If you haven’t seen very much of me in the last two months, it’s because I’m right about here in the new book:

Just after Thanksgiving, I took out a blank piece of paper and started to think about the things I love and the things I fear and the questions I’ve always wanted answers to; and I began to build those things into a plot. I went to bed with questions, and as the weeks went on, woke up with scenes and characters and more questions. Pretty soon, pieces of the book came into focus: a sense of setting, details about the characters and what they desired and what kind of mess they were in.

What a lot of faith you need to start with nothing and believe you can create something good and important.

Of the writers and artists I know, confident isn’t the first word I’d use to describe any of them. Cheery in their outlook on life and their place in it? Uh-uh. Excited by dreams of making big bucks? Buoyed by past successes and constant, overwhelming praise? Ha. Quite the opposite.

I can tell you that while I’m writing this new book, I have another on submission. And every day I have to pretend it’s not distracting, pretend I have room to be crushed a little bit more. Like all of you, I have to keep believing (knowing that belief and confidence are things I’ve lacked my whole life) that my writing will connect deeply with someone out there who will take a chance.

Maybe it’s precisely because it’s so easy in this business to sink into despair that I’m hesitant to give an honest answer to the Question of the Month. In fact, I’m hesitant to even think too long about what my answer might be. So I’m going to flip the question a bit. Rather than musing on the thing I desperately wanted and needed as a kid, I’m going to tell you a story about something I got, something truly simple but revolutionary that changed who I am.

I used to babysit every single day, for years and years, for a little girl who had a brain tumor – from age four when her parents first noticed the weird way her eyes would twitch and cross and how she’d bump into the door frame rather than walking cleanly through, to the surgeries and the horrible things that happen when you take away pieces of a person’s brain, to bike lessons and swim lessons and special schools and vacations (like the one in the picture; that’s me holding the baby bottles).

This is about a family who had every right to be stressed and focused soley on that tumor – killing it and saving the girl.

But that’s not how they did it. In this family that shouldn’t have had time for me or for each other, they read my dumb poems and stories, watched the skits and fake-Olympics I helped the three kids put on, listened to bad knock-knock jokes, and tolerated Vanilla Ice dance-offs. They always made sure there was enough food so I could stay for dinner. And one winter, in the middle of the worst of it, their father taught me to waltz.

The lesson I learned? There’s time. Time, even in the midst of a crisis, to give attention and show love. And there’s room for joy. There had better be. Or the cancer and wars and other things that are out of our control win it all.

So, for all of you who overwhelmingly answered that what you wanted and needed so dearly as kids was to be visible and to matter – and I’m talking the real you, not the potential of you, and not when you got your act together or hid parts of yourself away – my hope is you get that here because you deserved it then and you deserve it now.

Last thing…

This weekend, we’re having a huge, musical barbecue to celebrate our anniversary – 17 years; 22 if you count when we started dating – and I already know what Mr. Henderson got me: red Doc Martens!!

~

What I read this month: Chris Adrian, THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL (God floods the world again and the only survivors are inside a floating children’s hospital. The first 300 pages are some of the best pages I’ve ever read – quirky, profound, emotional, and the brother, Calvin, who is dead before the book begins, is one of my favorite characters ever. But something too magical for my taste happens in the middle of the book, including a wedding I didn’t care for, and for me, the book never quite recovers its magnificence after that. I’m going to recommend it all the same. Uneven or not, it lit me up from the inside in a way few books do.)

What I read to my boys: We did that thing I hate where we start too many books at once and kind of ruin the momentum of all of them, so the only finished book was John Masefield’s THE MIDNIGHT FOLK (The boys found it fascinating in that great and creepy Neil Gaiman-y way, but slow because of the 1920’s British writing). And I also read them a whole bunch of little-kid picture books because I’m their mom and they still go along with what I say, even though they groan about it now. So: Jacques Duquennoy, THE GHOSTS’ TRIP TO LOCH NESS; Robert Bright, GEORGIE; Mark Teague, THE SECRET SHORTCUT; and Leo Lionni, FREDERICK MOUSE.

Thanks to everyone who played here, and to my guest, Lac Su, for giving such an honest and emotionally powerful interview. And thanks to those who’ve been linking to LitPark: New Pages (best writer resource on the web – check ‘em out!), Side Dish, Eat, Sleep & Read, Bliggidy Blog, Buy More Books, Mediabistro’s Galley Cat, The Book Deal: A Publishing Blog for Writers, CarolineLeavittville, Alpha FEmale Mind, In Her Own Write, A Title? What’s in a Title? I Was Never Told There Should Be a Title!, Paul Lisicky: Me Big Shiny Man, Kaylie Jones, Spaced Lawyer, Maureen McGowan, Raima Larter, Raven Books, Terry Bain, Ric Marion, and Terry’s LiveJournal Axis (Yo). If I missed anyone, let me know.

See you the first week in June with a new question and a new guest!