My revision is due around the end of this year. In order to stay on track, I need to complete about 100 pages of revision each month.  September almost got the better of me; teaching responsibilities crowded in and pushed the manuscript to the back burner.  Yesterday, though, I finally hit a stride – at least for one afternoon – and was able to cruise all the way past my goal.

I’ve revised this manuscript before, and more than once, but this stage of revision is very different, because my editor’s voice is in the process with me now.  Her 18-page, single-spaced letter stays open while I work, and I revisit it again and again to determine whether I have answered the questions she has set for me.  

I find this new stage of revision to be quite slow.  Every change made has a ripple effect on the rest of the story: some ripples are minimal; others spread all the way to the end of the novel and into the series beyond.

I got stuck a couple of weeks ago on one of those big ripples, as I realized that a character’s nature was being violated by a plot line, and that it would come back to haunt me in the next book if I didn’t figure out how to a) change it or b) justify it.  I tore my figurative hair out over that one, and more than once I muttered “No one cares. I’ll just leave it. It’s fine.”  But they will, and I couldn’t, and it wasn’t.

Immediately after sorting out that particular problem, I continued to revise, and not ten pages later I was snarled again, stuck in my own convoluted mess.  I slapped the laptop shut in a fit of frustration on Friday night, and I may have said a few choice words to Rapunzel about just where she could go and what she could do.  Yesterday, I got over it, and Rapunzel seemed eager to make it up to me, so we flew along together very nicely. 

I have three hours carved out tonight for writing work, and I’m leaving the house to avoid distractions, so I’ll get ahead of my October goal.  Good.  Because if October was anything like September, I’m going to need a head start to get me across that 200-page finish line.

I was that parent at preschool this morning, snapping endless pictures of my son.  It’s his first day of school, and I want there to be a record.  Something tangible and permanent, something within my control.  He is out of my control now, and for the next two hours, he’ll be in an environment I didn’t plan or organize, learning from people I don’t really know.  I guess I should be used to this, from daycare, but daycare has felt like an extension of home (it’s an in-home daycare, for one thing), and school feels… different.  Bigger.  Less within my grasp.  I cried last week, after the orientation, because I felt powerless.  Powerless to quit work and be with my son full time or at least to be deeply involved in his preschool, powerless to control the many influences that he experiences outside of my presence. 

Will they love him?  Will they see the strengths in him?  Will they be irritated by the things he can’t do yet?  Will his quirky, solitary nature puzzle them?  Will they guide him gently, will they let him take his time?  I’ve experienced many teachers now, in my teaching career, and I know that some of them naturally see the best in children and are determined to meet them where they are, and others are not cut from that generous cloth. 

I’ve also experienced a lot of kids.  And I know how kids can be to other kids.  I was never much of a winner, socially – not as a kid, anyway.  I had a target painted on my back from the get-go, and it was many, many years before I understood that although I am intelligent, I don’t have the same innate social intelligence as many other people – and socially intelligent people can sense that.  Even really young ones.

I’m scared. 

But it’s just preschool, right?  He’ll be fine.

My other baby, my first novel, will soon be out of my control, too.  It frightens me to think of the many different reactions, good and bad, that people will surely have to it.  It frightens me to lose power over it.  Maybe I’m getting good practice right now, letting my flesh-and-blood baby into the world a little bit.  Surely no book debut, however scary, could be as scary as this. 

On September 4, 2012, I was happy with the book I had written.  I believed in it enough that I decided it was time to start a blog and keep track of my journey toward authorhood.  I believed in it – but I didn’t count on it.  I had no idea how things would shake out.  The question thrumming in my mind for much of the last year was Will this happen? 

Yesterday was my blog anniversary, and I have kept up with this blog just as I set out to do – which is a first.  I haven’t let myself down.  I have sat down and written again and again this year, regardless of whether or not I felt like it – and not just on this blog.  This year, for the first time, I treated myself like a professional writer, and I expected from myself what I believed I ought to expect from a professional writer.

And what do you know?

Yesterday was also the first day of the new school year.  I spent last week organizing my classroom and color-coding my posters, and now the kids are back to make a beautiful, vibrant mess of my efforts.  Middle-school students are like no others.  They pop with life.  They seethe with emotion.  They are on the cusp of everything.  It’s electrifying.

My son also starts preschool this year.  I’m amazed at how fast that tide came in.  I felt like I had so much time before preschool would be upon us.  Nope.  As it turns out, every cliche is true, and my child is growing up much, much too fast.  

So. I am a mother, and I am a teacher (with three preps!) – and now, in a more real and on-the-hook way than ever before, I am a writer.  For the past few weeks, as summer has set, I’ve felt the stress of these responsibilities gathering.  Pressing in.

I am trying not to panic.

The big question thrumming in my head this year is Can I balance motherhood, teaching, and writing, and do all three jobs justice?

Here’s hoping that, like last year, the answer is Yes.

I spent the last week traveling with my husband and our small boy.  Our boy will be three in October, and this was his longest trip yet, both in terms of distance and duration.  We crossed the country and were away from home for eight nights, drifting from Delaware to New York to Massachusetts.

Being away from home with a small but highly mobile child was like running a deadly obstacle course for eight days.  Our son likes all sorts of activities that sound like no big deal but are a VERY big deal when a little person is in play.  Some of his favorite things include stairs, water, cars, trains, and touching everything.  He can run (incredibly fast for someone with such small legs), climb, open things, and turn things on.  He can easily get out of his pack ‘n’ play crib (I woke the first night to the sensation of my hair being pulled and rolled over to find him standing by the side of the bed smiling at me like something out of a horror movie).  It all made for a very tiring adventure.

It was wonderful, though.  Some of my dearest friends, who also have young sons, brought them along for a brief reunion, and we got to see our kiddos interact all together for the first time.  I got to see my boy chase fireflies (we don’t have those on the west coast) and splash in the fountain at Washington Square Park, like a proper NYC baby.  He got to eat more ice cream than has ever been allowed, skip his naps, play with Hot Wheels, take bubble baths in a friend’s jacuzzi tub, dance with us at a wedding, eat Di Fara’s pizza in Brooklyn and see the Manhattan city skyline from the F train.  He even learned (because it was how we kept him distracted on the long plane trip) how to play Angry Birds.  Sort of.  He shoots the birds into the ground and then giggles a lot at pig Darth Vader when he loses, which probably seems like winning to him.

This trip was also a milestone for me as a writer, because I got to sit down with my editor and talk shop. I probably said “I have a meeting with my editor at Scholastic next week,” about a hundred times during the week before I left.  Maybe two hundred times.  Certainly far more times than was necessary, and I must have been obnoxious, but everyone has to forgive me while I get used to the fact that my dreams are coming true.  I was – and am – so ridiculously, stupidly excited about everything that’s happening.

Before the meeting, I received my first editorial letter.  I was very scared about this, because I am thin-skinned.  The letter is a cool 18 pages, thanks – but somehow, it isn’t daunting or embarrassing to see the weaknesses of my work exposed.  It’s all laid out with such care, and it’s so constructive, written with only the best interests of the story at heart.  There are hills I am willing to die on, but so far, my editor and I seem to be in alignment about what matters, so no hill deaths are necessary.  She sees the things that I can’t see and asks the questions I can’t be impartial enough to ask, and yet she has absorbed the spirit of the thing completely.  I could not ask for a better guide. 

And now I’m home again, with revisions to make, and a timeline to adhere to – and a full-time teaching job that starts up again tomorrow.  Yep.  Today is the last day of my summer.  The kids aren’t back until after Labor Day, but the teachers are back in professional workshops tomorrow.  Again begins the crazy.  But then, I thrive on the crazy.  And when the crazy is accompanied by new school supplies and falling leaves, crisp air and jeans with sweaters, I can only embrace it.

Still.  For just a few more hours, there’s nothing but the last spoonful of summer and the quiet of home, sweet home. 

I had the opportunity last week to sit down and talk with the author of this marvelous work of YA historical fiction.  She taught me how to pronounce all the Welsh names (emphasis on the penultimate syllable, people), and she spoke with near-fanatical relish about the very creative public humiliations that medieval folks heaped upon each other.  She also gave me the compliment of saying that I “get” her work.  I take this to mean that I am now an authority on this novel, and so you all have to listen to me. Author’s orders. 

Even if I didn’t think J. Anderson Coats was a pretty cool person, I would still highly recommend her debut novel – which is brilliant.  Paperback to be released in September!

THE WICKED AND THE JUST
by J. Anderson Coats
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012

Five reasons to read it:

1.  Don’t know anything about 13th-century Wales?  You’re about to.  But you won’t even notice the learning as it happens.  Through the alternating viewpoints of her two teenaged female protagonists, Coats steeps the reader in the daily details of medieval life at Caernarvon castle in such a way that the world is rendered both fascinatingly new and also completely clear.  Her ability to do this reminds me of Karen Cushman’s, and that is no light compliment.

2.  My inner feminist sang and twirled and leaped about throughout this story, for a couple of specific reasons I won’t point out here, because they’d be spoilers.  Let’s just say that medieval times were not particularly fabulous for girls, and I loved the way Coats let both of her girls be real people – constrained by society, yes, but with emotions and desires recognizable to the modern teenager.

3. One girl (Cecily) is privileged and the other (Gwenhwyfar) is oppressed.  Gwenhwyfar is by far the easier to like; the injustice of her situation, together with her humor, her fury, and her loyalty to her family, make her an easy win.  However, it’s Cecily – the oppressor – whose voice is more often heard, and so she, too, must be compelling and lovable.  To make this privileged character sympathetic, one might assume that Coats would make Cecily into quite a nice person – a young saint.  Instead, she’s completely a teenager.  Cecily has moments of common sense and goodness, but she’s blind to the bigger picture.  And yet she is lovable, because she is real – and because those moments of common sense and goodness come at just the right times.

4.  Coats does not sugar coat what power does to people.  Everyone who gets a taste of power in this story abuses it, believing themselves justified.  If you enjoy, at all, a story of power dynamics, then you will gobble this one up.

5.  Do you hate it when authors give you pat endings, wherein everyone learns their lesson, all is remedied and all are redeemed?  Welcome to this book, where the author’s commitment to historical accuracy means that happy endings are impossible.  That’s not to say that one can’t walk away from this book with a sense of hope and satisfaction – I certainly did, because of Coats’s management of her characters and my investment in them as people.  But this is a brutal book.  Awesomely brutal.  Wait, don’t back away – where are you going?  Get back here or I’ll beat you with a cudgel. 

I’ve been lazy about this blog, this summer.  But I haven’t been lazy in general.  Spending lots of time with my son has been paramount, and spending lots of time writing has taken a pretty close second.  Writing is going beautifully, mainly because I keep a big stick handy to whack at the bad thoughts.  This novel is stupid. WHACK. The first one was better. WHACK.  You’re a hack, you’re a hack, you’re a hack... WHACK WHACK WHACK.

— A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

If you imagine me sniffling and choking up throughout this exchange, then you have it about right.  Then, while I was still getting my emotions back in shape, my son wandered over to Maurice Sendak’s In The Night Kitchen and turned to his favorite page.  “MILK IN THE BATTER!” he shouted.  “MILK IN THE BATTER! WE BAKE CAKE! AND NOTHING’S THE MATTER!” And he laughed, and so did I, and then he jumped up an down a lot.

Because reading is AWESOME.