Lara Zielin

Did you know that on Youth Literacy Day — this Thursday, 8/26 — you can text “WRITE” to 20222 to make a one-time donation of $10?

It’s true! You can!

And how easy is that? You can support youth literacy just by texting. I swear, technology is so awesome sometimes.

You may ask yourself, how did I get here Lara, why are you so invested in youth literacy?

To which I would reply that a picture is worth a thousand words. Thusly, I give you this:

Let me tell you, this fascinating little tome, which I penned in second grade, ends really well.

Which is all to say I’ve been writing and reading since before I could do much anything else, and it’s become something I’m passionate about — professionally, personally, and just generally. David Eggers put it best when he recently said “More than ever before, a young person’s success is inextricably tied to their ability to express their ideas clearly and powerfully.” Celebrating Youth Literacy Day helps show support for helping kids do just that.

Look, the stuff we write might not always be amazing …

… but it doesn’t have to be. It just has to be a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

Will you help support Youth Literacy Day? Follow @826michigan on Twitter or visit www.826on826.org to learn more!

ARE YOU READY FOR YOUTH LITERACY DAY? <– If you say this like the guy says “Are you ready for some football?” on the NFL commercials, it’s really exciting.

Youth Literacy Day is this Thursday, 8/26, and will celebrate the power of reading, writing, and self expression. 826 organizations, founded by David Eggers, are heading up the charge for Youth Literacy Day by asking people to support the 826 chapters in their city.

I’m getting behind this because I know firsthand how books can forever impact kids and teens. I grew up in a small Wisconsin town but I don’t believe I limited myself because I saw so many possibilities in the pages of the novels I was always reading. Books infused me with the passion to become a writer — something they still do, in fact. Growing up, when I didn’t have any friends — something I experienced more often than I would have liked — I always had literary characters who, even if they couldn’t leap off the pages and talk to me, at least were often going through similar things.

Can you support Teen Literacy by donating $8.26 on 8/26 through www.826on826.org?

Need more convincing? No worries. I’m making this Youth Literacy Week on Larawrites.com, so I’m all about sharing the youth literacy love until this awesome organization has all the money they need.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: My friend Heather and I recently re-watched the trailer for the movie Superstar. I was laughing even before it started. I love this movie, but I especially love the lunchroom dance scene to C&C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now.” Only thing is, that scene isn’t on YouTube. Bummer. But the trailer is.

I’m already thinking about next Tuesday. Why? Because I have a chat scheduled with my awesome agent and we’re going to talk about getting my third book rolling along like an 18-wheeler. Breaker, breaker — this is Big Lars, I see a contract on the horizon, over.

Okay, maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself. But I AM really excited to talk to my agent, revise my proposal, and hopefully get it in front of some folks soon. My third book, for the record, involves a lot of bad weather in Tornado Alley. Exciting!

Please keep your fingers crossed for me!

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Okay, you know how I love Lolcats, right? Well, my friend Margaret sent me this link showing the creation of the universe in Lolspeak. From the Lolcat Bible! I die!

These days, I’m doing some digging into the topic of happiness for an article I’m writing for work. And it turns out, optimism is a big component of happiness. No huge shockers there, but here’s what I found interesting. The researchers I’m talking to gave undergrads a survey at the start of the semester, and they asked them what they thought their grades would be at the end of the semester. Those who answered saying they thought would have good grades at the end of the semester actually had good grades. And these weren’t just the smart kids. They were just the kids who thought they could have a role in their GPA.

The researchers said that, overwhelmingly, the kids who thought they could get good grades came to class. They figured they needed to learn in order to up their  GPA. Those who didn’t think they could get good grades didn’t show up because they thought it didn’t matter anyway.

I thought about this vis-a-vis writing and I realized optimism goes a long way. If you think you can get published, you can get published. You’ll send out more query letters, you’ll keep revising, you’ll hang in there with your manuscript. If you think, ah, screw it, the game’s rigged, then your publishing career is over before it started.

If you are an unpublished writer, this morning, tape a message to your bathroom mirror that says, “I’m only one ‘yes’ away from a published manuscript.” I know it’s cheesy, but the research says it works!

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: The intro for He-Man. I recently saw a Facebook status update where someone was threatening to quote the whole thing because they had it memorized. But now I can’t remember who that was. Which is a bummer. Because probably that person is my hero.

Here’s the thing about the awesome reality show Tabitha’s Salon Takeover: Tabitha is so completely passionate about what she does, that you can’t help but be inspired. I know what you’re thinking. It’s reality television, Lara, how good can it be? Well let me tell you — it’s better than chocolate. Okay, that’s not true. But it’s still really, really good.

On a recent episode,  Tabitha said that at the end of the day, she can’t walk because she gives so much of herself to her clients. Some people might think, meh, all she does is hair. But her business is hugely successful (she has a three-month waiting list at her salon!) and shouldn’t we all get worn out, at least a little, by the things we’re passionate about?

I love how Tabitah chooses to live her life and run her business. She’s inspired me to give so much of myself to my books that I can’t walk at the end of the day.

But not so much that I can’t still apply lipgloss.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: A failed book banning from Wisconsin. And it’s not even anything crazy — just Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Despite the cheese, my home state can really make me mad sometimes. But thank goodness this story has a happy ending.

So, remember how I said all us writer folk need each other? Well, to underscore that just a bit more, I’d like to announce the wonderful, fabulous and hilarious Rhonda Stapleton will be road tripping to Ohio (glamorous Ohio!) with me in March for a writers’ retreat.

Because sometimes, when your creative juices aren’t flowing, all it takes is getting in the same room with a like-minded writer and daring the muses to come find you both. But the best part about this trip? I mean, obviously it’s being with Rhonda, but other than that is the fact the place where we’re staying … has its own railroad.

Its own railroad!!! Look!

I even asked them if the train would be up and running when we went there and they said yes. OMG, OMG, OMG. So. Excited.

In May, I am also going on a writers’ retreat with my awesome writer-lady friend Ellen Baker. We do more of a subdued Northwoods thing in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But man, are we productive.

So whether you have trains or woods, the point is to partner with people who can help you through the creative process. Writers rock! And we all need each other so we can rock harder. So our books can go to 11, as it were.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: A kitteh on a Roomba makes for much funny. But add a friendly pit bull into the mix plus a Ludacris song, and you get this hilarious scene. (Also, I’ll say this is the first time I’ve seen a kitteh and a Ludacris song paired harmoniously. Or, actually, ever.)

So. 2009 happened.

Apart from Amos eating our advent calendar, it was pretty freaking awesome.

I’m looking ahead to 2010 and thinking about what goals I’ll set for myself. This helpful blog post from Colleen put goal-setting and resolutions into an awesome perspective, and I recommend it for anyone who’s saying “I want to do X in 2010.”

Well, I want to do X in 2010. And how do I personally solve for X? In a few ways, of which I’ll share two:

1.) I want to compete in a duathlon, a run-bike-run race. It’s sort of like a triathlon without the swimming part. There is one in Sylvania, Ohio, on August 8, which is a 5k run, a 40k bike, and then a 10k run. Now that I spin and run regularly at the greatest gym of all time, Ypsi Studio, I want to keep it up and train for what would be the most challenging physical activity I’ve ever engaged in.

2.) I want to write more regularly, with the goal of completing two novels this year. Well, two and a half if you count the edits I have to do on PROMGATE. As some followers of this blog know, I write in fits and starts. I’ll go weeks without penning anything, then I’ll sit down and pound out 20,000 words. I’d like to be a bit more balanced in the time I take for writing.

Now that I’ve made mine public I suppose I’m super accountable to what I’ve posted. Which is cool by me. I think.

So … anyone else feel like sharing their 2010 resolutions? I promise, you can just share: we won’t hold you to them. Much.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: My friend Brandon called this the Fish Death Star. I think that’s pretty much spot on.

So, when I was in Chicago with the other 2009 debutante writers (see pics below), one person in the audience asked us what we listened to when we wrote. I sort of scuffled my feet back and forth and let other writers answer first. Because my playlist? Is ridiculously simple. I usually listen to one or two songs on repeat for the duration of an entire draft. With DONUT DAYS, it was the Killers “When You Were Young.”

Right now, I’m obsessed with Coldplay’s “Life in Technicolor ii.”

But get this: When the other writers started answering, I realized it’s not just me! Shadowed Summer author Saundra Mitchell confessed she’d listened to a single song almost 200 times during the course of a draft.

Birds of a feather, I guess.

So, what’s your preference? To have a diverse playlist at your disposal, or to pick one or two songs and put them on repeat while you exercise your creative muscles?

This past weekend at a book event in Chicago, I made the joke that I’d gained 20 pounds writing DONUT DAYS because I called eating pastries “research.” Which, okay, that’s only partly true: I have gained 20 pounds, but it’s not from donuts; it’s more likely from cheese.

These days, I’m losing some of my excess by waking up early three days a week and spinning my butt off. It’s a good thing, and on the recent Chicago tour I felt good. I liked how I looked in the event pictures—generally.

But this past summer, I was neither spinning nor feeling fabulous, and I still had to go on a book tour.

Where I was slated to see people from high school. And college.

And multiple photos were going to be taken.

Um, that’s pretty much my definition of hell.

Before the trip, I cried a lot. I was petrified. I was so worried that these high school women would chatter among themselves and say, “Oh, man, can you believe how fat Lara’s gotten?” My grade-school nickname would come back with a vengeance: Lara Tubbalarda.**

(** It’s totally okay to laugh. It’s pretty dang funny. )

Dude, if you’ve never struggled with your weight, you’re probably scratching your head right now and thinking I sound pretty insecure. Which, I probably am that to a degree. But if you’ve ever had to organize your closet into various sizes to accommodate your fluctuations—or hell, just had a hard time buttoning your pants—I’m going to guess that you’re empathizing with what I’m saying, at least a little.

Gaining weight sucks. The thing is, in my mind, it was one thing to gain weight and live my quiet life and not really see anyone. But a public book tour where I was going to see people from my past (who had last seen me at my 10-year high school reunion, where I was probably at my skinniest ever) was brutal.

Did I mention I cried?

Okay, but here’s the thing. The book tour was really awesome. And the women from high school and college were just lovely. I highly, highly doubt they snarked about my excess behind my back. Why? Because they were focused on the fact that I’d written a book. That was published. That I was on tour. That it was good to see each other after so long.

Sure, maybe they saw I’d gotten a bit bigger, but they didn’t focus on it. Because there was so much other good stuff to focus on.

They saw the things about me that I couldn’t even see at the time: that on my tour, I was more than the sum of my scale numbers.

In all honesty, I still cringe when I look at some of those book tour pictures. But I’m working on focusing on how much was totally awesome about that tour—how I reconnected with so many people, how I met so many new people, how I was able to sign and sell so many books.

A while ago, I read about an author who didn’t want to get her author photo taken until she’d shed a few pounds. She kept postponing it and postponing it until finally her publisher was like, we need this now or your book goes to press without an image.

At the time I thought, that’s so sad. Here this author was, with a published book (at the time I read that story, I didn’t have an agent or a book under my belt and would have given my left arm for either) and yet she was plagued by her weight.

Well. Sad it may have been but my recent book tour showed me I have more in common with that author than I’d realized.

My goal moving forward is this: to continue to focus on my successes and not my weight; to focus on my talent, which doesn’t wane just because my weight waxes; to focus on writing as much and as well as I can because it keeps opening door after door of opportunity.

A book tour is still a book tour, after all.

And that’s worth celebrating, no matter what the scale says.

This is me and author Charity Tahmaseb at the Red Balloon bookstore in Minneapolis this past summer. Um, yeah, not my fave picture, but I still count the tour a great success.

Here I am this past weekend in Chicago. Thanks to spinning, I feel like I look lot a lot better (and I flat-out feel a lot better!) though I’m trying not to let the scale dictate my emotions.

Here’s a full-body shot. Not that different from this past summer, but I’ve shed a lot of mental weight too!

It’s not too late to pick up books by all the fab authors who were in Chicago this weekend for the Debs Holidaze Tour! Here are some pics of the fun we had in the Windy City, and a list of all the books by the women I was honored to be with on Saturday:

Cynthea Liu, PARIS PAN TAKES THE DARE and THE GREAT CALL OF CHINA

Saundra Mitchell, SHADOWED SUMMER

Aprilynne Pike, WINGS

Kristina Springer, THE ESPRESSOLOGIST

Darcy Vance and Charity Tahmaseb, THE GEEK GIRLS GUIDE TO CHEERLEADING

Look! All our covers!

Here we are at Borders in Bolingbrook.

Thanks, Borders, for carrying my book! For five seconds.

Here we are signing our books. Aren’t we all so adorable?

Our next stop was the Book Cellar.

Kristina and I are enamored of signing!