This is an occasional journal about how my life affects my writing and my writing affects my life. This journal is not to be a classic blog, in other words it's not interactive. It will not have photos either. Or links. Nor do I expect to write in it every day. And I don't want to have to moderate the thing. However, if you read something here that you want to respond to, send me email (janeyolen@aol.com) and I will write back. Please say whether or not you agree to have your email quoted somewhere in "Telling the True." I like getting questions from my readers--whether you are a writer or a book fancier, a teacher, librarian, or child. Note that the order of the entries is most recent first. Entries from earlier days are archived.

November 13-30, 2004:

This was a two week trip that included the death of three friends, two cracked teeth, multi speaking engagements and signings, the sale of one picture book, the purchase of a new house, a lot of good in-depth gab sessions, and many too many minutes of small talk.

And writing?

Hah-hah! It is to laugh.

Basically, I flew off to Houston for a day and a half for readings and talks at two Jewish Community Centers. The first for younger children was packed, the second for older kids was sparsely attended. Then I had diner and a wonderful visit with writer friend Patricia MacMahon.

Off the next morning to Indianapolis for the week. I began in the nearby town of Greenfield which had chosen me for its first ever ONE COMMUNITY/ONE AUTHOR celebration, and they did me proud. About 150 at the family storytelling evening, then early morning lecture for teachers and librarians (maybe 50 people) and two schools doing long-distance learning. That afternoon I spoke to a small hand-picked group, about a dozen people, at the Indiana Writing Center. Made friends with the delightful new Center head, Emily. Early the next morning I spoke at a breakfast for educators, then off to the local Indie bookstore, KidsInk, where I got to talk to two groups--student teachers and teens.

That afternoon, I was picked up by my poet friend Rebecca Kai Dotlich and we had a super quiet (I needed quiet by then) afternoon and evening at her house just gabbing, before meeting poet Janet Wong and a librarian friend for dinner.

The next day I had free, and so sf writer, Linda Dunn, took me around and introduced me to the city. We went to the Children's Museum, which I loved, and the Indiana State Museum to look at a classy exhibit of Japanese art quilts made from antique kimono fabrics. Then an I-Max presentation of the Lewis and Clarke expedition. I felt I was walking alongside of them all the way.

IRA (International Reading Association) began the following day. I spoke with Bruce Coville. My topic was about landscape in books and how it can be metaphor, character, backdrop. Interesting to talk about that having just seen the landscape through which Lewis and Clarke slogged. We had standing room only attendance which was great.

Then I began the serious conference signings: for Harcourt, Penguin/Putnam, Harper, S&S, and Tor. Had no lunches, but dinners with Tor and Harcourt. Waved at Boyds Mills and Scholastic who'd neglected to ask me to sign. (They apologized.)

And then off to South Carolina Sunday morning. One of those Ooops-the-plane-has-a-bad-tire-we'll-get-back-to-you mornings. Luckily only an hour late in landing.

Through all this, I had an aching jaw. I thought it was the same cracked tooth radiating upward. I was on double strength Tylanol every 4-5 hours and nothing helped. In agony, but trying to be charming. By the time I got to South Carolina where I was meeting the family for Thanksgiving, I was miserable.

Of course the sight of my twin grandbabies perked me up. Adorable, feisty one and-a-half-year-olds can do that. They can also exhaust you. Along with the aching jaw and the hurt that comes from hearing about two friends dying (Nancy Larrick and Trina Schart Hyman,) I was a mess by Tuesday when David, Heidi, and Maddison drove down.

But I also managed some hours with Jason talking business. We looked at three new books to pitch to Boyds Mills, one of which he already had all but two photos. The other two books we talked about as we drove along the waterside and bayous. And we spoke as well about 6-8 books he could be working on himself, writing as well as illustrating.

Then, as we drove around, we noticed a house in a nearby neighborhood that looked fascinating. They've been looking for a new house with a bit of yard for the girls who are at that age. He opined that it would be too expensive, but when he checked, it was within their budget because nothing had been done on it since 1954 when it was built. Just up their alley. Jason has built one house from scratch (in Colorado) and rebuilt the house they are in now. When his in-laws arrived, they drove over to see it, though the information online was that it wasn't up for sale till Dec 8. The grown children of the owner happened to be there sorting stuff, and asked if they wanted to come in and view it. They said it was their daughter and son-in-law who were looking. A phone call left us with the babies while Jason and Joanne raced over to look. They made the full offer the next day and it was accepted. WOW!

We made the long drive back via a stopover in Myrtle Beach to visit Heidi's best friend. Five hours then a quick kip in a hotel till 5 in the morning. Off again through rain. Startlingly, we encountered NO traffic, and got home by 5:30 in the evening. Picked up my email, and there discovered that my dear friend from college (he went to Amherst, I to Smith) Eric Van Tassel had died. I just broke down weeping. It seemed too much.

The next morning I had hardly time to look at my two weeks of accumulated mail (the rejections, the reviews, the bills) before I went off to have my hair cut and then sit in the dentist's chair. There the dentist discovered the second cracked molar, this one above the other.

My mouth felt like a wrecking ball had been through it. We joked about my having been in another bar fight. One I had lost! But over the next two days I began to feel better, so we are assuming it was that tooth that was the problem.

Meanwhile, I stopped off at Michelson's Gallery and bought the Trina Hyman cover painting for my novel, GIRL IN A CAGE. It costs more than the advance on the book, but I simply HAD to have it.

Tuesday I began to work again. Got the proposal started for the book Jason and I will be pitching to Boyds Mills, went over the copyedited mss. for YEARS BEST YA SF & FANTASY, and also went through the adorable pictures (and my text) for BABY BEAR'S CHAIRS. I also read a picture book of poems and wrote a blurb. Then I headed off to my writers' meeting where I was cosseted. I was in the need for a lot of cosseting.

So maybe--I thought--I can actually get back into the writing groove. Except that I know there are about a half dozen signings coming up, as well as a lot of dentist chair stuff.

The moral of this story is, once again, be careful what you wish for. I wanted to become a well-known writer. Some days it feels as if becoming so marked the end of any time I can get actual writing done. But ask me tomorrow and my reply to the question "Anything done?" will be different, I am sure.

 

November 11-12, 2004:

The final days before a big book trip are always full of little bits and pieces of stuff. Checking the speeches, being sure I know who is picking me up, taking me to dinner. It is the kind of minutia that drives me crazy. Besides, as it was Veteran's Day, there was no mail. Days with no mail make me even crazier.

So halfway through Thursday, after working some more on my Mother Goose poem, I went off to Smith College for a few hours to research through the five college computer system for the final DANCE book story. (The five colleges being Smith, Amherst, Mt Holyoke, Hampshire, and UMass.)

I only found one appropriate Spanish story and it has nothing to do with flamenco. So all that research was for nought. I sat in a carrel and read through books of Spanish ballads, books on classical romances (El Cid etc.), on tragic love stories and tales about devils disguised as handsome men. No dancing in any of them! Finally in a children's book--THE LOVE OF THREE ORANGES & OTHER STORIES--I found a story about a magical flute and a shepherd boy who makes people dance. But it has absolutely no connection with flamenco, which was the point of this exercise.

Ah well, the day was bright and soft, and fall's last gasp. I enjoyed walking across the campus. (Parking is a major problem at Smith!) So much has changed there in the last 40 years. My dormitory has been torn down, new buildings have grown up like mushrooms in the fields. The library is all computerized and doubled or tripled in space.

I came home to find the f&gs of SOFT HOUSE in a FedEx pack on the doorstep. It is a quiet picture book I wrote when my children were 4,6, and 8, back in the 70s. Finally coming out. Sometimes, as Buffon contended, genius is simply a long patience. The illustrator--Wendy Halperin--has done a brilliant job.

Since David had gotten his flu shot and was feeling the need to be quiet and not jump around a lot, we decided not to go out to a movie, which was what we'd planned. Instead, we ate in front of the tv (Heidi and Maddison were still working the book fair at the Campus School) and watched "Iron Jawed Angels," a very interesting tv movie starring Hilary Swank, about Alice Paul and the suffragette movement. Afterwards I did some research on Paul. It is always of interest to me how close to the actual history a writer stays. This time it was fairly accurate, though I thought Paul had rather too many changes of clothes for aQuaker farm girl and the dialogue at times was too modern in its locutions.Writing history as fiction is always a tug-of-war between facts and story.

 

Friday, I worked again on the poem (I have lost count of the number of changes) and then David and I met a real estate agent at our favorite Hatfield house which is up for sale. It is an elegant place, but we felt it hardly suits our needs. No place for book cases other than the lovely arched built-ins which would contain, perhaps, less than a fiftieth of our collections.

At home again, I worked on the ANGEL OF HADLEY novel for a while. I have only four chapters so far, but they are good ones! However, it is not the book I should be working on. I am awaiting news from two different editors on two novels, and new material from one co-writer on a third. It is foolish of me to get involved with this novel now. But the heart goes where it will in the matter of literature.

However, I then got caught up in the Scott Petersen case and its jury decision. I wondered if I could have found him guilty knowing there was a possible death penalty. From what I've read, I believe him guilty, though also from what I read, I'm not sure the government proved that beyond a reasonable doubt. I have been on only one jury, and after we judged the defendant guilty in a theft case (I was absolutely sure of it and was quite persuasive to my fellow jurors) I was sick for two days after, realizing I'd condemned a man to prison. And at one time I'd wanted to be a lawyer! Lucky I decided to become a writer instead. Killing off characters is the extent of my life-and-death decisions, and even they are difficult ones.

The only new writing--as opposed to revisions--I got done today was this journal entry.

 

November 10, 2004:

I woke early and went right upstairs, knowing I still had work to do on my Mother Goose poem. Spent a couple of hours reworking it. As usual, I rewrite, read aloud, then rewrite again. The eye and ear (as I have said elsewhere) are different listeners and in any written work--I believe--the author must satisfy both. Frankly, I hear different problems when I read silently on the page than when I speak the thing aloud.

I segued right to working on email and then started on revising my travel schedule to give David to update the web page. I got all the way through 2005 and hit the wrong button and deleted everything. Have I remarked lately how much I hate computers?

That did it for me. I went downstairs and had breakfast, cursing computers and fate and everything else. Watched the news as I ate. Final push on Fallujah and Arafat dying, the nomination of Gonzales, and all the rest. After that, the computer problem seemed miniscule. It's not as if it were something important, like a chapter in a novel.

The rest of the morning I spent in a phone interview, getting details straight with my Indiana spirit guide for part of my trip next week,trying to buy the cover art for my son's first novel (it was already gone), tidying up stuff on my desk. Business. No--rather call it busy-ness.

Then off to meet Heidi and Maddison for lunch and a shopping trip at our favorite store--Zanna's. I needed some new clothes for the upcoming trip and all the December signings, as my favorite things are literally worn through at the elbows and knees. As usual, Zanna Rules!

Heidi and Maddison went off to Tony DeTerlizzi's because Maddison was posing for his Spiderwick Fairy Field Guide as a mermaid. I headed home to do a bit more work. Fiddle, fiddle. Putting out some interesting publishing fires, telling the movie agent I trusted him to do right by me, and packing away holiday gifts.

Then David and I met the Gang at the Go Ten restaurant (a Japanese Benehana style place) for Holly Black's 33rd birthday party. I sat next to Tony DeTerlizzi, and we were not subtle. We gagged it up doing robot dances and high-fiving everyone. Granddaughter Maddison was mortified I think, but everyone else laughed. Then Tony and I had a long intense talk about the publishing business. Finally, we toasted Heidi who is on the cusp of selling her first solo picture book. I am absolutely delighted for her, of course.

 

November 6-9, 2004:

This was a whirl of signings and a Sunday of work. Sometimes it happens that way. Heidi and I signed at a Big Brother/Sister book fair for much of Saturday in Northampton, and came home too tired to work. Not even to do mail.

Sunday, I decided not to go to a big bash at the Eric Carle Museum for my friend Mordicai Gerstein and Philippe Petit (the actual man who walked between the towers, about whom Mordicai wrote in his Caldecott-winning book.) Heidi and Maddison went and came back all agog and aglow.

But I had managed instead to rewrite two chapters of the last Scottish book, and then emailed it back to Bob Harris. I also finished going over the copyedited manuscript of PAY THE PIPER and spoke with Adam about all our changes. I caught up on mail, bills, and holiday gifts.

Then Monday morning I sent off stuff that several editors had lost--a short story, a couple of proposals. As well as finding stuff my agent thought she had but I had squirreled away years ago in my files.

The importance of a good filing system revealed itself to me once again. That and good notes. There is nothing like a publishing nightmare to send chills down one's spine: when editors, art directors, copyeditors, or the US Snail have lost one's labor of love. I remember an illustrator friend whose entire package of finished art fell out of the back of a mail truck onto the open road, and disappeared. Yes, she had insured it, but redoing it took her another six months of work. She told me she thought it was better the second time around, but she'd lost a half year of royalties and had to push every other project off another six months.

Monday at 10, I went off to the second big signing bash, this at my granddaughter's school, with 28 (count 'em) famous authors and illustrators, including Jane Dyer, Norton Juster, Tony deTerlizzi and Holly Black, Patricia MacLachlan etc. My daughter was the Book Fair's second in command and everything went swimmingly. Raised much money for charity.

But came home to peanut butter sandwiches and early-to-bed. Luckily they fed us well at lunch.

Meanwhile, at the book fair, I saw the invitation to the Michelson Gallery's "An Homage to Jane Yolen" with the painting Ruth Sanderson did of me as Mother Goose riding in the sky. (My webmaster should be getting it up in the WHAT'S NEW section of the website any day now.

Do come if you are in the Northampton area Dec. 5 at 3:30 in the afternoon. Lots of beautiful paintings from my books for sale, good eats, lots of well known artists to sign your books.

And then I turned the card over and read it. Oooops! I'd forgotten I'd promised: "At 4:30 Jane will read her newest poem written in honor of this special event." So in-between signings I tried to write something. It was awful. That night as I fell asleep, I had an idea for a different tack, a sonnet, turned on the light and wrote the first twelve lines. Fell asleep thinking I'd solved it. But when I woke, all was revealed. It was worse.

Finally Tuesday morning at 5 am, I finally got the direction I wanted to go in. In the 18th century, Thomas Fleet of Boston had published "Mother Goose's Melodies." So I wrote a poem in the voice of an aging Mother Goose called "Mother Goose's Maladies." Did three and a half drafts by evening.

I also reviewed a CD of about twenty pieces of art and sent my choices for winners for the Raab Illustration Award at Uconn. Then off I went to my writer's group, where we celebrated Leslea's birthday with lots of shoe things and leopard prints. (Don't ask!) And heard and critiqued two pieces of work--part of Corinne's novel, the start of Leslea's new picture book. Both will end up stunning, I know, though these were early days for both.

Came home to do more work on the poem, did some titivating on my ANGEL OF HADLEY novel (a twenty year project) and a lot of work on the upcoming three week book tour plus Thanksgiving. David made dinner, thank goodness. I don't think I could have come up with anything on my own.

 

November 5, 2004:

Today I received my first nasty bit of email from someone who read my journal. Every other letter has been positive to glowing. Objecting to my small burst of politics, she wrote: "How nice it must be to inhabit such an insulated bubble."

Now my response should have been to say, "Excuse me, but this is MY journal, and you do not have to read it." But I tried, in my liberal way (considered flip-flopping in some circles) to explain so that she would continue to like me. Fat chance.

Ah me, I should have just sent her to some of the really political blogs.

 

Back to writing news. I sold a book today. The sale--or rather the route to the sale--is instructive. In its own way, it says as much about the state of publishing as any screed I could pen.

The book, called ENOUGH, is based on a Jewish folk tale that I have been using in storytelling performances for some twenty years. And about ten years ago I was on a panel about the spiritual in children's books and in answering a question, I told the story.

One of my editors was in the audience and came up afterwards and said, "You have to make that into a picture book." The thought had never occurred to me because the story as I told it was very condensed and I feared opening it up to make 32 illustrated pages might damage it. But I always like a challenge. So I worked on it for a couple of months and then sent it to her. She adored it, asked for revisions, and three or four revisions and a promised contract later, reneged. The market had begun to change, you see, and she (and her publishing company) was sensitive to that.

That's when I began sending the manuscript around (well, my agent started sending it around) and we garnered some of the greatest rejection letters in the world, including one from an editor I greatly respect who said she thought the writing was gorgeous, her family came from that area of the world, she found the book terrifically moving and important. BUT. . . Always wait for that BUT. But, she couldn't successfully market it.

Marketing. Tail wagging the literary dog these days. Leads directly to celebrity books, among other things.

Anyway, today August House, a small publisher whose main concern has been books for and by the storytelling community (and now opening things up and expanding its focus)--today August House made an offer for ENOUGH. Pending a few contract changes, we will be accepting it. I am delighted. August House also published the expanded edition of my book about folklore and fairy tales in children's books: TOUCH MAGIC. They have miniscule advances, but they tend to keep books in print. These days that is something to be greatly valued.

Otherwise, I worked over the copyedited manuscript of PAY THE PIPER for four hours--after spending two hours in the dentist's chair. Good news, bad news, I suppose. I also gathered together about a dozen poems--both published and unpublished--and shipped them off by email to an anthology. I also fixed my recalcitrant and cranky printer. (Who says I am a total Luddite?) And I wrote this journal piece.

 

November 4, 2004:

I was so exhausted, I barely made it out of bed. Had a little talk with Maddison (Heidi and I had spoken about it, when she heard that Maddison had been weeping in school about the election results.) I told her that when I'd been at the White House last year, I had a revelation. "This is not the president's house," I said, "he is just a renter. This house belongs to me, and to you and to all Americans." It seemed to help her.

I did some email, got the mail, picked up medication I will need for the dentist tomorrow, did some research in the Smith college dance library, then headed home to do some bill paying.

The only writing I did (beside this journal piece and yesterday's) was to rework the GHOUL SCHOOL CHRONICLES proposal because Susan Chang had indicated wanting to see it at Tor. Since Heidi and I are working on it together, she will go over it some time in the next couple of days.

Then I met Heidi and Maddison at a reading in South Hadley at the Odyssey bookstore, featuring children's book author/illustrator (and a friend of mine) Steven Kellogg. He gives this manic, wonderful presentation, though many of the the kids seemed too young for what he had to offer.

Heidi and Maddison and I had a quick dinner and then I came home right after, though they both went on to a fifth grade rendition of "The Tempest." I had no energy left for that.

Tomorrow, after the dentist, maybe I will get some writing done. I wish I could call these "gathering days," but honestly, I seem to be sleep-walking though them.

 

November 3, 2004:

I was up at 1 am and then 4:30 am, and the news confirmed that Kerry had lost the election. And while this is not a political blog, but a writer's journal, a writer--even a fantasy writer--is mired in her society. I had trouble sleeping knowing that at least half of America seemed to be hating the things I believe in: the Constitution, the pursuit of life and liberty, equality of all Americans under our laws. My friends are black and white, gay and straight, Muslim and Christian and Jewish and Buddhist and Wiccan and atheist, etc. Equal protection. As I always said to my children: "Leave the world a better place than you found it."

Heidi and I left the house at 5 am and drove into New York City, fighting bad traffic that made it a 4 1/2 hour trip. Once there we had breakfast with my niece (Heidi's first cousin) Lara Stemple, a Harvard trained lawyer whose husband was working this semester at Columbia Law School.

Then we headed downtown and spent several hours going over stuff with our agent, Elizabeth Harding. I have 24 (yes, 24!) unsold picture book manuscripts and we tried to look at which ones were the most viable. The rest I'll leave to my kids to make their fortunes on. (That's a joke!) I also spoke with the foreign agent who told me about a Dutch publisher for THE DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC, and the movie agent who told me about one option needing renewal and another producer having a script being written.

Heidi and Elizabeth and I went on to Abrams Publishing where we met my editor Susan Van Metre and her boss Howard Reeves, and the five of us went out for an elegant lunch. (The world is falling apart, but one must always take advantage of a good lunch, especially if the publisher is paying!) Susan had the latest book jacket for Adam's and my music book, now called APPLE FOR THE TEACHER & Other Work Songs. It is illustrated with folk art from various museum collections. As lunch progressed, we talked about a number of other possible projects, though nothing was finalized.

Then Heidi and I said our goodbyes back at Abrams, and walked over to Tor. (Though we stopped along the way to do some serious shopping.) At Tor we met with Susan Chang and Irene (the art director.) They had copies of the sensational book jacket for PAY THE PIPER and the more ordinary but useful jacket for YEARS BEST YA FANTASY AND SF. There will be a bookmark for PIPER, but no CD. Boo. We spoke of other books as well. Then off we went for high tea, which was charming. Heidi and I felt like stuffed geese, however. Though that didn't stop us from eating. And talking books.

At 5, Heidi and I grabbed a cab uptown (great cab karma!) and got to the car park by 5:20. By 5:40 we were heading uptown to try and get on the Cross Bronx Highway, hoping to get home to catch part of West Wing if traffic didn't hold us up too badly. We were stunned to get home by 9:04 just as the actual show began.

 

November. 2, 2004:

Email and snail mail took up my morning. Organizing tomorrow's one-day trip into NY as well.

There were phone calls from a woman wanting to do a puppet show using one of my stories (until she found out she had to sign an actual contract and decided it was too much trouble), an interviewer who hadn't done his homework, several people wanting money for various colleges and universities (stand in line!)

I went out to vote. Small town, everyone knows everyone, no line, Book Club sells baked goods at the door. Heidi got into an argument with (she believes) the one Republican in town who didn't want her to take Maddison into the voting cubicle with her. "I've done this for every vote the last 4 years," she said. Under the aegis of showing an eight-year-old Democracy in Action, they let her go.

Some teens were stealing our Kerry signs, according to a neighbor who called. But as the kids were showing them to anyone who drove by, we figured they were going to a good cause.

I did a couple of errands, and then came home to watch the election returns. Glen's boyfriend came over to browse in our larder. I expect I will be asleep before the results of the vote are all in.

 

October 28-November 1. 2004:

David and I took a long weekend trip to Minneapolis to spend time with our son Adam, daughter-in-law, Betsy, and their two children. The trip out was uneventful, though we took the cheaper one-stop through Chicago instead of the more expensive no stop direct flight there. No one can explain to me why it should cost MORE to take two planes than one.

Once there, we spent the days playing with grandbabies (Ali at six is quite sophisticated and articulate, David at 2 1/2 is very firm in his opinions though his grammar does wobble.) We did a lot of shopping for things Adam and Betsy needed, like groceries and a lamp, and promised to pay for a new bed for Ali and a coffee table, too.

I did a very small bookstore reading and signing at Eye of Horus. (Eight adults, two kids.) Two evenings we went out to listen to Adam's Irish band play at Kierans, which was a great deal of fun though very smoky and very late. Betsy put on a wonderful brunch and my nephew Greg Yolen, who is a cinematographer, and his new Brazilian wife, Carolina, came over. We discussed politics (of course) and the state of movie art,family stuff, Carolina's bellydancing, and a lot of other things besides.

As far as writing, Adam and I worked on the new golem book. I'd had a brilliant idea for the book's structure in that moment between waking and getting out of bed. Often the brilliance of such ideas is like those half-seen desert visions, disappearing the closer one gets to them. But I talked with Adam about it, and we agreed it was, in fact, a great idea. We also spent several hours on and off discussing his next project. He is really a wonderful writer and storyteller.Why am I surprised!

And I read the last of the materials PNH and I are considering for YEARS BEST SF/FANTASY.

The trip home was even more uneventful than the trip there. I got an earlier plane to Chicago, ahead of the storm, but not an earlier flight out to Hartford. Came home to much mail, a contract for a long poem that Heidi and I did for Nick Jr magazine, and the copyedited manuscript for PAY THE PIPER which must be gone over before next week.