A friend recently reminded me that in the world of publishing and writing, the waiting never ends. Waiting for the royalty statement, the acceptance letter, the reassurance some of us need to keep writing and creating. I’ve been in waiting mode myself, lately, and I’m as much waiting for my next moment of direction as I am for the go-ahead on the projects I am so excited to pursue. Sometimes I think I’m waiting to know more about myself, and that is a very long wait indeed. Of course, I probably shouldn’t be waiting at all.

I’m reminded of our long wait for the authors we love to produce something else for us, when all along they are working to produce something they themselves want to make public.

Thanks for waiting with me during my own betweentime.

Photo via Lil Larkie

Hi.

I admittedly have been feeling a bit inundated lately…there’s a lot of upheaval afoot. My day job has exploded (in a good way). I’ve been working on my health and fitness (goodbye old habits that are so comfortable and comforting). And I’m deep in the throes of book proposal land, which has a way of stirring up all of my insecurity and doubt.

I’ve been immersing myself in the world of my subject matter, reading letters, diaries, biographies, articles, and such. Of course, I’ve been writing, too. Drafting can feel incredibly overwhelming. Where do I start? Am I saying the right thing? Am I overwriting? What will my agent think? What will my readers think? What will this dead person who I long to represent properly think? Oh God, is this paragraph too long? I’m feeling bored. Can I stop? Why am I doing this?

I only know one way to counter this, which is to START and rush on through the process of drafting, pushing ahead on the page. I will fix the paragraph and worry about the dead people and the librarians and the agent and the reviews and the sale later. For now, I have to hold myself in all of the discomfort and not let myself bob right back out into the easier path of not writing. It can feel like I’m drowning myself, but sometimes a writer needs a swift, effective dunk.

Can you believe it? The Heroine’s Bookshelf recently celebrated its second anniversary. Here’s an A-to-Z recap of what happened over the last two years:

A pause to smell the inside of my brand-new book. I’ll never forget that moment.

Boulder Book Store graciously hosting me for I don’t even know how many readings, signings, and book club events.

Colorado Book Award (Nonfiction – General), 2010.

Doubt. Steaming, squeamish, heartbreaking, anxiety-producing doubt.

#EBPOWER and vital writer-to-writer challenge and inspiration in the form of friendships with Eleanor Brown and Ellen F. Brown

Far too many cups of tea as I signed bookplates, wrote guest blogs and thank-you notes.

Greenwich Village walking tour.

Hardworking agent, editor, book designers, publicist, marketing department, sales reps, booksellers, and reviewers.

Innumerable conversations with readers who have turned out to be my people.

Jet lag.

Keynote speech at a high school in Illinois.

LauraPalooza. Twice.

Ms. Magazine. Be still my heart.

New York Times mention I still can’t believe.

Orchard House. Ingalls Homestead. Anne Frank House.

Paperback that is somehow just as beautiful as the hardcover.

Quietly going insane as I watched my Amazon ranking rise and fall and my royalty statements confuse the hell out of me.

Road trips! My book has taken me all over Colorado; Mankato, MN; Normal, IL; San Diego, CA; Richmond, VA; Seattle, WA; New York, NY; Boston, MA.

So many lovely emails and notes from readers all over the world.

Translations into Korean, Italian, Portuguese.

University women, schoolgirls, book clubs, fan clubs, alumni organizations—just a few of the groups I’ve spoken to over the last two years.

Voraciously reading reviews, then swearing them off.

Water bursting from a toilet and spraying all over my face and clothing as I prepared for a reading while on The Littlest Book Tour. I slicked back my hair, put on a new dress, and did it anyway.

eXcitedly awaiting interviews with journalists from publications like Glamour, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Denver Post, and The Christian Science Monitor.

“Your book gave me hope.” —Reader whose letter made me cry.

Zooming heartbeat as I listened to Tavia Gilbert narrate the audiobook version of THB.

Thank you so much to everyone who took time to make me feel so warm and loved as I entered the world of books. I am beyond indebted to you for your arms-wide-open welcome.

Sometimes, the book world can take you places.

Case in point: This Friday I’ll be road tripping with the lovely Eleanor Brown from Washington, D.C. to Richmond, Virginia, where I will be participating in the 10th annual James River Writers Conference. I’m on panels about websites and point of view, and will be meeting beloved blogger/literary friends Ellen F. Brown, Rebecca Schinsky, and even glamming it up as I observe the Library of Virginia Literary Awards.

I’ll admit that I’m just as excited about the road trip portion of my journey as the bookish festivities to follow!

Why, yes. Yes I was.

Surely a two-volume set of the Little House books is relevant to my interests. I’m still ashamed of not currently owning a complete set, and I am eternally thumbing through the books I have for references and respite. Still, I felt a few reservations. How would LOA do with a set of children’s books? How could you publish the Little House books without Garth Williams’ incredible illustrations? (Yes, I know, the first editions of the books weren’t illustrated by GW at all, but his illustrations are among the most amazing in children’s literature, and they add a priceless dimension to the books I so love.)

My fears were assuaged when I received the books. It’s a two-volume set, nestled together in a nice-looking box. Each book has a pleasant heft, but isn’t too large. They have fancy built-in bookmarks and are surprisingly great to hold and touch.

Even better than holding two books full of some of my favorite volumes in the English language was a detail I’d overlooked when accepting LOA’s offer: the supplemental material. Each book is accompanied by essays and speeches by Laura herself, and each has a chronology of Laura’s life and notes. Notes. My dream of an annotated LHOP series has now been attained. My only complaint: The notes aren’t substantial enough! Perhaps I have been spoiled by such riches as WW. Norton’s The Annotated Secret Garden, but I wanted more notes. I am sure I am among only a small subset of the Earth’s population that requires more notes in books, but there you have it. I confess to immediately plopping down on the bed and reading the notes in both volumes from start to finish. It was lovely.

My verdict: The books are a pleasant surprise. It feels nice to have the stories there, all nestled next to each other, being respected as treasures of literature.

Want to learn more? Here’s an interview with the editor of the LOA edition.

While I was abroad, I made a 24-hour pilgrimage of sorts to what has now become one of my all-time favorite cities, Amsterdam. It’s a fascinating place, and Amsterdam in August is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever seen. People on bikes. Huge drooping trees. Perfect weather, and plenty of people out and about, enjoying it. As we hurried across the city on foot, losing ourselves over the canals and winding, narrow streets, I thought of Anne Frank before she went into hiding, walking down the street with her arm around a friend, balancing her book bag on a bike in the years before all of the bikes were confiscated from Dutch Jews.

Cobblestones. Statues. Throngs of people, punctuated by calm glimpses of houseboats. And then we were there, standing in front of a building I had never seen, but knew intimately.

We rang the little doorbell (I highly recommend that you skip the long lines and make a reservation) and were buzzed in. We were at the Anne Frank House.

I’m still processing what I saw there. I had many Strong Opinions on the way the museum was laid out, the information that was given visitors, the flow of bodies from one empty room to the other. I felt myself gulping breath as I peeked out the heavy curtains in the front office where various occupants of the Secret Annex took baths, did filing and mundane office work to help their hiders. Outside the window, I was mere inches away from someone’s head. The entire street was so close that I felt terrified. I started to realize how dramatic it must have been to hide away in the busy center of a bustling city, how constant and oppressive it must have felt to hide every minute, especially when you are a thirteen-year-old girl who just came in to the damp, narrow house from the gorgeous green of the summer streets. (They went into hiding in July and were betrayed in August, two years later.)

One of the things that surprised and impressed me about the museum was that it featured photos taken by ordinary Dutch people. They were surprisingly mundane, and taken under extremely dangerous circumstances: Photos of tiny clusters of Jewish men and women being rounded up and taken away.

Now it was time to go upstairs. I stole behind the bookcase, or rather trudged. I have never seen such stairs—as narrow and steep as a ladder. Here, the tall men hit their heads. Here, a rain of beans made everyone laugh. Up in the rooms, I felt muffled and dull. The blackout curtains cast a cool pall on the map showing the progress of the Allies, the thin lines indicating Margot and Anne’s massive growth during the Annex years. They were taller than I’d thought.

Amidst the throng of tourists, armed with pamphlets and surreptitious cameras (I was too dutiful to take photos inside), I kind of lost track of myself. It was all becoming a bit more real, the configuration of bedrooms, the surprisingly large bathroom where a teenaged girl experimented with pin curls and checked out her developing body, the big, light attic that must have felt like the only thing to live for. I heard the clangy, ancient-sounding bells of the Westerkirk, bells that drove Edith and Margot crazy and that Anne and Otto loved. I listened to a horrible tape of Otto Frank, the only survivor of eight, describing his experience as he read his dead daughter’s diary: “Most people don’t know, really, their children.” I thought of Miep, the workhorse, dragging rotting vegetables and ersatz food and little gifts up and down those narrow, scary stairs, gulping down her own fear as she entered the house behind.

In an hour or so, it was over. We were back on the street, mute and a bit drained, drinking up the canal view.

Moar doughnuts, please.

Well. It’s come to this.

I did a bunch of reading on V.C. Andrews and whether Flowers in the Attic was inspired by real events, but let’s get real. We’re all here to discuss the incestuous love between Chris and Cathy, amirite?

“I could hear him breathing deeply my scent.”
“I could hear him breathing deeply my scent.”
“I COULD HEAR HIM BREATHING DEEPLY MY SCENT.”

Ahem. Sorry. At some point during Part II, I stopped highlighting in my Kindle and just gave myself over to the delicious trainwreck.

So…before I get into the rape ‘cest luv, can we talk about The Grandmother? Because I really kind of liked her by the end. Yes, she poisoned Corey totally inexplicably (seriously, does anyone understand any character’s motivation in this book?). Yes, she tried to cut off Cathy’s hair in a fit of rage, but really it just gave her and Chris a chance to hang out in the bathroom together. However, by the end I found myself kind of perversely attracted by her interesting advice about men (“Let them wait for you!”) and her bizarre wig-wearing ways (could the book possibly have been written for anyone but 12-year-olds? This detail is just the one a 12-year-old would look for and love).

Also, what is up with Bart whatshisname? I felt really unclear as to whether he actually saw Cathy while sleeping until I realized that she for some reason started making out with him. What is wrong with these people? Do attics just turn you into sex-crazed perverts, or did it have to do with wanting everything Momma had?

And also…did anyone else find the SUPPOSEDLY HUGE REVELATION about Momma’s intentions at the end really freaking confusing? If Momma didn’t want kids so much, why’d she leave them up there? Why didn’t she just give them the boot or kill them?

Okay, rapey brother sister love. I was surprised at how much naked hanging out preceded it, but even more surprised at how horrifying the actual scene was. I am also horrified at how it basically seemed like VC Andrews would way rather have put a tender sex scene in instead of a rapey one, but felt compelled to in order to barely escape any accusations of the book being even more horrible than it actually is. And Cathy’s denying it was rape? What in the HELL? What in the ever-loving hell.

Now that it’s been a few weeks since I finished reading it, I am even more confused about this book than I was at the beginning. On the one hand, I found it way more readable than I thought. On the other hand, I find myself looking for a point or moral or summary of the book. Is it that you’re basically screwed either way? Is it that you have to fight back soon or you will be left in the proverbial dust? Or is there no moral at all?

All in all, I’m really glad I gave this book a re-read. It provides strange insight into the child I was then and wow has it been fun to discuss with all of you.  (Who’s up for watching the movie?)

I’ll start with the work that’s in front of me right now: Working on a book proposal. I’ve received extensive edits from my agent, which has lead to a list of missing scenes/things that need to be done better. In order to make the work more fun, I am using a ridiculous Hello Kitty pen I bought in the clearance bins at Target. This picture doesn’t exactly show you the sparkle of the ink, but it hints to a death scene I need to breathe some life into…

This will serve as a stream-of-consciousness conversation starter about the V.C. Andrews classic. I am dying to hear what you all think. Think of this as the book report you would never dare write.

Summary: Um, four Dollanganger children live the perfect, charmed, perfect, charmed, perfect, charmed life. Until one black day when their blond father dies in a car crash. For some reason their mom decides to take them to her parents’ house, where she locks them up in an attic while she works on convincing her dad to leave her his millions. There is a wicked grandmother, lots of bathtub scenes, and sex talk.

Tone:  Golly-lolly, the tone of this book! I once referred to it as “porn for 12-year-old girls,” and my opinion has not changed. It reads like an entry from a pulpy diary written by a preteen. (Isn’t that the point? Except wait, isn’t it written “in retrospective” by “a woman”?) The entire book has a certain breathless cluelessness, like a puppy dog bumping into the walls with excitement to tell a truly sordid, ugly and mainly inexplicable tale. Such masterful language as:

She took bacon and eggs from the refrigerator, then turned to take me in her arms.

should not be ignored. Modifiers are missed, participles dangle, adjectives crowd together. There are glimpses of good writing in there (on rare occasion). You have to dig within tortuous sentences, however. Example: “Why, you could even see how each strand of hair pulled her skin up in little resentful hills—and even as I watched I saw one hair spring free from its moorings!” (Italics mine: I like the description.)

Themes:  Lest you think the incest begins later in the book, we are disabused of this notion by approximately page 2, which brings us images of Daddy “warming our lips with his kisses” and promising his daughter he will never transfer his affections to another. Oh, and Mom’s boobs and curves are sooooooo alluring. And Chris! He is tall, handsome, blond, and hawt. Ew.

Incest not be enough to get you through this? We’ve got some sadism for you as well. The grandmother (who apparently has a much more minor role in this book than kid Erin remembers) is convinced the Dollanganger kids are the devil’s spawn. No wonder she puts images of hell on their walls, threatens them with beatings, lashes the mother, and doles out food in miserly doses.

What on earth is up with the professions of adults? PR person for a computer manufacturing firm in the 50s? Secretarial school, with those confounded scribbles and confusing typewriters? People named Bartholemew Winslow?

And let us not forget the traits of not-quite-3-dimensional characters. Momma (horrid spelling) breezes through, a blowsy specter. Cory and Carrie (seriously? I keep envisioning Carrie as the half-witted Baby Carrie of the Little House series) throw random tantrums, then are sweet. Mary Sue Cathy is a crackerjack ballerina. And Chris is a doctor! Or maybe he just likes to play doctor?

Things I Noticed: It is really weird to take time to read something that was pawed through and inhaled as a child. I’m surprised at how compelling some of it managed to be despite the lamentable writing. I’m surprised at all of the little details that have come back to me…the swan bed (golly. lolly.), the kids locked in a cupboard watching an over-the-top party that is a child’s imagining of what rich people do, the unnecessary details of the gifts Momma brings.

But enough about me. Next time I’ll talk about fiction and truth, the true identity of good old V.C., and whether I blushed when I heard what happened on that stained mattress. Now it’s your turn. (We will discuss Part II on August 6.)