~~~Lara Zielin~~~

STATUS: My cat’s breath smells like cat food. I got a link this morning from Colleen where you can Simpsonize yourself, and I totally had to try it out. Unfortunately, it had some issues with the photos I submitted, so I’m posting Colleen’s Simpsonized photo instead of mine. It really does look uncannily like her. If she was yellow and a cartoon, that is. Also, in honor of Homer and the gang (not to mention the new movie, which I haven’t seen yet but will soon), I’ve changed the links under “Something Shiny” to all things Simpsons (or at least things they’d approve of). I feel this is especially relevant since Homer loves donuts and I’ve got a book coming out with a title he’d totally dig.In the meantime, Rob and I are in the throes of figuring out how to make my author website rival YouTube. Well, not really, but we do want it to be cool. He pointed out the Calamity Physics site, which is kick-ass but is really more about the book (and filling in All the Things You May Have Missed) versus a true author site where you learn about the author and all their books, not just one book in detail. I like the Catherine Gilbert Murdock site, but she looks kinda … severe or something. I probably shouldn’t say that because I want her to blurb my book at some point. So, um, picture her site with way more laughs, and that’s pretty much how I want larawrites.com to be.

As soon as it’s up, I’ll of course link to this blog.

If anyone has good author websites to use for benchmarking, pass ‘em along!

STATUS: Not invited. To Steve Martin’s wedding, that is. Look at this guest list! Holy wah. That’s a dream room right there. I totally would have crashed it if I could have: Why, hello, Diane Keaton. Your turtleneck looks smashing this evening. Mwah, I’ve known Steve for ages. We met on the set of Bowfinger. What? My invite? I, er, left it in the car. No, really, there’s no need to flag down security … [heard faintly from beyond gate at front of driveway] Congratulations, Steve! Best wishes to you and whats-her-name!

The weekend was good. Seriously productive, writing-wise, and also organizationally. Did some rehab to the back patio and it looks way, way better. It’s amazing what a couple hundred bucks and a trip to Meijer can do. I’m SUCH a TLC girl.

So, I often write while rocking out to iTunes, and I’ve found myself inspired by some good songs lately. So I thought I’d write down some kick-ass lyrics and songs that makes me want to pound the keys harder. Here goes:

If some night I don’t come home, please don’t think I’ve left you alone. The same place animals go when they die, you can’t climb across a mountain so high. – Arcade Fire, Keep the Car Running

I think I adore this song because I’m learning to play the drums and the drums in this song are so cool. But I like poetry behind the notion of someone going to the “same place animals go when they die” and it being a place others can’t necessarily follow.

I got a girl in the war, Paul, her eyes are like champagne. They sparkle, bubble over, but in the morning all you’re left with is rain. – Josh Ritter, A Girl in the War

Josh Ritter has some great lyrics, but this is one of my favorite lines. Ever.

I wanna have the same last dream again, the one where I wake up and I’m alive. Just as the four walls close me within, my eyes are opened up with pure sunlight. I’m the first to know, my dearest friends, even if your hope has burned with time, anything that’s dead shall be re-grown, and your vicious pain, your warning sign, you will be fine. – Angels and Airwaves, The Adventure

I found this song on an iTunes playlist dedicated to the memory of Steve Irwin. I LOVED that man and I still mourn his passing. This song is so inspiring to me – about there being so much hope in life no matter what. “Anything that’s dead shall be re-grown.” Amen.

There’s a crazy mirror showing us both in 5-D, I’m laughing at you you’re laughing at me. There’s a room of shadows that gets so dark brother, it’s easy for two people to lose each other in this tunnel of love. – Bruce Springsteen, Tunnel of Love

Okay, so The Boss has amazing lyrics, but there’s something about this song that just gets me every time I hear it. Maybe it’s the metaphor of love as a dark ride through a mysterious tunnel that you think is going to be so fun but it can get really scary and shadowy. But is still worth it.

STATUS: Deathly Hallowed. I stayed up late last night reading the last Harry Potter and, I gotta say, I’m bummin for all sorts of reasons. One, because I stayed up late and that always makes me a little grumpypants. Two, because so many amazing people die, die, die, left and right, in the final installment of Mr. Potter’s adventures. And third, because the ending is so …well. I can’t say that. I don’t want to be a spoiler. New York Times I am not.

There is an interesting part in the book where Harry reads a tombstone and it says, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” This is from the Book of Matthew in the Bible, though J.K. never lets on that it’s scripture. Jesus does not seem to exist in the Harry Potter books though curiously they do say “Merry Christmas” to one another, and Draco at one point is home for “Easter holiday.” I’m not advocating that Jesus should exist in the books, btw. I’m just making a point.

Anyway, swell music, fade out, wipe tear.

Move on.

The paperwork is all signed on DONUT DAYS. And I got an email from Susanna saying that we’d be starting edits in September.

Yikes! I’m supposed to have all the edits done by October, according to the contract, which makes me a little stressy stressy, but hopefully the edits won’t be too extensive.

Also, I have my fingers secretly crossed that the book will come out in fall 2008 and not spring 2009. In the book world, they release the “heavy hitters” in the fall, just like they do the movies. The Oscar contenders, the Pulitzer books – everybody with heft comes out swinging in the fall. Putnam was thinking they’d hold off on releasing my book until the spring because then it wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle, thrown to the ground under the weight of massive sellers like THE HISTORIAN. But I also don’t want DD coming out as a “light spring read” and everyone assuming that just because it’s funny and quirky, that it doesn’t have something really important to say.

I guess in the end Putnam will decide all this for me, which is weird in and of itself. I learned with my last book that you lose control of a lot of things in this process. The good news is that this time around, I have the publishing world’s version of Ron and Hermione there to make sure I’m okay in the end.

STATUS: Brazilian. I’m getting rid of what doesn’t need to be there.

Rob and I are in a cleaning/selling/reorganizing frenzy. When you live in 850 square feet like we do, you gotta be lean. We’ve been paying almost $200/month for a climate-controlled storage unit these past couple years, and we’re SO over it. I mean, that’s a car payment, a raise, an extravagant dinner at the Chop House every month. Why waste it on stuff? Let’s be honest: We all need less stuff.

But here’s the twist. The one area where I need more is with my latest book. More scenes, more depth, more emotion. More, more, more. And you know what? That’s hard to do. I haven’t mastered the art by any means, but I’m going to offer up one tip for anyone who is also struggling with more: Make connections.

Simply put, that means tie your characters together in unexpected ways. Why make them separate people operating in separate spheres if you can link them somehow?

Let’s say you’re writing about two friends who are thick as thieves until … I don’t know … the traveling circus comes to town and one of them wants to join up. Fine if they experience that separately, each with their own reactions to the dancing bears and high-wire performers, but what if the one friend was totally crushing on the friend who wanted to become the lion tamer? See, extra dimension right there.

As I make more connections in my current book, I’m also busy with some fabulous bathroom reading. No, not the new Harry Potter book. Crappie magazine. Get it? Crappie? I’m serious about this, actually. We not only put Crappie in the bathroom as a cheeky joke for anyone who might use our toilet, but I also happen to have a character who’s really into fishing. So I gotta read up.

It’s craptastic.

STATUS: Better than Britney. I’m laying off the celebrity snark for a while here because everything is just swirling into a black hole of tragic. Britney’s wiping up dog pee with Prada and Lindsay’s saying the drugs aren’t hers. Total *sigh.*

On a happier note, Ellen is coming to Ann Arbor on August 1 and that makes me happy, happy. She’s doing a reading-slash-signing at Nicola’s Books, which is fabulous little independent bookstore next door to Barry Bagel’s. And no, I didn’t put the apostrophe in the wrong place. They did. Unless they guy’s last name is Bagel and then it’s correct. But regardless, it cracks me up every time I see it. I suppose if I were Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the misuse of the apostrophe might make me angry. It might also rouse my ire if I were a better editor. But I’m not. So there you go. I have better things to worry about. Liiiike …

Britney?

Oh, alright. Sor-ry. Will honor moratorium on snark.

Actually, I sometimes worry about bad reviews. Like, if people totally hate DONUT DAYS and they throw virtual rotten tomatoes at me in the form of half-stars on Amazon.com. I was just emailing my writing pal Dan about it this morning. I don’t totally look forward to the (possible) day when Crusty McReadsalot from Publishers Weekly gets his hands on my novel and sneers at it with pretension and loathing – but if it happens then I guess it happens. I believe in the book, my agent believes in the book, and Putnam obviously believes in it.

So screw Crusty.

Unless he gives me a great review.

Then we hug Crusty. But not too tight lest his shriveled little heart begin beating too quickly with the horror of actual human contact and spasm into paralysis.

STATUS: Spinal Tapic. There’s talent there somewhere, but I’ll be damned if 11 sounds any different than 10.

I’m hankering for some writing time and I’m not sure when I’m going to get it. I got a brain fart this weekend about the new book, and I’m aching to clear the air by getting some of it on paper (er, disk). I get pretty grumptastic if I don’t write for a while, which made me think this morning about how writers go about fitting writing into their lives.

For most of us, it’s an issue of making the writing happen regardless of kids (I don’t have any, but bless those of you who do and still make books happen), jobs (that I do have, thankfully), extracurricular activities, and the Munger, Michigan, potato festival. Many of us plug away at books despite these distractions (or maybe in spite of these distractions) but there’s a more dangerous kind of distraction – the kind labeled “D” for Drama, which then leads to “E” for excuses.

So, I happen to know this writer person. Let’s call them Pat. Pat has talent. Lots of talent, actually, but Pat also has a penchant for making bad choices. Relationships, money, where to go for lunch – anything can become an Issue, and those Issues pile up until Pat has no room left in life to write. At the end of the day, I sometimes wonder if Pat makes Drama Happen so the Issues ensure Pat won’t ever have to finish a book. I dunno. But it’s possible.

There are really good reasons for not writing – and there are good reasons for taking it slow and plugging away at it, bit by bit, for years if that’s what it takes. I’m all for that. Alls I’m saying is to be careful that what’s swirling around you and keeping you from your laptop is good stuff, healthy stuff, and not baby mama drama.

Which, OMG, this isn’t baby mama drama but it’s close: Lindsay is in jail! Her first day out of rehab she got a DUI! Oh, poor, misguided, gnawed-on-by-the-world Lindsay. Maybe Paris can giver her tips for how to make jail feel like Soho.

STATUS: Crank-Yankery. It’s Monday and I’m a little grumpy, but things are still funny. Like this morning when I drove to work and heard the always-classy Britney Spears call a member of the papparazzi a nasty name connected to weight, apparently forgetting her own sojourn in the land of Eats Everything. Oh Britney, Britney, Britney. How is it possible that K-Fed is the one looking good these days?

So, I thought I’d post my DONUT DAYS query letter for the world to see (well, the world of three people that read this blog — and thank you, three people. You know who you are).

As I stated in an earlier blog, I totally had good success with this query, but I had bad luck selling DONUT DAYS for a while there. Mostly because it sucked and needed lots of work. (Thank you, fabulous agent Susanna, for helping get me to the finish line.)

I think this query could be better in a lot of ways, but my 50% show-me-some-pages rate wasn’t too terrible. Some of the things I did right were give it a good hook in the beginning, and reference other books that the agent had represented that would make my book a good fit with him/her. I also highlighted my connections with people who deal with books (teachers, librarians, etc.) and emphasized I’d been published before. Without further ado, here’s my query, and I hope it’s helpful for this blog’s three readers.

Dear Agent,

Seventeen-year-old Emma Goiner (called “Goiter” by her classmates) is the daughter of evangelical preachers. Every Sunday and Wednesday she attends church where the congregation rolls on the floor, speaks in tongues, and shouts “amen!” during the sermon. But there are cracks in the church’s spiritual veneer and the behind-the-scenes dogma is making Emma’s already difficult relationship with her parents even more challenging. So when Emma’s best friend, Natalie, suggests Emma leave the church’s problems behind by camping out in front of Birch Lake, Minnesota’s, soon-to-open Crispy Dream donut store, Emma agrees. Emma also believes that by covering the opening as a journalist, she has a chance at winning the Paul Bunyan Press’s $5,000 prize for the best feature article by a high school student.

In this novel for young adults, titled DONUT DAYS, Emma must contend with her peers, Harley bikers, donut cops, preachers and gamblers – plus a visit to jail and a life-altering sermon by her dad – to get her Paul Bunyan Press story. Yet for all the story’s sugary quirks, the novel still retains true substance as Emma works to figure out what she believes in – and winds up finding faith in herself. Based on your agency’s representation of GREAT TEEN FICTION, I believe DONUT DAYS will be a fit with [insert Literary Agency here].

I am the published author of a teen nonfiction book titled Make Things Happen: The Key to Networking for Teens (Lobster Press, 2003). Since its publication, I have cultivated relationships with librarians, teachers, and teen-center directors across the Midwest in my role as a speaker on the subjects of goal setting, careers, and creative writing.

Per your submission guidelines, I have included the first 10 pages of the manuscript.

Thank you in advance for your consideration of DONUT DAYS and I hope to hear back from you.

Has anyone been noticing the proliferation of dorks on TV lately? It’s awesome. There’s Ugly Betty, Dwight Schrute from the Office, even Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica.

What’s great about seeing so many dorks is that it humanizes the dork experience, which, if you’re anything like me, you’re scarily familiar with. Nicknames, weight issues, bad clothes – the list goes on. I have fewer dork experiences now that I have fake hair and my new BFF Mac makeup by my side, but they still happen. And the worst ones, the most damaging ones, are the ones where you encounter someone who just doesn’t think you amount to squat, even though you know you have a glittery lion on the inside of you waiting to bedazzle the world.

My recent dork experience made me realize that, at the end of the day, you have to teach other people how to treat you (as Rob says), and yet there are some battles you just can’t win. And this is where having a little card in your back pocket that reads “writer” becomes such a powerful thing. There are myriad ways we all identify ourselves and find meaning in our lives, and sometimes we forget that writing is one of the most powerful.

How dare someone treat you with anything less than total respect when you put pen to paper and spin stories that make people happy? It’s unthinkable that someone would act like a know-it-all around you, when you’ve done the hard work of digging through the slop of the soul to find the one pearl that will make a story sing.

Now, of course, crap still happens. People are … people. And not everyone is going to understand how to treat you because maybe they’re born jerk-faces, and obviously they can’t see all the fabulous manuscripts and poems and works you’ve started, or finished, or just need to find the right agent for.

But don’t wait for a $500,000 book deal to consider yourself a writing success and worthy of respect by either the writing community or the people around you. I’m not advocating being an asshole or anything – I’m just saying, keep that writer card in your back pocket and pull it out regularly. It’s a badge of honor.

Paula Abdul is crazy. How do I know? I watch her new reality show, Hey Paula.

If you like to watch what happens when a sleep-deprived human crashes into basic vocabulary needs, I recommend you watch. Otherwise, it’s just painful. Especially the parts where she tells people she needs support and then doesn’t get it. It’s like watching someone in a nursing home, who’s all alone, plead for help … and then expire on the floor. Except in this case the person’s not old. Or alone. They’re just Paula Abdul.

The other thing I’m over the moon about right now is a little video on YouTube called Human Tetris. Colleen said, eh, yawn, wait until the last minute or so (then it gets good, she says) but, call me a simpleton, they had me at hello. I mean, a show where people have to find a way to fit through a moving shape, otherwise they get knocked into a pool that looks suspiciously laden with kiddie pee? Oh, I am SO THERE.

Looking for a good read? I’ve got one! And, yah, if you can’t tell, this is the part of the blog where I talk about things I’m into, not just writing stuff. Which, I hope I can update the site with this kind of info more regularly. It’s fun — especially because I get to use words like “pee” and “Paula.”

Anyway, the book is SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS. The title was a total turnoff (your what hurts?), until I was stuck at the airport waiting to interview James Earl Jones (my new BFF, see pic in previous post) and I was desperate for something to read and I picked it up. It rocked my world, changed my life, made me want to be a better person, take up Kabbalah, etc.

Well, not really, it’s just a good read. Prolly you already knew that but sometimes, I’m just a little behind the 8-ball people. Sue me — I’m working on a new book.

So, it’s not every day I meet an A-list star, so I thought I’d better blog about it.

I interviewed James Earl Jones [insert squeal here] for my day job, and got to ask him all kinds of questions about his time at the University of Michigan, his career, his feelings about stars today. Oh, he totally mentioned Dakota Fanning. I have to find out if something scandalous happened. Did she beat on someone’s windshield with an umbrella? He made it sound like something went down recently with her, but maybe it’s one of those things you know only if your publicist talked to hers.

Anyway, we totally hung out at the Algonquin. It felt very glamorous to me, midwest girl who once climbed on top of a Babe the Blue Ox statue for fun. We hung in the suite where there was a Truman Capote letter framed on the wall, and I wonder if he (Truman) slept there.

To interview an A-list star there was, like, unbelievable. I did ask him to leave the outgoing VM on my cell phone, but he wouldn’t do it. I think it’s a Verizon thing.