Back from a 3-day stay at The Bancroft School in New England, where I was invited to be the keynote speaker at their young writer’s conference. It was an awe-inspiring, humbling, and hugely wonderful experience, complete with fifty kids straining at the bit to write their hearts out, four other writing mentors who kept me laughing and eased my pre-speech jitters, and the most gracious host family I have ever come across.

The keynote was sort of the “big” thing of the event. Or at least that was what everything had been leading up to. I was prepared, had practiced the speech at least 6 or 7 times, and stood up behind that podium after being introduced feeling fairly confident. Except that nothing that I had practiced, nothing that I had written down on that paper came out of my mouth. Instead, as I looked out at all of those kids, most of whom I had spent the last two days with talking intensely about writing and reading and Twilight and what it feels like to be in a room with a hundred other kids and feel like you are completely alone, something completely different began to come out of me. It may have been my maternal instinct kicking in. Or maybe I saw myself in those kids, the way I had been when I was 15 and 16, struggling to come to terms with the world around me. And so instead of talking to them about writing and revising and trying to find inspiration, I began to talk about how important they were. I told them that they all had a voice, and that when they found that voice, it was their job, their duty, to use it. I told them to sing out. I told them to be brave. I told them to tell the truth - even when it hurt. I told them to speak up when they saw something wrong, and to speak up again when they saw something right.

At one point - and to my absolute horror - my voice cracked as I spoke to them. But I couldn’t have prevented it, even if I had tried. I knew that they were listening to me and that all these years later, standing up in front of a room full of kids trying to understand, I was listening too - maybe for the first time.

It felt good. It felt right.

Afterwards, they asked me to come back next year.

I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Onward.

CG

I still haven’t heard back from my editor about the book.

But I came across a quote yesterday that I love: “Patience is a form of respect.” Waiting - for anything! - is so hard, isn’t it? It’s like not knowing if you’re pregnant…it’s the not knowing that is almost unbearable, not the final answer. The final answer, whatever it is, will be the thing that spurs the next action. But the waiting, that world of the unknown, demands stillness. An inaction of the highest sort. Trust. Patience.

I am not good at sitting still. I don’t feel comfortable being inactive. I’m still learning how to trust, and with that, to learn patience. But up there with all of these things, I would like to learn respect too. And so if patience is another form of it, then I will dig deep(er), close my mouth, and keep waiting.

Other news: I am in the throes of writing a speech for my upcoming weekend at Bancroft School in Worcester, Massachussetts this weekend, at which I will be the keynote speaker. Actually, I’m not really writing a speech: I’m more or less cobbling the most important points about inspiration and the craft of writing and how I work which, crazily enough, these good people seem to want to know about. Here are a few I’ve come up with so far:

1. Inspiration:   

             A. Can come from anywhere. Ingmar Bergman, the great Italian filmmaker, wrote his entire movie Wild Strawberries, after glimpsing a yellow scarf fluttering around a girl’s neck as she rode by on a bicycle. The point here is to always be awake. Always be looking. Always be present.

2. Writing

            A. One of the most important things about writing is to stay seated. By this, I mean keep at it, no matter how poorly you think it is going. I have a great tendency to get up when the words aren’t coming and to wander around the house mumbling to myself. Inevitably, I will notice that the kitchen floor needs to be swept or that I am so far behind on the laundry that I can’t even see the basement floor anymore. Having a cup of tea sounds wonderful, and while I am at the stove, why don’t I heat up the leftovers from last night’s dinner at Hong Kong Palace?

              You get the idea. As soon as you get up and walk away from your work, you lose the chance of regaining the ground you were wavering on. Most of us probably wouldn’t walk away from a kid who’s crying inconsolably; so why would we walk away from a piece of work that is flailing around and trying to tell us what it needs? We don’t. Or we shouldn’t. Staying is sometimes the hardest thing to do. It will also be - and this is true for every single time I’ve done it - completely worth it.

3. How I Work

      A. I keep a schedule - at least during the week. (Weekends are for my babies.) And I leave the house, which works better for me, since there are less things to distract me. Being in a college library for six hours every day does have a tendency to get a few things accomplished on the page.

      B. I sit down scared every single day. Every time that damn blank screen stares out at me, I can feel the knot in my stomach twisting. I’m scared of all of it: that I’m not good enough, that I’m a fraud, that the words won’t come, that when they do, they’ll be crap, yaddayaddayadda….    And then I start to write.

      C. I keep a notebook. After six hours of writing, my brain seems to like to sort things out, filter them somehow, even add or subtract certain things I’ve done that day. I write it all down in a tiny gold book I keep in my bag and refer to it the first thing the next day.

That’s it for now. More to come as the week - and the work - progresses.

Until then, remember:

Patience = respect.

Writing = life.

Onward.

CG

Back from NYC. I am sooooo tempted to write “She loved it!” about my editor’s reaction to my new book, but I won’t.

The truth is much less exciting.

The truth is this: She hasn’t finished it.

We were sitting in a Dean & DeLuca coffee shop on Fifth Avenue, and I was just digging into a raspberry scone, when she offered that bit of information ever so casually. I coughed a little and then said, “Oh, that’s fine!” Aside from my feeling like it was the furthest thing possible away from fine, I knew that it really was fine. The woman is a superb editor. She has twenty or so authors - all of whom have one or multiple manuscripts that she has to be reading. All the time.

The good news is that what she has read (three quarters of it) she does love. A lot. She used words like “strong,” and “important,” and (yes, really!) “truthful.” And she said she would have it finished very soon.

So….I guess the bottom line is this: Look at the glass here half full or half empty? What she’s read so far she likes, or she hasn’t finished and to hell with it?

I go with A.

Half full is always so much more filling anyway.

Onward!

CG

I’m heading into New York City today to meet with my editor at Simon & Schuster. She’s asked me to come in and tape an interview for the S&S website, which viewers will then be able to download and watch on their ipods - yikes! We will be going to lunch afterwards to discuss my newest book - which I finished writing in September and of which I have still not heard anything.

To say that I am a nervous wreck about the second part of this meeting (what if she’s going to say it “doesn’t work?” Again? What if? What if? What if?) would be an understatement. Even as I type this, my fingers are having trouble locating the right leys - er, keys. But I have to hope for the best. I had an extraordinary experience writing that book - tapping into something very deep inside of me, out of desperation yes, but still, something real, something true. And I can only pray that some of that truthfulness has resonated with my editor.

So we’ll see. Gotta go get dressed so that I don’t look like a shlumpy, freaked out author on someone’s i-pod some day!! Man, I wish they photographing my feet - I have some KILLER shoes!!

Wish me luck!

Onward!

CG