Assigning Blame

It's all Suzanne Collins' fault. Yep, you  read that right. My muse is missing, and I hold Suzanne completely responsible.

My muse was happily coming up with all kinds of wonderful stuff, feeding my brain lots of lovely ideas. Life was good in creativity land.

And then I started reading Catching Fire. It consumed me. Pulled me into another world, where I worried about Katniss, and Peeta, and Gale. Even when I wasn't reading the book.

Cooking dinner: thought about the wild game Katniss caught.
Heard jays squabble: thought of mockingjays.
Tried to think of my own work: couldn't get the plight of the people in the Districts out of my head.

Suzanne Collins, with her extraordinary ability to transport me to another time and place, chased my muse away. So, really, my lack of productivity must be her fault, right?

Do you think my muse will return when I finish reading Mockingjay? I certainly hope so. I'm off to find out.

What books transport you into another world?

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Stolen Moments

You know those moments when you get unexpected free time? When you thought you had one thing to do, and suddenly, you don't? The stolen moments that feel so much more valuable than scheduled free time? Yeah, those.

I have one right now.

I got home with the kids, and they immediately skipped next door to play. And here I am with what will probably turn out to be an hour and a half to myself. It feels different from my alone time during the day, when I've planned out what I will work on, and actually stick to the plan (for the most part).

Because right now, I can do anything.

I know what I should do: research magazines looking for nonfiction science/nature/environment articles, revise my MS, work up quiz questions for my students, write a query letter, work on a new PB idea.

But this is my stolen time. The afternoon sunlight filters through the leaves of the trees outside and my plants have long gone untended, due to the excessive rain we received these past few weeks. This afternoon is the perfect stolen moment, so I'm going to enjoy it outside.

What do you do with your stolen moments?

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Poetry Friday: Frost's Mending Wall

I have finally gotten around to reading Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire. (Yes, I know, I should be mocked... send your mockingjays my way).

The image of the walls and fences that separate the people in the Districts is vivid in my mind. Last fall we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and while I am not interested in discussing politics here, the images dovetail with  recent political rallies in the U.S. 

I guess you could say that walls, and the purpose of walls, are fresh in my  mind. 

Mending Wall
by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." 

(from http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html)

I love the way Frost frames his questions about walls: why have them? what purpose do they serve? But most telling, I think, are the last three lines. "He will not go behind his father's saying/ And he likes having thought of it so well/ He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'"  Do they?

Poetry Friday is hosted by Susan Taylor Brown.

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We have a winner!

Today is the big day. The Pasta Detectives and German chocolate. Five entrants. One winner. And a big thank you to everyone who participated, tweeted, and otherwise helped to spread the word.

I ran randomizer.org twice ('cause I got my numbers screwed up the first time), and both times I got the same person (different number, but this person had three entries; weird).  Clearly Lynda Young is meant to have the book and chocolate. YAY!! Congratulations, Lynda. Email me at anpstevens [at] gmail [dot] com and we can work out the details.

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I finished writing the first draft of my latest non-fiction PB (I did that twice, too, come to think of it), and today I'm off to catch up with the rest of the blogosphere. And do some work for which I will be paid.

Oh, but I sent off the magazine article and have been researching literary agents for the PBs. So I think September is off to a good start!

What are your goals for this month?

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