The Story of how I found my land and put a shepherd's hut on it

Behind the stone wall is my tiny piece of land on a Hebridean island just after I bought it -- the sign says SOLD.

I've wanted to live on a Scottish island since I was a young teenager and read THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, and then THE SINGING SANDS by Josephine Tey, and THE CROFTER AND THE LAIRD by John McPhee.....I imagined a sunny, windswept island near the top of the world. Whenever I thought that, I told myself that if it was in Scotland, it wouldn't be sunny. But that's how I always pictured it -- and that's how it was (well, sometimes) when  in 2011 I saw my first Hebridean island, Barra.

The plane landed on the beach,  at low tide.The way to the hotel had the sea on one side, the machair -- a flower-filled meadow found only on the West coast of some hebridean islands-- on the other. It was so beautiful (or something) that I started to cry. I've been to every continent except Antarctica and nothing like that has ever happened to me. There was, is, just something about that light, landscape, silence, space -- I don't know what -- that felt like home.

About a week later, I spent a night on another island (chosen almost entirely by chance--there are 50 inhabited Scottish islands). There it was sunny, both days. On the first, I went for a three hour walk and didn't see anyone -- only wind and sea and sky; wildflowers and grass and sand, and, once, a large brown hare.

When my b and b hostess brought me to the ferry the next morning, she looked at me and said:

"This is going to sound really strange, but I feel like you're part of our family."
That's how I felt, too.

When I got back to America, I looked on the island's Web site to see about renting a  cottage and emailed the owner of one that seemed promising. She emailed back:

"...I think I have one of your books."

She did -- the IRELAND book I did for Scholastic; she'd bought it thinking it was a book about Connemara ponies. But still. How many published books are there in the world -- ten million? What are the chances of her having mine?

I spent five months in her cottage on the island, and while I was there, the land came up for sale -- incredibly cheaply. Many people said not to buy it: I wouldn't be able to get access to it, I wouldn't get planning permission.....but I took a chance and bought it anyway, then hired a builder in Wales to make a shepherd's hut for me and drive it to the island.  

Working out the details of the design and transport took MONTHS but it all turned out well in the end:

The land is across the street from the local school, and when the hut arrived on the island, the children cheered -- literally, cheered.

"It's the coolest thing EVER!" someone said.
"Libby, are you SO excited?"
I was. 

I loved it the day I arrived, and was just as happy as these children look -- maybe happier--to have my very own shepherd's hut on my very own land on a Scottish island.

The world has changed so much since I was a child that I usually assume modern children will find the things I loved then incomprehensible, or boring, or something. So when I mentioned watching the DAVY CROCKET

I'd loved over dinner the other night, I was surprised when a seven-year old begged me to let him come over and watch it with me.

I warned him that he might find it boring and told him to tell me if he did....but from the very start, he loved it. His eyes widened; he said things like:

"This is so cool!"

"I love it!"

"Why would you say this is boring?"

His only criticism was that Davy wasn't wearing a blue and white uniform, like Andrew Jackson's soldiers--he described theirs as "jazzy."

I have  admired Davy Crockett fervently ever since I first saw the show -- and even more after learning more about him as an adult.

So I pleased as well as surprised that the movie, which was made in 1955, included Congressman Davy Crockett voting against Andrew Jackson's Indian Bill -- the one that resulted in the Trail of Tears. That -- in real life and the movie -- was the end of Davy Crockett's political career. The movie included a speech that probably went right over my head as a child, about how the government had promised that land to the Cherokee and it was wrong to let "a few landgrabbers" who just wanted to make money deprive them of it. He also talked about how "all of our people, whatever the color of their skins," had the same rights....and how the fact that it was being done was the fault of Congress, "because we aren't doing our jobs right."

It's true that Jake fidgeted a bit during this part--but his interest perked up again as soon as Davy galloped off to the Alamo. That Disney distorted: in real life, after Davy lost the election (as a direct result of his stance on the Indian Bill: before that there had been talk of running him for President), he was asked to make one last speech. He did, and it was brief:
"You can all go to hell. I'm going to Texas."

It was sheer bad luck that he arrived just in time for the Alamo. But in the movie, they made it a planned choice.

One of the few scenes I remembered from my last viewing (as a child!) was Jim Bowie, sitting up in bed with a fever --  but firing pistols, one in each hand, as Santa Ana's men run in to kill him.

The movie ends with Davy -- all 6' 6" of him -- swinging his rifle at the uniformed soldiers attacking him from below. Walt Disney felt that it would be too upsetting for children to see Davy die, so we see only that, and then hear a song about "history tells that they were all cut down," but....(much like the ending of les Mis, really) then we see a flag and the song goes on about freedom.

Jake thought the ending should have been more "realistic," and that if we didn't see Davy die, we should at least have seen one of the Mexican soldiers firing at him....but I now like the idea of Disney letting children have as much reality as they can handle. He leaves it up to them and I think that was a good decision.

I don't think I would have liked to see Davy Crockett's dead body, then or now. And I have to admit that I was absolutely astonished at how good this movie is. I loved it as much as Jake did....and would love to write a book about Davy, the REAL Davy, who was even more interesting and admirable than the Disney version. But Disney did a great job with this one.

Fogbow over the bay

Someone having dinner at the hotel took the first photo, which shows almost the whole fogbow; I took the others. I think they capture the light here better than any other pictures I've taken this summer.

Though the fogbow is unusual (fogbows are rarer than the Northern Lights!), the light here, which changes every few minutes, is almost always beautiful. It's clearer, more luminous than any light I've ever seen -- the wind and water, how far North we are. What it will feel like to be away from it and my hut I don't know.

Well begun is half done

Usually, I have a long list of resolutions and accomplish very few of them. Last year, though, I did achieve the main thing -- earn enough money to live on without worrying. That is harder to do if you're a freelancer than I ever thought it would be when I left my last real job: writing about finance for the Fidelity Web site.

Me doing this was always fairly ridiculous -- though I really loved the group I worked with, especially the designers (we were called the "Creative Group" by the rest of the company and had our own litttle clubhouse). But every time I wrote an article, I'd have to look up words in Barron's or some such -- a blue book that defines financial terms like "put" and "call." Each time, I'd vow to remember what they meant, but it was so foreign to me that I never could.

Now that my income for the next 6 months at least is assured, achieving other goals feels within my control. It may be uphill work



but I'll make it. I've whittled my goals down to three -- though each has specifics (how to do it, milestones, subgoals).

GET MY ENERGY BACK
*chakra chanting and yoga, bouncing (I got a mini-trampoline: bouncing on it is really good for your lymph system), vigorous exercise--walk, swim, ski, ride a horse or bicycle every day.
*stick with the Fat Flush diet -- this means planning out meals and having good vegetables around and even, for busy days, cooked and waiting to be eaten...and NOT having things like chocolate, nuts, and wine in the house
*take vitamins, drink water every day
*no sugar
*in bed by 10pm -- NO STAYING UP ALL NIGHT reading or, worse, watching addictive series from Netflix (most of the old Masterpiece Theatres are there for instant download! Very tempting), or worst of all, worrying.

WRITE, TRYING MY HARDEST
*start at 7.30 every morning
*finish a chapter a week -- it doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be Good Enough, with THINGS HAPPENING, not just conversation and descriptions.....



DON'T WAIT
*wear cute clothes and look nice (as Grace said, what am I saving them for?) every day.
*see the people I love MUCH more often
*go ski-ing, take riding lessons
(*go to England)
*feel grateful for what I have NOW -- stop living in the future

"Happy is he, and he alone,
the man who can call today his own.
He who looking back can say,
Tomorrow do your worst for I have lived today!"

Underlying attittude: COMMIT/DO THINGS WHOLEHEARTEDLY OR NOT AT ALL
--this is a little harder to explain, but I'll try. It means: when I'm working, really work. When I'm relaxing,really relax. When I'm having fun, revel in it, enjoy it -- don't ruin it by thinking I should be working. Minimize activities that are neither work nor play; just being HONEST can make things one or the other. For example, if I'm writing email to friends, admit that it's Just for Fun, don't pretend I'm writing!

Similarly, eliminate activities that I don't really enjoy but find myself doing out of habit or boredom or indecision or lack of energy. Asking myself,
"Is this productive? Is this fun? If not -- do I have to do it?"
If the answer to all three is no, don't do it. Well....there are SOME things that are niether productive nor fun that you do have to do, but not that many. Some can be skipped, some can be off-loaded onto others-- and the ones I have to do, I will do quickly, and without procrastinating.

Procrastinating just prolongs the energy spent on something -- or, more poetically,
"Procrastination is the thief of time."
So, just do the boring things and get them over with -- and NOT first thing in the morning. Save the times with the best energy for the most important activities.

I'm happy to report that eight days into the new year, I'm on my way! I already have more energy, have lost a little weight, and am making progress on my novel.

I love new years and new starts. We used to sing this at school in, I think, second grade (imagine a bouncy tune and seven year olds singing it while the teacher played the piano):

"JANUARY DAYS ARE SHORT!
JANUARY NIGHTS ARE LONG!
A HAPPY NEW YEAR HAS JUST BEGUN
SO SING THIS JANUARY SONG."

I do.

A small bottle of wine

Last summer a two year old's favorite book was Rosemary Wells/Iona Opie's MOTHER GOOSE; we read it so many times that we learned every single one by heart. (He also wanted to know what every word -- including "treacle" -- meant.) He loved the book so much that he kept asking me to read it even once he could say the rhymes along with me. We both loved the sounds of the words, even when they didn't make any sense; and I think that nursery rhymes are a great way to give children a love of language. I bet if someone did a scientific study of them they might even discover that the sounds they repeat are the very sounds babies need to learn in order to strengthen the muscles that will later enable them to talk.

I myself love fairy tales just as much -- but those books have too many words and not enough pictures for him. So this summer I was very excited to find a new book of fairy tales with pictures on every page.



I love the cheerful illustrations -- but Red Riding Hood brought "a basket of food," not "a little cake and a small bottle of wine." I remember loving those details when I was a child, especially the small bottle -- I wanted that basket! The story also left out the mother's warning not to stray off the path; without that detail,the plot loses much of its point.

The only thing Jake liked in the book was the fight scene in The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We never even read most of the stories, and I couldn't help wondering if the way the author dealt with details was why the stories didn't capture his interest. I'm all for cutting out unnecessary words and details, but I think too many books now -- especially picture books -- don't pay enough attention to the words. This can make stories bland and deprive children of the joy words can bring.

Looking for trouble

Two brothers, six and nine, were fooling around, playing a silly version of THOMAS THE TANK
ENGINE and wrestling a lot. The older then started singing this song to the tune of the real
theme song, cranking his arm like a train as he ran around the kitchen:

"Thomas the Tank engine, looking for trouble --"

This made me laugh: picturing that earnest, always-trying-to-get-it little train looking for trouble. (It has to be admitted that looking for trouble is usually an accurate description of the boy singing the line and giggling hysterically.) As they wrestled and ran around I couldn't resist telling them I had an addition but it had to be sung in an English accent to work:

"Thomas the tank engine,
Looking for trouble,
Thomas the tank engine,
getting it double!

Thomas the tank engine,
crashing the train,
Thomas the tank engine
Does it again!"

They played and sang this for over an hour, laughing as they pummelled each other. Picture the older boy lying on the ground, being repeatedly punched by his younger brother while he himself laughed delightedly and shouted:
"This is definitely getting it double!"

This is the kind of energy being around some kids creates and silly as it may be, I love it. Perhaps part of the fascination is that brothers (I have 3 sisters) play so differently with each other than sisters do-- at first, I was worried and asked:
"Is this going to end in someone crying?" but they assured me it wasn't....at least, the older brother did. The younger one looked a little more doubtful about that.

But, as it happened, no one cried until the next activity -- running around the house, the OUTSIDE of the house, without stopping, until someone gave up.
"What do you get if you win?" the little brother asked.
"The loser has to be Thomas the Tank Engine," the older brother said.

Pause

I'm not going to be posting anything on this blog for awhile.....if you would like information about me, my books, or school visits, please visit my Web site,

ifyoulovetoread.com

Blow Out the Moon has come out in a new edition -- it's available at both Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Thanks for visiting,
Libby

Adam's plan

This is Adam's plan for the birthday party I described at Blue Rose Girls:


He's only six (well, he was when he made the list!) and reading and writing aren't his strong points....I'm impressed by how thoroughly he planned the party and how much he CARED about it. At the actual party, he cried more than anyone else, maybe because of the contrast between his plan -- his imagined party and the real party. At one point, his mother was trying to organize a relay game and Adam screamed,
"No, no, this is supposed to a _____ game!" (can't remember the word he used and it's probably what the "sl" on the list means, too: individual competition game, with one winner).

His mother seemed taken aback by how passionately he was screaming. They withdrew to discuss it privately, and when they came back, there was none of that team stuff. Adam won the game, too. He's a very competitive little boy, and during the baseball was, first, trying to change the rules and then, when his father wouldn't permit that:
"But it's my birthday! I should be allowed to have four strikes!"
"You should be allowed to cheat?" his father said, with a look that was quite quelling. (Adam adores his father.)

I'm fascinated by the way children think -- I"m interested in the way adults think, too, but kids' thoughts and feelings are more mysterious, partly because they can't really articulate them.

And at least for awhile, their thoughts tend to be really original. At around eleven, a lot of kids seem to start thinking the way they've been taught that they "should" think -- at least, that's what I've observed and read, too. Maybe that's what socialization means. But it never "takes" with some people; and some are probably more original to start with, too. Adam is definitely an original thinker, and that's one reason I like him so much (and am making him the hero of my next book, a short mystery).

The other is that he feels things so intensely: once, he wrote a card to his parents that said on the outside "I love you Mom and Dad." Inside, he wrote: "I love you a lot. Really a lot." There was no occasion; he just made it.

It's an interesting contrast: someone who plans so carefully and feels so intensely. I'm looking forward to starting this book.

Surprising sequel to birthday party

The kids birthday party I posted about on BRGs had a surprising sequel.


Parties change a lot as you go through life -- parties like Meghan's Strong Man party and Alvina's birthday party, where people dance all night, or at least until really late, just don't happen much once people marry and settle down (at least, among my friends). Unless someone is REmarrying -- then they give a big, weekend long party and everyone carries on and begs the band to keep playing past two a.m. or whenever they were supposed to stop.

This may just be my friends. When we have our boarding school reunions (classes five years apart attend), it's hilarious -- classes older and younger go to bed, we dance until the band stops, then stay up all night drinking and carrying on, usually joined by a few people from the class that has just left college. The opening chapter in an adult novel I began awhile ago describes such a scene. I may post it here someday....

But mostly, at this age, the parties are dinner parties, or stand-around-talking parties - and I live too far away from most of my friends to attend even these....I'm always trying to write something and spending the night away seems so disruptive! I don't know many people in Mystic: I just moved here a few months ago and I have been too busy with work to make the effort you need to make to meet people. So, between all these things, I don't go to many parties.

But since the birthday party, I've been invited to 2 other parties here, right here in town. One, by a child:
"Mommy, when we have our neighborhood party, can Libby come?"
Of course since this was asked in front of me she had to say yes, maybe she would have anyway.


And then yesterday another mother called, saying that she was having a birthday party for HER son and I seemed "so enthusiastic" and "have just moved here and maybe don't know many people" that she wondered if I'd like to come. I'm going! THIS party is going to be girls and boys and the main activity will be crabbing. I can't wait!

(

Yoga results (physical)

For the last 8 days I've gotten up at 4.00 a.m. to go to a series of yoga intensives taught by Ana Forrest. Thiu is like no other yoga: it transforms you and your life -- you can read about how and why on HER Web site.

Here, I'm just going to list how I've changed physically in eight days.

*my eyes are bluer

*the whites ARE white, almost silver-grey, not pink

*my neck is longer

*I'm about an inch taller

*my stomach is flatter

*I woke up yesterday morning not hurting anywhere for the first time in about ten years (I have fibromyalgia and arthritis both; and usually wake up with aching hips and shoulders -- not one twinge of pain ANYWHERE!)

*I've stopped drinking and eating unhealthy food or even, too much healthy food (not sure this will last!)

So what did I do? Intense yoga for two hours every day - by the end of the class, even the very young and very fit are wet with sweat all over: hair, clothes, everything - wrining wet. And I listened to what Ana Forrest said.

In many of the classes, you pick a spot in your body that holds an emotion or emotions you want to get rid of -- and during the poses, she reminds you to breathe into that spot. At the end of class today, she said to breathe into your spot, and "unclench it like a fist" -- and then:
"Just let it rest." She talked us through just letting it rest.

She also said:
"You can heal. No matter what terrible thing happened to you, you can heal. I know because I've done it."

It's not all serious: Ana doing the Naui walk made most people burst out laughing -- this is Naui. Imagine someone walking while doing this with her stomach and smiling goofily:







People cry during class. They laugh. They come out transformed.

I'm related to the Bounty mutineers!

I've always wished I had ancestors, famous ancestors, ancestors I could learn about. A cousin of my mother's has just found out that we're related not only to William the Conqueror but to TWO of the people who were on the H.M.S. Bounty.



They are Fletcher Christian, who led the mutiny, and George Stewart, a Midshipman who was NOT a mutineer. He gave himself up in Tahiti, was clapped into irons, and drowned when the ship taking him back to England was wrecked. He had a wife in Tahiti, so I probably have cousins there, and I know Fletcher Christian had kids on Pitcairn's Island, so I have cousins there, too.

These people were all descended from a Viking who was William the Conqueror's great-grandfather. (WIlliam the Conqueror was the Norman Duke who invaded England in 1066 and became King of England.)

What makes this especially exciting, though, is that I know a lot about the Bounty--I am completely fascinated by the English navy in the 18th century: Jane Austen's brothers, Nelson, the Bounty, the Patrick O'Brien novels.....I love them all and have even plottted out my own 18th century navy story, Philippa. Maybe I WILL write that next after all!

Message in a bicycle basket

Awhile ago, a baseball -- a real hardball -- appeared in the basket of my bicycle.The bike is always parked in front of my house, under this sign,
so I thought maybe somebody had found a baseball on the street and returned it to the most likely spot.

But then yesterday I rode my bike to the liquor store to get a bottle of rum for a party, and when I came out, another ball had appeared in the basket:

One could be a coincidence -- but TWO? Is this a message? A sign? I can't help thinking that it is, even though the reality may be that my bicycle just looks like a good place to put any baseballs that happen to be lying around. What the message IS I don't know yet; but that's often the way with oracles and ideas for stories, too.

Why Mystic Libby

I live in Mystic, CT -- and I also believe in synchronicity: the I Ching, that everything that happens in a particular moment has the characteristics of that moment and is related. In the Ching, you throw six coins and look in the book and (if you are used to interpreting the language) it tells you, in an uncanny way, what's going on in your life and what you should do about it.

When I asked the I Ching about blogging again, I got one of my favorite hexagrams, Return: "the return of heatlh after illness, the return of understanding after an estrangement, everything must be treated tenderely and with care at the beginning, so that the return will lead to a flowering."

Here are the first flowers in my garden, the one I planted from seed here in Mystic.


When I was digging up the lawn, my landlord's daughter asked if she could help -- I thought 'This will last about 5 minutes,' but she and her brother worked ALL DAY. As the eight-year old brother said, sounding very surprised,
"This is hard work!"
and later,sweat streaming down his face,
"I can see that putting in a garden isn't something you do in 5 minutes."
I said SOME people did -- they just bought the plants, but I liked to do it from seed. He said,
"You put in a little piece of your heart with each one."

You do: he did, his sister did, I did. And it seems to me (synchronicity, I didn't plan to write this!) that that's true of anything worth doing - writing, painting, blogging, whatever it is -- if you don't put a little piece of your heart in with it, it won't be any good to you or anyone else....and maybe "little piece" is good advice, too: not the whole thing, just a little piece. Anyway I'm going to blog from the heart this time around.

PS I re-posted the old posts I still had; lots got lost permanently when I took down the old blog!

As many old posts as I still have

Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Great lines
These sentences have all stuck in my mind for years.....I have no idea if they will interest other people or not.

"You've lost your mittens ALREADY?"
father to small child in mall parking lot. I think they'd just gotten out of their car.

"First, Dad sells the pony. Then, the turtle dies."
(spoken by childhood aquaintance)

"While potato chips are not exactly a health food, you might be surprised at how good for you they actually are."
(small print -- above nutritional content -- on potato chip packet)

"You shoulda seen the place I had in '29. All spring I was up to my ass in daisies."
Hollywood starlet as quoted by F.Scott Fitzgerald in his notebook

"Just open the refrigerator and take out something to eat! You don't have to stare at everything as though you're thinking of moving in!"
father to eight-year old son

How much do we as writers need to explain? I often err on the side of explaining too little -- but as I look at these sentences, they all (even the potato chip packet) reveal so much about the speaker that any comments would ruin them.

Maybe the last is an exception: I remember the son bent over the refrigerator, looking intensely...and him shouting back:
"There's nothing to eat in this stupid house!"
The mother was a health food fanatic, hardly ever home, and a year or so later divorced the father....all somehow there in that scene?
Posted by Libby Koponen at 4:36 PM 0 comments
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The First Child
Books really ARE a lot like babies.....as a first-born myself, I've never really liked it when mothers neglect their first child to take care of the new baby. In fact, when I see mothers doing it -- even strangers in the super-market -- I have to restrain myself from commenting unfavorably (note: I always do restrain myself).

But now I'm doing the same thing myself!As my new novel nears completion (or what I hope is completion), I find myself completely losing interest in Blow Out the Moon, thinking that there is no need to promote it or fuss over it, it can fend for itself. I don't even feel that interested in it anymore (let's hope this is never actually the case with real mothers).
Posted by Libby Koponen at 12:57 PM 1 comments
Friday, April 27, 2007
This is up by my desk, along with

"There is no substitute for hard work" (Thomas Edison)

and a more upbeat quote from Linda Sue Parks about how she always writes at least 500 words a day....no matter how "crumby I feel about writing." She also says "when I sit down to work I never know for sure which kind of day it's going to become....I do my two pages...and when I'm lucky, the act of writing itself turns a bad day into a good one."

Amen! But this is what really almost literally sends chills down my spine -- I founf it in a friend's great-grandmother's (or great-great grandmother's?) handwritten cookbook.

PROCRASTINATION

Lose this day loitering and
’twill be the same story,
Tomorrow, and the rest more
Dilatory.
Thus indecision brings its own delays
And days are lost lamenting days.

Are you in earnest?
Seize this very minute.
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
Only engage, and the mind grows heated,
Begin, and the work will be competed!

--Maria Elizabeth Dietrich’s autograph book, 1876
Posted by Libby Koponen at 7:41 AM 1 comments
Saturday, April 21, 2007
A First
Words in rewrite: 30,557 (have actually written more than 400 words- I took out a lot of stuff, too)
Waist: 29
Weight: 146

Finally, the numbers are ALL going in the right direction!

ALL the places where my best friend didn't think the ms. was working were the places I didn't really like myself....the parts that were labored, or where I didn't know what to say and just chattered. Here's where writing and weight really are alike for me: when I feel uncomfortable -- anxious (and for a writer boy is having nothing to say an uncomfortable feeling!) -- or empty, I fill up the space: with chatter in writing, with food in life.

Neither works. In writing, the solution is to concentrate on what wants to happen in that scene -- what the characters would do, how they would feel, what they would say -- and if I don't know, either there doesn't need to be a scene about that at all or I need to wait to write it until I DO know.

So I'm starting the rewrites with the scenes that have just come, the ones where I really do know what happens, what has to happen. For me, there is a feeling of ease and inevitability about these scenes. ANother simple test is that I can see them perfectly in my mind -- they play there like a movie. The chatter scenes are just words.

The new thing on the other Ws (thank you, Ana Forest!) is that I am just eating ENOUGH. I'm not on any bizarre diet (farewell, miracle fat-burning diet and South Beach and Frenchwomen who don't get fat!); I'm just having small amounts of healthy food. And doing lots of yoga.
Posted by Libby Koponen at 8:25 AM 0 comments
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Reader reactions and rewriting

I got my first comments: I could tell by how she said hello (trying to be cheerful but ill at ease) that my best friend didn't like the manuscript, and she didn't. She liked the characters and the setting, but not the plot which I had been so proud of!

At first, I felt deflated and even angry:
"One thing I loved about Blow Out the Moon was that it was such an emotional --"
"But I don't WANT to write another emotional book! I want to write a fun, action-packed adventure."
And then she compared it (unfavorably) to action-packed fantasies:
"The kids go into their basement and open a door to a whole new world!"
"But I want this to be a REALISTIC adventure story!"


I will admit that I also thought that she writes for TV: but this is the very reason that she's an excellent reader for me! Her strong points are my weak points.

When I thought it over, though, she was right about four things--luckily, I realized this before the end of the conversation and could thank her; we brainstormed a little. By the end of the day, I had ideas for how to change ALL of them. I called her back, we discussed them -- she thinks they will work and I do, too.

She is used to structuring a story with other writers--that's how they start all their scripts. She's good at it and I'm lucky to have her as a friend; not just becuse she's a good reader! But that's another topic.

So right after this somewhat deflating call I went to a three-hour intensive yoga workshop with Ana Forest. I almost started to cry during the workshop! It was designed to get you in touch with all the feelings that you would just as soon forget about -- I wasn't the only one to feel them: even one of my yoga teachers who was there as a student said later that he had felt "defeated." I considered (literally) walking out.

But, I didn't: although there was some bleak low energy moments in the middle, I did what she said - I stayed with it - and found a kind of calm steadiness inside myself that I never knew I had.

And it is in that spirit that I'm going to rewrite my book -- NOT all of it needs rewriting, if I just add the scenes I thought of yesterday and tweak a few other places, it will be ready to send out again....the editing can wait until the next round! My other readers can tell me what to take out: my task now is to get IN all the things I need to bring my heroine through her painful moments (which I skipped over and neglected to tell the reader about just as I try to avoid painful feelings in real life!). OK, Camm has to go through them, too; but she also will get to that calm steady place at the end --and (like me at the end of the yoga class) will be stronger for the hard choices she made.

The difference is that her journey will be externalized and articulated; one of the powerful things about Ana Forrest's work is that -- at least for me-- you don't even get into why you feel the way you do. There are just the feelings in your body and your body releasing them.

Some of Ana's words (when everyone -- a room full of at least 100 people) was roaring like lions:
"You may wince" (I was surprised that I did, I really didn't like hearing those sounds) "if you grew up with a lot of yelling...don't worry, no one in here is going to hit you" was one.
"Just make your own sound back, don't cringe," was another.

Another was that just when you get to the place where you want to quit, you should GET INTO IT and use the pose to help you through it. In my book, all the places that I didn't like myself -- that felt fake or forced or just not quite right -- are like those hard yoga poses. I need to try harder with them and tell them in my own voice, my own way. I have to wait for them to just come, too, I can't force them -- the great thing about yesterday is that all the ideas did just come rushing into my mind. They'd probably been there all along, I was just so intent on my idea of "action packed" that I didn't listen. It IS going to be an adventure story, and a joyous one; but the characters' emotions have to be there. I'm an emotional person, my stories can't just leave out that aspect of life.

I wish I could write today, but it will be just as well to let it all sit; I listed what I need to do last night, I won't forget; today is for client work. I'm as lucky in my clients as I am in my friends.
Posted by Libby Koponen at 6:00 AM 0 comments
Friday, April 13, 2007
New numbers


Words in rewrite: 30,161
Waist: 30
Weight: 149

Yes, everything is fatter, including me....but the revised draft did go off to 2 trusted readers. It's not finished; I knew when I sent it off that the last two chapters were really really rough -- but just as I was falling asleep last night I thought of what the title means.

The title had lodged itself in my brain and wouldn't go away -- even though I tried to make it, and even told people kind of hoping they would hate it. I thought that might make it easier to discard it; but *I* liked the sound of it and people I told did, too.



But what did it mean? I knew it had something to do with navigating change, her feelings about change, but what? I swore that I would never again have a title that needed explaining (whenever I do school visits, the kids always ask "Why is it called BLOW OUT THE MOON?" and once I explain they say that makes sense; when I say I wish I'd had a simpler title they then say "No, no! I love that")...So THIS time, the meaning will be in the book -- or maybe not. Maybe just a few more hints. But at least now I know how that title is connected to the story!

I've learned a lot from writing this novel: that I can write quickly (six to nine months is quick for me), that I can write something with a plot....and that if I work on something, can't come up with the answer, and then just wait, it will come.
Posted by Libby Koponen at 7:09 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Blue Roses
When I first started working at computer start-ups I was usually the only woman at meetings or dinners.
"Are you enjoying all the football talk?" an older scientist once said with a smile.


Then, at one company, I worked with a group of women: engineers, QA, marketing, for some bizarre reason everyone on that team was female....and we never missed a deadline -- or "slipped a delivery date" as it was called (this was not the norm at that company). We got SO MUCH DONE! I've never told anyone this, but when we were meeting, I was never able to escape the feeling that we were just pretending to be grown-up and working. It always felt like a game or teaparty was about to start at any minute....maybe this is just because most of the guys really prided themselves on being macho (engineers are insecure about this was my theory) and THEIR meetings were a time for posturing.

Once at a meeting someone the other guys always mocked for being wimpy was having trouble opening a can of Coke. The meeting sort of stopped while everyone watched him struggle with it.

Finally Bruce, the boss, sighed,
"Show him how to do it, Ran."
And RAN (whose father had been a professional baseball player) took the Coke with a manly gesture and popped off the top.

This DID have a point about the BRGs (Alvina, I, and Anna are on the Mystic Bridge above; Alvina and I are wearing the scarves Grace made for us, Linda took the picture, Meghan was there only in spirit) but I'm running out of space and perhaps you are running out of patience so I'll wrap it up -- we BRGs work well together and get a lot done, too, because we're friends....there IS competition in a way -- we spur each other on, but we don't brag and we don't posture the way some men do.....and with us it not only feels like play, the tea parties often do break out! Grace is having one in Boston on May 19 and I'm glad, honored, proud to be her friend and to be invited. Everyone in Kids Lit Land is invited, too -- see the Blue Rose Girls blog for details: I'm looking forward to meeting those bloggers and readers I've met online in person.
Posted by Libby Koponen at 10:25 AM 0 comments
Older Posts
Are all deleted! I took down this whole blog in a foolish fit: these I saved, and perhaps they are enough.