Portrait of a Pirate as a Young Dog.

Twig is fetching even when she's not actually fetching, no? Who can resist those squinty eyes, that tiny head?

I've hit a tough place in my new novel, can you tell? The computer and all its time wasting wonders calls to me. "Novel?" it soothes. "The world don't need more steenking novels. I know a place where you can look at many, many beautiful pictures of miniature pinschers, like myself - er, I mean like Twig."

I look at the tiny headed dog. She squints at me, then reaches out a long stick arm to hassle the old man wiener dog.

So how did writers go nuts before the internet? Absinthe I guess. But at 8:30 in the morning I'm more interested in a pot of tea and raisin bran. So that leaves me avoiding the tough place in my novel stone cold sober.

"Aaargh!" Pirate noises. Twig has launched a full on attack on the old man wiener dog. The only thing missing are cutlasses and those three cornered pointy hats - oh, and puffy shirts.

I open my manuscript document, wondering if the answer to my tough place is a pirate dog in a puffy shirt.

It's not.

The dogs tumble across a sun patch on the carpet, snarling good naturedly. Maybe the answer to my tough place isn't a dog, pirate or no. Maybe the answer is how these two dogs are behaving. Neither one of their tiny heads is worrying about what they're not doing. They're just being - being dogs. Sometimes that means sleeping on the forbidden couch, sometimes that means stealing socks.

For a human, I have a tiny head. But even with my tiny head I can see their point. I'll try to relax about the whole thing and be a writer. Sometimes a writer writes, and sometimes a writer surfs the web for many, many beautiful pictures of miniature pinschers.

Arrgh.

I just finished reading Thomas Nagel's excellent essay, "What is it Like to be a Bat?" In it he makes the argument that as humans we are unable to truly know what it's like to be a fluttering, echo locating, night rodent. We can imagine having webs between our limbs allowing us to swoop at will. We can imagine eating bugs. We can imagine what it's like to go nighty-night at the break of dawn and spend those sleeping hours upside down. I'm having fun right now imagining chasing after a few people I've come across in life. Hey, people! Look at me! I'm a bat and I'm going to fly right into your hair.

But in these imaginings we aren't knowing a bat's experience of what it's like to be a bat. We're stuck in our human-ness only knowing what it would be like for us to behave as a bat behaves.

I run into variations on this theme pretty often. Why do squirrels dart out in front of your car, making you have a heart attack as you slam on your brakes only to dart right back as soon as you start moving again?

I try very hard to imagine what it's like to be a squirrel, but the closest I get is pretty similar to a TV screen between stations.

Here's a species even closer to home. The little dog, Twig, joyfully runs over to proudly lead me to a new pile of poo on the stairs. I try very hard to imagine what it's like to be a 5 pound miniature pincher puppy. Hmm, aside from images of dog treats, chewed socks and the repeated word, "sucker", I got nothing.

Truthfully, I don't even know what it's like to be "that guy" talking too loud on his cell phone, the woman that cut me off on the freeway, or the baby in the seat next to me that screamed the entire flight.

So what does this mean for a writer? I always felt I knew exactly what it was like to be all my characters. I invented them after all. I believed I knew what it was like to be a three legged cat, a dead stuffed cat, men, little kids, women with actual waists. But did I?

Maybe the best I, we, can do is imagine what it is like to be them only as far as knowing what it is like to be us behaving as those other characters.

Hmm.

How do royalties work? I've gotten this question so many times and mangled the answer to that question so many times. But if you really want to know the correct answer, Moonrat's got you covered.

She may not be Queen of the Dog Park, but she is Queen of Information on this tricky subject.

To bathe in the light of her wisdom, just go here -> http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/05/and-you-thought-royalty-involved-crown.html

I just got back from a trip. It wasn't to be a vacation. It wasn't to be career related. It was to be life related. I just got back from Ohio where my son just graduated from college. First I have to say that I do not travel well. I am an unapologetic homebody control freak who not only hates to fly, but is absolutely terrified of being strapped in a seat at 35,000 feet up in the clear blue deadly air speeding along at, how fast do jets go? I'm guessing it's about a million miles an hour.

That's right - a million miles an hour. I'd have to be a moron not to be terrified, right?

But I was willing to risk several more gray hairs to see the man cub in his cap and gown get his very much deserved college diploma. As it turned out, my view was a little blurry - hard to see through tears, you know. Yes, I did fulfill my obligation as a mom. I blubbered throughout pretty much the whole ceremony.

But there was one section of the 3+ hour event that I didn't cry through. It was the address. The speaker was essayist, novelist, playwright, and distinguished professor of English at Stony Brook University, Roger Rosenblatt. Truth be told, I wasn't much interested in hearing him speak. I wasn't interested in hearing anyone speak. I was there to see my kid. And whatever or whomever didn't directly relate to my kid or my little personal universe, then it was all pretty much blah, blah, blah.

But Professor Rosenblatt changed my opinion right away and at the same time changed the overall view of what my trip turned out to be. The guy's hilarious. He speaks in a calm, deadpan fashion that urges you to lean forward in your seat. And just as you're tipped almost to ending up ass over tea kettle, he throws a line at you that sets you back in your chair, laughing said body part off with abandon.

A large part of what he talked about was, of course, now that you're done with college, what do you do with the rest of your life. But instead of telling them to roll up their shirt sleeves and get to work, the professor gave these hopeful young people some helpful tips on how to spend their lives avoiding work.

I wish I could remember the whole list of avoidance tips, but I do remember two of the. One was to become a Drug Czar. The other was to become a writer. Being a writer frees you from all sorts of responsibities, he advised. A CEO that has fallen from grace is a disappointment. A writer living in abject poverty is an acheivment.

This line of logic made the rows of robed and capped graduates laugh. This line of logic made me feel better. Suddenly, instead of feeling like a financial failure, I was right on target as a writer. Yes, I'm published. And yes, I'm buying nothing but store brands, baby. And work? Most people would think that spending most of the day in in your pajamas reading, staring at a heartless keyboard, or surfing the web is not work. Hey, Hulu is great reasearch. Seriously.

I have spent my adult life not working. I've had to work pretty much 24/7 in order to be able to do this, but it's been totally worth it. I think Professor Rosenblatt was right on. Work=bad. Passion for what you're working on = good. Plus, now I can greet the UPS guy in my rubber ducky pjs at 3:00 in the afternoon with my head held high. I'm a successful, store brand buying writer after all.

Hearing my son's name called and watching him walk down that aisle made this foray out into the world one of the highlights of my life. Hearing Professor Rosenblatt's speech was a bonus.

To quote BTO, "People see you having fun, just a lyin' in the sun. You tell them that you like it that way. It's the work that we avoid and we're all self employed. We love to work at nothin' all day."

Bring on the rubber ducky pjs. I've got some writin' to do.

I used to be a tennis singles player. But then, mostly because it was easier to find other players, I switched to doubles. And I've spent a lot of time and some cash in order to learn this very different game.

Then, this week, my team's coach puts me in the singles slot for our last match of the season. And it's not only our last match, it's a match with the top team in our division. "So what did I do to piss you off?" I ask our coach. He just smiles and says, "You'll just have to adapt is all."

I did manage to do that - after losing 3-6 in the first set. What I had been trying that whole first set wasn't working. It took nine games and a lost set to figure out what I doing, what had worked so well for doubles, wasn't going to work for me right now, right here. So I changed my game plan and won the second set 6-3 and the third set tie-break.

It made me wonder how often that applies to art and writing as well. I've been doing more writing than art lately and have been switching back and forth between picture book manuscripts and young adult novels. Picture books are more like doubles. The points are usually shorter and you just don't have the time to take your time with a long rally to set up your shots.

The novels are definitely more akin to a singles game. There you can take some time to really set up the court the way you'd like. And if you do that well, you'll get a point. Sure, singles and novels have their furious, rapid fire moments, but those are often offset by the more methodical set ups.

I have found myself at times trying to force a picture book mentality onto a novel, and also the other way around. Sometimes that's because I'm going in about 37 directions at once, creative-wise, but sometimes it's because I'm simply slow to adapt. And for me, the best plan is to scrap what I've written and start over. That's not quitting - that's recognizing you need a new game plan for the project in front of you.

On game day this week, there wasn't any way I was going to win that first set with the tactics I was using. But by reevaluating my game plan I did see success. I know this can seem like a reach. Does tennis strategy really translate to writing? Well, my fabulous agent, Edward Necarsulmer IV has sold both a novel and picture book projects for me in the past year. He's a genius at game plans and not too shabby a tennis player either.

So here's where I'd like to say I played a tennis match against my agent and I watched his game and adapted to come through with a win. Nope, I played a tennis match against my agent and had my fanny handed to me on a silver platter.

Next time, Edward. Next time.

Why it's hard to write (and draw) sometimes....

It seems like whenever you read about a writer (or an artist) not being able to create, it's usually an angst-ridden wail of despair and dread. It's a treatise on the most heinous condition known to writers and artists - THE BLOCK.

Having THE BLOCK is the equivalent of laying in bed, awake in the middle of the night. You want to sleep - you'd pretty much kill to sleep. But nope, sleep just laughs its sneaky little laugh at you and scurries to hide behind the glowing numbers of your alarm clock, forcing you to stare at the glacially slow-changing numbers as the minutes and hours pass.

Fun times!

Not being able to write (or draw) is always labeled bad, bad, bad. And sometimes it is. I've sat at the keyboard, not doing anything more than just sitting and looking at it more times than I want to think about. Yes, it is like laying awake at night or even worse, it's like sitting alone at the dinner table, faced with a plate of uneaten peas long after everyone else was allowed to leave. You'd like to be able to eat that cold, coagulated, green lump, but can you?

Stupid peas.

But not being able to write (or draw) isn't always a bad thing - or at least it doesn't have to be. Sometimes, it's simply life getting in the way. I've had a good dose of that in the last month with the arrival of the dreaded min-pin puppy, Twig. She is all about life, and finding things on the carpet to eat, and pooping, pooping, and pooping some more. It's been hard to write (or draw) because I've been busy.

Our old wiener dog, Dutch hasn't distracted me for a few years. He likes to sleep a lot, he hasn't eaten a shoe in a while, and, gentleman that he is, he poops outside on a consistent basis. But suddenly, he's become a distraction again. Now he and Twig dance and roll across the floor. Play growls fill the air until finally tired out, they find a sun patch to curl up together in. How am supposed to do anything but watch that?

Unlike THE BLOCK, this interruption doesn't fill me with paralyzing fear. Instead I'm thinking of it as a break, a refueling of sorts. And hopefully, when I do get back to full steam ahead art and writing-wise, I'll be the better for the time off.

So go out there and write (and draw) if you can. But if you can't, at least try to enjoy the reason that's so.

Twig (and Dutch) commands you.