Research is not, as I said the other day, funny.  Research is dangerous.

First of all, I have this habit of putting food in my novels that is way too delicious.  In two separate stories–one, Nice and Mean; the other, one called Not That Girl that may someday be unleashed to the world–I prominently featured doughnuts.  Every time M and E would make up, or J, M, Z and B would gather at the shopping center, I would have to stand by and watch while they stuffed their mouths with chocolately, cakey goodness and try not to care that I didn’t–and shouldn’t–have any in my house.  It was particularly rough when M wiped the extra glaze off the wax paper and then ate it.  That’s what I would do!

Then there was–and is; in contrast to the doughnut scene, this part made it into Nice and Mean–the matter of ravioli.  There’s an important scene in which Marina and Sachi eat ravioli.  I love ravioli!  Marina accidentally pours too much parmesan onto hers (I seriously hope this does not count as a spoiler), but I would eat it like that anyway.  I think they’re eating peas at the same time…I love peas with my ravioli!  Every time I’d revise that scene, I’d be tempted with the prospect of a ravioli lunch, and let me tell you, there is a lot more fat in ravioli, even cheese ravioli, than you realize. 

But now I think I’ve taken the cake for myself–or even, ha ha, the Cakesters.  In my camping story, workingly titled The Book of the Dead, some genius sent my characters Oreo Cakesters.  It’s important how many come in a pack, so just now (before lunch, I might add), I went online to find out and ended up having to look at this website:

http://www.nabiscoworld.com/oreo/cakesters/

Why can’t they just have the info without pictures?  It’s so mean and tempting.  Now I want Cakesters, and I should not be having Cakesters!  (I don’t mean to make this blog another lament along the lines of Women and Food Denial, but I very much doubt that most peoples’ healthy eating plans include regular consumption of Cakesters, especially in the middle of the afternoon.) 

So I may be on the verge of deciding that I should forgo research–or at least, internet research on food.  I am just going to make up all my facts from now on.  Even if I need to learn how long it takes yeast for yeast to rise–too bad!  I don’t want to be tempted with images of fresh-baked bread.  They may be making their own veggie burgers from a mix, but I will just have to imagine the finished product, thank you very much (okay, maybe some people would balk at the idea of mix-made veggie burgers, but at this moment, when no peas or ravioli have crossed my path recently, I am finding it quite tempting.)  If my subconscious is going to keep throwing tempting items into my stories, the least I can do is resist further temptation.  And if I put errors in my story in the process, who cares?  Wouldn’t you rather have me wrong than expiring of a heart attack before completing this novel?  I would.  Thank you. 

ps I am sorry if I tempted you with the pretty pictures here.  I had to get them out of my system.  Of course, now they are in my system.  Hm. 

pps It has been pointed out to me that I have not really made good on my tagline.  Consider this a love song to cake…a song of the broken-hearted.

You’ve got to love when you do an image search to check your understanding of a Pulaski (everybody’s favorite tool–axe and pick in one) and you come upon this:

instead of this:

This is the second time I’ve had a laugh on behalf of Casimir Pulaski, a Polish hero of…something or other.  I’d tell you more about it, but you’d probably think it was silly and agree with me that you had to be there.

If you have any stories of resarch snafus, however, or, indeed, tales of Casimir Pulaski, feel free to share.

Welcome to the second weeklyish On my Desktop , in which I photograph something on the desktop and do a little dance about it.  This week, I thought I’d do a little time-lapse photography of the narcissus I planted in my nifty bulb-planter.

Cool how it grows every day, no?  I know.  I shouldn’t be surprised (that would be narcissistic of me, right, if I expected plants to grow at a human rate?)  It’s a fast-growing plant, and even plants that don’t grow fast do change each day.  I guess it’s just…okay, dovetailing into writing metaphor here: I face this bulb each day when I write, and though mostly I succeed in nudging up the page count by the end of the day, there’s also a lot of re-outlining, rewriting, scrapping and reconceiving.  But it’s undeniable that at the end of the week, I have gone somewhere with my story, and month after month, I get closer not just to the end, but to a story that’s sound.  It may seem like it creeps as slowly as these roots toward the bottom of the glass (“are they moving at all?  Maybe it’s my imagination.  They were this long yesterday…”)–little changes happen each day.  Stay tuned for flowering!

(ps, can I also add what a freaking pain it was to upload those photos?  Unless I resize the pics, WordPress tells me I’ve gone over my jpg limit.  Any advices appreciated.  I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today!)

So every month, I post a new poll on my website (www.jessicaleader.com–just like this except w/out the blog)–that relates in some way to Nice and Mean.  The first was about whether you were nice or mean or somewhere in between, back in middle school; last month’s had to do with getting what you want (something both characters have great difficulty doing–one wreaks havoc in her wake; the other one sneaks). 

This month, I’ve asked, How did you decide what to wear in seventh grade?  People have been voting, with interesting results (honestly, I would not have guessed my friends and acquaintances were quite as conformist, but I suppose we all are, in some way)–but the best responses have come from Facebook.  In the name of giving you something interesting to read (because it is, after all, Comment Challenge Month, so we’re all hopping on each others’ blogs in search of material juicy enough to comment on), here are some fabby excerpts:

Stole my stepsister’s jeans and hoped to get home from school before she did so I wouldn’t be caught.

In seventh grade, I think I was shopping at stores like Claire’s. Eighth grade was the year for curlers. The bangs were definitely in a forehead salute.

I can’t remember how, but I do remember never getting it right.

I’m starting a new feature: desktop Thursdays.  Yes, I know it’s not Thursday—but I took this picture on a Thursday!  Every Thursday (….that I remember to do it), I’ll take a photo of some aspect of my desktop and do a little explanation. 

Because how could I not be inspired by what I noticed yesterday?  I was on the phone to a friend, making plans and tidying up, and I realized the armadillo—the first present anyone gave me on my wedding weekend—and the slice of cake—which my best friend sent me for Christmukkah—were destined to be together.  They were both rubber!  Both small and cute!  Both a little lonely amid the paperclips and wanting to connect.

Then—lo, fuzzy chick!  Speaking of paperclips—she’d been exiled among them because she couldn’t stand up so well on her own, and frankly, she needed a little more proppage in this picture.  And then the origami frog I made two Christmukkahs ago, to entertain myself during some slightly laggy conversation—presto.  He had a home, too.

I’m psyched about my rubber, fluff and origami menagerie.  I plan to keep adding to it.  (Ooh!  Should the bluebird wind-chime from my former advisor join the party?)  Laura Wingfield will have nothing on me….

Don’t forget to vote in this month’s Nice and Mean poll: How did you decide what to wear in seventh grade? 

Testing, testing…what happens if I try to upload a blog post from Word?  Can I use any font I want?  This would be verrry exciting, as I am just not a Calibri kind of girl (and who is a Calibri kind of girl?  Everybody I know hates Calibri.  Booo on the Vista default font!

 Also, I wouldn’t be restricted to that tinsy WordPress window.  They should call it WordCompress.  And yes, I meant ‘tinsy.’  As in, ‘teensy-tinsy.’  No reason the second half of the word should get neglected. 

 Okay.  Here…goes…

No!  It did not work.  Curses!  I will have to contact the awesome web designer.  Sorry to bother you, awesome web designer.  But the Calibri must go.

(I also have to add that I had a little trouble updating this post–maybe because I pasted from Word–and every time I hit, “publish post,” it took me to a blog page with the header, “I’m sorry, but what you are looking for is not here.”  That’s kind of deep for an automatic error statement, don’t you think?)

Hey there! In case you’re new to the blog–every month (ish), I post a poll on my website related to the themes of Nice and Mean. So far, we’ve learned How nice (or mean) were you in seventh grade? And now we’re learning…

How do you get what you want?

If someone is standing in the way of getting what I want, I am most likely to…

• Decide what I want is not worth an argument 0%
• Sneak around them to get my way — 13%
• Discuss what I want with the person and try to compromise — 44%
• Try to get them to see that what I want is good for them, too — 31%
• Blow past them however I can to achieve my goal — 13%

If you’re a blow-paster, you’re like narrator numero uno, Marina, and frankly, even though I know many adult readers may balk at Marina’s brashness, I think young readers like and even envy that quality.  Why are they so into The Clique and The Ashleys?  The clothes, maybe, but also the idea that somebody out there just does what she wants.  Of course, maybe they also comfort from the fact that there are often consequences from completely unleashing your inner beech tree. 

If you kind of swallow what you want, you’re like Sachi–at least, how she starts at the beginning of the book.  She learns a little from her experiences, and from Marina, to be more direct. 

To vote in this month’s poll, How did you decide what to wear in seventh grade? Go here.

In addition to getting all geared up for the June release of Nice and Mean, I’m working on a YA novel, currently called The Book of the Dead. I won’t say too much about it except there are six main characters, a mysterious narrator, and a location that looks like this:

(Well, except that there are people, too. It’s not a about elk. I won’t even pretend that sounds interesting.)

I’m loving writing it, but I don’t always get to write it, because I keep needing to re-outline. I’ve come up with a sort of metaphor. (Actually, now that I’m rereading what I wrote, I realize it’s a simile.)

Writing a first draft is like trying to cross a wide, rushing, rock-filled river. If you’re me, you know where you want to land on the other side–ie, the end of the book. So I can cross in a few ways: charge across the river, freezing cold. You cut your feet on the rocks, get pushed by the current and have to scramble over debris, but at least you land on the other side pretty soon after you started.

You can also gather stones around you on the bank and toss them into a path across the river–at least, as far as your throwing arm will let you. This would be the outline stage, and for me, it’s more successful than the dingle-doodie shamble-run across the river because I’m more likely to land where I want to and less likely to end up stranded in the middle of the river, blocked by a big honking tree branch.

However, I can’t always land the rocks perfectly from the shore. There may be an obstacle I can’t see from where I’m standing. But I’ll get impatient and want to get to the other side–maybe there are some foxes nipping at my heels where I am–so I step out onto the rocks as far as I can go. Drafting–yay! View of the river! The rush!

Then, of course, you know what happens: I may still run into that tree branch. I may see that some of the rocks landed wobblyly (I now dub this an adverb), and I need to shore them up. Or I may realize that they’re not in an arc that will let me land where I had planned to, and I may need to retrace my steps and start again-over and over and over.

At some point, I start to ask myself, should I just abandon these rocks and charge across the river? Am I being wimpy, throwing stones instead of running? Maybe I should run. At least I’ll be able to say I’ve gotten to the other side.

But then I think, if my feet are all bloody, is it worth it? And oh yeah–did I mention that I’ll need to use that same path to get other people–readers–across the river? At some point, it’ll need to be navigable for them, too. So I keep up my rock-throwing, hoping my aim will improve and that eventually, I’ll have the path.

What about you guys? Do you see first-drafting like this at all? Are you a rock-thrower or a mad dasher? Or somewhere in between? That’s where I am now: in between. Maybe I’ll see you there.

It all started when Josh Berk, one of the Tenners (novelists debuting in 2010), posted something very helpful on the site, and someone referred to him as a font.

I wrote, “Yes, but which one!”

And he, ever witty, wrote, “Mostly I feel like Wingdings.”

Then, since I only have limited flashes of genius each day (sorry), I Tweeted, “If you were a font, what would you be?”

Josh gamely repeated his Wingdings comment, and Amy Brecount White turned me on to this–a bunch of bearded men dancing, New Wave video-style, to a an ode they’d written to a typeface.

In the words of one of my protagonists: that video is hot, hot, hot. (She probably says that about a video, too. There’s a lot of video in Nice and Mean. Actually, it’s about making a video.) But these guys’ video is hot in another way, although sort of like PS22, which I wrote about last month. They’re so Into It. And you know, I think I really like Into It.

And it all started because Josh Berk was a font of information. That’s what we like about the internets. Electric boogie all day long.

Oh: I got my ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) of Nice and Mean today. They’re adorable. They look just like what I’d think a book of mine would look like. Way to bury the lead, I know. But I’m still thinking how I’m going to announce it more publicly, with cute pictures n giveaways n stuff. So instead I post about fonts.

A Wordle, for those not in the knowdle, is a computer-generated artistic collage of the main words used in a document. I made a Wordle of the final chapter of Nice and Mean–but I can’t get the image to appear in this blog! Since it’s probably more important to, you know, start writing today than continue to futz, I’m going to leave you with a link for your clicking pleasure. Enjoy, and may you create fun Wordles for yourself, too!