Dunbar.

Legendary Surfer Woody “Spider” Brown: biography of a really interesting surfer, one of the big wave pioneers.

Conference Commandments: I plan on adapting this list of Veronica Rossi’s for when I go to the SCBWI Summer Conference.

YA Girl, Episode 1: Kristen Held‘s hysterically funny post on what happens when your characters really talk to you.

20 Awesome Examples of Literary Graffiti: I think I found this through a tweet by Scholastic, and I keep going back to look.

Manuscript Formatting and Prep Screencasts: an extremely useful formatting tutorial. I loved it, and realize this makes me look like more of a nerd than ever. Another one sent by Pat Kahn.

The Art of the Rewrite: Heather Anastasiu’s post at Adventures in Children’s and YA Publishing. I liked it so much I actually copied & pasted it into a Word document so I wouldn’t lose track of it (because my computer file system is so foolproof…ha).

When Kids Are Sick

Posted on by Beth Hull

I’m writing this with Maverick in my arms. At just one year old, he still fits in my lap, and he’s a cuddly little guy. Truth is, part of me is afraid to put him down (but not so afraid that I didn’t stick him in his crib to scream awhile ago because I was weepy and dirty and desperately needed a shower – don’t worry, his dad rescued him).

We’ve done two ER visits and two clinic visits in two days. One more follow-up appointment today, just to make sure he is really truly not going to need another ER visit over the weekend. The vomiting and diarrhea got so bad that he was dehydrated and needed an IV at the first ER visit. He was so out of it that he didn’t even fight the IV. The second ER visit, the doctor wanted to give him an IV but they tried & tried & couldn’t do it. Now his little arms are all bruised, but he’s had plenty of fluids (read: occasional sips of Pedialyte and/or Gatorade, & nearly constant breastfeeding) and his lips are finally no longer chapped.

I know parents who have kids with chronic illnesses or congenital defects that require repeated surgeries and hospitalizations. We got just the tiniest glimpse of what they go through. Holding the baby while the nurses try and try to get the needle in. Watching as they do necessary (but horrific) medical procedures to get him well. Keeping the older kid occupied and entertained while waiting and waiting and waiting. Trying to make decisions on fast food and not enough rest. Curling up on the hospital bed behind him, watching him sleep peacefully because although the hospital isn’t home, we are his home, and as long as we’re there, he knows it’ll be okay.

Homes and I have done a lot of bitching about how many times we’ve all been sick this year. Even now, on the tail end of Maverick’s Tummy Bug of Doom, he’s getting my cold. Z’s sick, too. It’s not fair. With illness, nothing is fair, and it totally sucks, and I’m glad we’re getting better, that this isn’t permanent, it’ll soon be a bad memory, and even though I’m sleep-deprived I can see how lucky we are.

April is the (Coolest) Month, a Friday Five

Posted on by Beth Hull

1. My writer pal Stacey Heather Lee (who I might get to meet in LA! – more on that later) interviewed me on her blog, on what I do when I’m not writing. You can see my favorite boots! My firstest book ever written (you can see that here, too, but Stacey’s background is gorgeous, so you should see it there also)! My bucket list! That I came up with at the last minute when I realized I didn’t have one! My secret! Well, it’s not really a secret, but…I’ve written a novel in verse.

2. I’ve written a novel in verse. More on this in a future post, but basically – the first few phrases I ever had for the book were in verse, and the emotion of them reached right out and sucker-punched me. Still I thought, no thanks. I am not a poet, and I know it. This is just aimless brainstorming in my diary, la la la. But I kept getting stuck while I was drafting the thing. Everything in prose paragraphs felt flat and lifeless, so I thought, Well, I’ll just write the stinker in verse and come back and redo it in prose once it’s all down. No biggie. Except I fell in love with the verse, and it just…works. I think it works. I hope it works.

3. My regional SCBWI chapter awarded me a $1,000 scholarship for the SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles! I’ve been wanting to go for years, and have been saving birthday and Christmas money accordingly, and now I will finally get to go! Thank you, SCBWI California North/Central!

4. Maverick is going to be one year old next week! I have mixed feelings on this. He’s my last baby, and while part of me looks forward to him getting older so that he’s not so dependent on me, another part of me just wants to hold him and keep him this age forever. SIGH.

5. Somehow “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” got stuck in my head a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been trying to memorize it. I’ve gotten through the yellow fog stanza, and after that it’s sort of “Hmmm hmm, I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat and snicker…Hmm hmm hmm hmm, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled…hmm hmmm hmmm…Til human voices wake us, and we drown. TA DA!” (Also, today’s Shifty “painting” isn’t from Prufrock, I know. But still. That April. She’s such a jerk.) (Maybe next Friday we’ll have another Eliot line that gets stuck in my head, “Now that lilacs are in bloom / she has a bowl of lilacs in her room…”)

18 Calming Things

Posted on by Beth Hull

If you have not yet experienced the calming, peaceful feeling of zen from summoning a calming manatee from a website found at, surprisingly enough, calmingmanatee.com, you should totally try it out. I love this site. It’s humorous and just one click gives me a little pick-me-up. There are, also, other calming things in my life, and this post is sort of the yang (or the yin?) to my post titled 14 Irritants.

  1. sleeping babies
  2. lullabies
  3. afternoon thunderstorms (sort of a paradox, but…yeah)
  4. couches
  5. blankets
  6. pillows
  7. purring cat
  8. silence
  9. shushing ocean
  10. velour sweatpants
  11. terrycloth robe
  12. best friend’s voice
  13. neck rub from husband
  14. Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food
  15. flannel sheets
  16. books
  17. The BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice
  18. DID I MENTION SILENCE!!!

What do you find soothing?

The Social Media Existential Balancing Angst of Flailing and Pondering and Sometimes Missing Stuff

Posted on by Beth Hull

A few weeks ago, I took a hiatus from social media thingies. It was refreshing. I had more time to do other stuff.

Here’s the thing, though – I missed out on stuff, too. Probably a lot of stuff. The silver lining is I’ll never know what stuff I missed out on.

I’d love to know how other people balance their stuff. For example, how much time does a writer mom of young children spend on Twitter and Facebook, on average? How does she manage social media and writing time? What about other busy people? How do they achieve balance (or something close to it)?

For awhile I tried popping in to Twitter and Facebook, with the idea I’d do just fifteen minutes a day. Fifteen minutes isn’t much, is it? But then I’d stay signed in, and check in again at a later point that same day, and suddenly I’d have spent thirty extra minutes doing, in effect, NOTHING (I think we’ve all had this experience). Or, if I asked a question on Twitter, someone would respond, and I’d want to respond to their response, and then I’d get a new follower and revisit the site just to follow them back (if they were deserving and not relentless self-promoters). And before I knew it, I’d have gained a follower but lost fifteen more writing minutes because there was a really cool conversation going on and I wanted to find out more.

What if I gave myself Twitter Tuesdays and Facebook Fridays? And I just check in on those days?

What if I just…stop?

Then there’s the “I’m a writer and so I must have an online presence” issue. A blog is probably enough. (But Twitter can be pretty fun.) (And Facebook is the only connection I have to certain friends, family, and colleagues, and it’s the gateway to some cool groups of people.)

I really don’t know what to do. I love writing. I also love participating in conversations online. I also love paying attention to my family. And there’s only so much time.

SUGGESTIONS WELCOME.

PS: the flying whale drawing has absolutely nothing to do with this post. I just drew it awhile (awhale?! hahahahaha) back and like it. That’s all. Really. Unless you want to work some cool psychoanalysis on it. In which case, do share!