Happy 2012 & Hasta Luego as Well!

It’s a new year already and I’ve fallen so behind on the blog.  That said, I read an article somewhere that said we need to figure out what things we can do and what things we can’t do.  There’s only so much time in the day.  For me, I’m going to be putting this blog on hiatus.  It served me well for what I needed it to do – namely, get me writing again in 2011.  At this point though, I have a serious writing project ahead of me:  an agent has expressed interest in my YA novel -HOWEVER- I need to make serious revisions.  Basically, I need to rewrite the book which will be much easier than trying a cut and paste job.  That said – no writing motivation needed. I have an agent interested!  Of course, that does not mean she’s signed on with me but this is big progress as far as I’m concerned. 

On other fronts, too, things are in flux and many changes are ahead of me for 2012.  But that, too, requires time and effort on my end – all of which forces me to make some choices on where I can spend my time. 

But before I say “see you later” I did want to share my New Year’s goals with whoever is out there reading this.  For me, 2011 was a year about accepting changes and letting things happen; about not being afraid or sad about letting other things - comfortable things – go.

For me, 2012 will be a year about working with others to realize my dreams.  I have 3 of them but the only one I can share here is the one related to the YA book.  Working with this particular agent to get this book to see the light of day – a project that has been in the on-and-off works since 2009 – is a dream.  The other two dreams … Well, I have high hopes!

Finally, some more specific personal goals include but are not limited to the following:

• Don’t be too hard on myself.
• Don’t pull away from people out of jealousy or anger or frustration.
• Don’t be rigid about planned and planning events or activities.
• Enjoy and embrace the seasons.
• Try to rise above petty things and see beyond to something better; resolve the issue at hand and move on.

And that is that!  There are fun things on the day-to-day horizon for me including biking even in the winter months (I invested in warm gear at the new REI store in SOHO this past week), cooking meatballs from the yummy Meatball Shop cookbook, eating healthier during the day by partnering up and being accountable to my friend Alex at work, riding the 7 train with my friend Missy in a couple weeks into Flushing, Queens and just stopping where we feel like to check out the neighborhoods and eat various foods… And that’s just a few things, all of which I would love to share in detail as they unfold, but that will have to wait until things settle down a bit more on my end.

In the meantime, Happy 2012 and hasta luego!

xo,

Jody

A Visit to the New Islamic Art Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sometimes you miss all the reviews of an event and just stumble upon it; by accident or whimsy, even in a familiar setting.  This is how I found myself, one Friday afternoon after getting out of work a little early, on a tour of the new Islamic art wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I had no idea what to expect.  I highly recommend doing the free one-hour tour as it gives a good history of Islamic art and lays out the breadth and depth of what you are about to see. 

There’s great attention to detail focusing on how written Arabic evolved over time, mostly evident in religious texts:

But it was the secular items that really caught my attention and, at times, took my breath away.  Here, I need to be honest and admit that I can’t recall the proper names of many of the items I saw so I’ll have to use some generalized descriptions – please forgive me in advance if anything sounds belittling. 

My favorite items were the daggers in the South Asian gallery;

inspecting the tops and bottoms of all the bowls to see how ornamentation really took into account every surface:

the elaborate animal incense burners;

 and the beautiful manuscript pages.

I urge, urge, urge you to sit in the specially designed stools and look over these manuscripts carefully, taking in the details and the layering of colors, preserved exquisitely after hundreds of years.       

Now, on a totally different observation… Even though the works themselves are tremendous, I was most struck by how many people from worlds influenced by Islamic art came to view the exhibit and how slowly they looked at each piece before they photographed it for posterity.  Again, this may be a generalization, but it seemed to me that this was a group of people who had never really seen art of their own country, whether it be Iran, Iraq, Syria or India.  That the Met created this connection to a far away homeland is truly what is remarkable to me about this new addition to the museum’s permanent collection. 

Later on, I did read several reviews that highlighted the creation of the exhibit and the thought behind it.  My favorite was in the Economist but I can’t embed that link as it’s restricted to subscribers only; however, there was also a really good review in the New York Times. 

So far, I’ve been to the galleries twice and plan to go at least one more time with my parents. My best advise is to take advantage of the Met’s evening hours on Fridays and Saturdays as the galleries are packed at pretty much any other time. Unfortunately, there is no tour during those hours so you will have to choose what you prefer or make the time and do two visits; the first to hear the tour and get the background on Islamic art, and the second to get up close and more personal with the unique pieces on display. Trust me – you will not be disappointed.

Discovering the New York Public Library

The other day I returned a book to a library outside of my neighborhood and work comfort zone. I am a big fan of the public library system and make good use of both the New York Public Library (NYPL) and the NJ libraries (mom and dad still live there…) Random chance found me with a book that was due and in the neighborhood of the Ottendorfer Branch on 2nd avenue and 8th street. Returning the book was no problem but for some reason I decided to take a minute and just check this library out. Now for background, I am not a stacks browser though the thought sometimes crosses my mind that I should see what new books might be out. But then again, I figure, all the good ones would already be taken so why waste my time? So I walked through one of the “old” stacks – meaning not the new titles, but the old dusty ones. And here was my surprise.

Right in the first stack, there were shelves and shelves filled with brand-new books. I’m talking books so brand, spanking new that when I ran my finger along the spine there wasn’t even the faintest break. No one had ever cracked these books open. A gold mine for lovers of books who actually enjoy the clean smell of never-before-read pages! I took a closer look and realized quickly why the masses may have turned their noses up at these volumes. They were Classics. All of these unbroken books were classics in world literature; everything from Jane Austen to Tolstoy to Ibsen to Proust. Wow. I felt so guilty seeing them just sitting there untouched.  I almost checked one out just to check it out, but I just wasn’t in the mood for a classic…

So turning back to the NYPL… The other thing I found was a pamphlet of free programs, classes and exhibitions. For example, there’s an exhibit at the Bryant Park location of Children’s Book Illustrators and Authors, including illustrations from a book called Eight Days: A Story of Haiti. There are also sessions on job searching essentials, how to protect your assets for the elderly, how to use social media to promote your business, etc. And to round things out why not check-out concert pianists, a holiday concert put on by Broadway composers and lyricists, or hear the New York Opera Forum stage a concert version of La Boheme? And these are just the ones I earmarked out of personal interest, but do you get my point? All of these cool, amazing, educational and informative activities – and most just plain enjoyable – are FREE via the NYPL! So next time you’re walking by your local branch, or any branch for that matter, pop by and pick up a copy of the latest goings-on and maybe, just maybe, take a browse through the stacks.  One of those unopened classics you always wanted to make time to read may just strike your fancy. Of course, you will need to have a library card to do so and New York residents can apply in person or online here to get one.

Happy Library-ing!

Visiting Ft. Lauderdale and Trying to Really Live Life Every Day

Time is just flying by! I’m debating writing about one of two trips I’ve taken recently… The first was out west to Santa Fe with a side trip to the Grand Canyon and the second was a mini-sojourn to Ft. Lauderdale, FL. I guess I’ll go with the most recent which is Florida; it doesn’t sound so exciting but sometimes these are the trips that surprise you.

B and I planned this 3 1/2 day mini-break over Veteran’s Day weekend awhile ago. We stayed in a hotel called Il Lugano which I highly recommend though it’s not on the beach and not even within walking distance of the beach. It is, however, right on the Intracoastal Waterway so the views were of boats – anything from yachts to wave runners – cruising along the water. Across the way were the gorgeous estates that dot the Ft. Lauderdale frontage.  The room was just $120/per night (excluding taxes) and we had a full kitchen, washer/dryer, living room with a flat screen tv, wi-fi and terrace, as well as a separate bedroom with a king size bed, another flat screen tv and another terrace. Both terraces overlooked the Intracoastal and had a small table with two chairs. The bathroom was big and spacious as well. We never ate at the restaurant but it’s a Todd English joint so it may have been worth a look… B and I also just parked the car on the very quiet street out front and though we constantly had to scrounge for quarters (a funny adventure in and of itself) it was worth it to have the quick access and not wait for valet; and also not to pay the extra $20 daily parking charge. The whole experience made the accommodation feel more like an apartment than a true hotel, really limiting our interactions with the staff which I prefer. Anyway, that’s enough about the hotel – you can read more about it by clicking the link above.

For dining, Il Lugano couldn’t have been better situated as it’s just down the street from Taverna Greek Islands restaurant. B and I had dinner here our first night. Now when I say “dinner” and “night” I’m exaggerating. We sat down at 4:30 p.m. in true retired Floridian-style and gorged on gyros, moussaka, spatikopia (no idea on spelling), rice pudding, etc. We also had b’fast every day at the Original Pancake House. Not located on the beach, but right on Highway 1 and the place is always packed. The three best things about it:  freshly squeezed orange juice, crispy but not charred bacon and pancakes – any of the pancakes. I also highly recommend Rocco’s Tacos on Las Olas Boulevard which looks like a total dive from the outside with nothing to look at across the street except maybe a dry cleaner’s and a hair salon, but inside the ambience is super colorful, cozy and cheerful and the food is simply delicious.

I pause for a moment to remark on an interesting comment B made to me. He said, “You really take advantage of the places you go”. That made me so happy! I have one dear friend in NYC – Pauline – who did the awesome Saturday bike ride with me a couple of weeks ago (see earlier post).  She really inspires me to look at life like a great opportunity: 

- Pauline always carries a New Yorker magazine in her bag so she has something interesting to read while she’s waiting (for me to show up for Ethiopian, for the bus/subway, etc.).  She never gets agitated waiting!

- Pauline always engages with her food and really examines and takes in everything that’s before her before she begins to eat. Her face literally lights up when it’s placed before her.

- While on vacation, Pauline stays up late to unpack everything out of her suitcase, lays everything all out and takes stock of what she has brought and maybe purchased along the way (she may even be humming while doing this), and then repacks everything. With a happy gleam in her eye, she says she likes to “see all her stuff”!

- Pauline listens with fascination to almost any explanation – tour of a house, tour of the salt caves in Colombia, South America, or a microfinance seminar/panel like the one we attended earlier this week (even though she’ll never do anything in microfinance she was 100% enthusiastic).

Anyway, I really draw a ton of inspiration from my close friends since I find each of them truly exceptional in totally different ways.  When I asked B what prompted him to make that comment, he pointed out the fact that I had arranged to play tennis every morning while we were down there – bringing all my gear and driving off to the court to play with the pro I tracked down. Or what about the 1-hour tour we did of The Stranahan House on Las Olas that turned out to be really enjoyable for both of us?

Let me spend a little time talking about The Stranahan House before I leave you, especially since I’m totally into historic house tours these days after that great Saturday bike ride. I never realized how much they brought to life and how informative they can be about a certain way of life in a time I will never otherwise know. I found out about this house through one of those coupon books for local activities you get when you check into a hotel. It sounded okay, wasn’t far away and I read some decent reviews on-line. Of course, we’d never heard of the Stranahans but figured we had an hour to spare, $2 off each of our tickets (coupon in the book), and B’s a pretty good sport and open-minded, so we went! I learned so much about Ft. Lauderdale history by going on the tour. It was fascinating to see what life was like in this climate in those times; totally different from up here in NYC. Also, I was super interested in how Mrs. Stranahan - Ivy, took to the area and what her day-to-day was like.  Was she funny?  Did she have a lot of friends?  I was so curious in fact that I purchased a book on Ivy Stranahan’s life (historical fiction) written by Jane Kirkpatrick called Mystic Sweet Communion.  I don’t like the title much but the book itself is a really interesting read. It gives great insight into Ivy’s experiences; her doubts and her fears. She wasn’t a perfect person and at times I find her convictions a little annoying but it all balances out to give a fair representation of a person – at least so far. I am only about 1/2 done with the book (almost 400 pages!) but it’s an easy read. I made a note as well to see what else this author has written.

On that note I will end this post and put my Ft. Lauderdale memories to bed. For some reason, B and I didn’t take pictures of anything on this trip which is actually not a bad way to enjoy a vacation…

Perfect Saturday in the Bronx

It’s Sunday evening and I’m watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations”.  I have to say, I really enjoy this show and keep a huge list of them on DVR even though I detest Time Warner cable.  This episode is on Cleveland.  Nothing about the cuisine or discussion of charcuterie inspires me to visit or dine in Cleveland, but I thought it would be fun to see the region since Bourdain’s show is about so much more than just eating where he travels.  And this week for my day job I’m going to be writing about Detroit hospitals as an up-and-coming market, focussing on the impact of the new UAW contract with Ford Motors and a fairly uplifting article in The Economist on Motor City.  I need to somehow tie all of that into 8 Mile and Eminem since I like having a personal touch to my work-work … but I digress.

What I want to write about is my day yesterday which was one of those days of overwhelming sensation and inspiration.  I thank the Five Borough Bike Club for this adventure in the Bronx as well as my friend Pauline for being game and joining me since most things tend to be more fun with a partner in crime.  To begin our adventure, Pauline and I were coming from different locations (with our bikes) and the plan was to meet at 161st/Yankee Stadium at 10:30 a.m. on the 4 train platform.  Temperatures were in the high 30′s and I was decently bundled up but sitting on the platform for 30 minutes waiting gave me a chill… No sign of Pauline.  By 10:45 a.m. I decided to take the next train that came since I was cold and wanted to try to get to the point where we were meeting the group so we didn’t miss them completely.  The crazy thing is that Pauline wound up on the train right behind me!  Happily, we joined the group around 11 a.m. as planned and we set off.

We biked along the bike paths of the northwest Bronx until we got to the Van Cortland Mansion/Museum.  Here we had an amazing tour by “David” a guy who volunteers there (his day job is to make tv/films) and he was a most informative and engaging guide on American art, history of the region and American History overall.  We saw the conditions of the slaves’ quarters, huge pieces of mahogany furniture carved out of one single piece of wood with no attachments,bezels, etc,  and special chairs which held chamber pots in every room.  Really cool.  From there we got back on our bikes and rode along to City Island – see an earlier post on this place.  Here, at the very tip of the Island we had lunch at Reef’s Restaurant, scarfing down fresh fish & chips, fried clams, clam chowder – all while sitting outside along the Long Island Sound on a brisk fall day.  Perfectly delicious.  Stuffed and happy, we got back on our bikes and pedaled on to the Bartow-Pell Mansion where we had another tour of a well-preserved mid-1800′s mansion.  Again, the history of these homes is fascinating and I can’t begin to get into the details – I wish I could remember more!  Finally, we biked off and separated from the main group until we got to the 5 train which we took for a bit until we transferred to the 2 train to finally get home.  An exhausting but perfectly fulfilling fall day – the 4 key letters being FULL.  Pauline took pictures which I may upload later once I get them from her, but hopefully some of the details of the itinerary speak for themselves.

Sensational Sensations:

*The sound of my bike tires crunching through the golden fallen leaves.

*The smell of the woods as we biked along Shore Road toward City Island.

*The taste of the fried sole and homemade tartar sauce at Reef’s Restaurant  in City Island.

*The sight of the old New York maps depicting what things looked like before Orchard Beach was created using the dirt excavated from the 8th avenue subway line.

*The feel of the cool wind on my face as we biked along all day.

Perfectly perfect.

On Yoga

Just a quick midweek update!

So I’ve been making an effort to get back into a semblance of a yoga routine and am using an amazing teacher, Mindy Bacharach, for inspiration.  Mindy teaches a handful of classes at the Equinox gym near my house and I kick myself for not going more often and taking advantage of the class and her teaching.  I’ve enjoyed yoga for many years but for the past 1 1/2 years I’ve really pulled away from it and focussed on “busier” activities/forms of exercise like spin class, biking, tennis, etc.  For some reason, I got impatient just thinking about yoga.  A terrible way to go into a class and so I stayed away completely.

But sometime back in September, I realized the steady hum of NYC was getting on my nerves and I was craving a quiet place.  I wanted to change my whole life into something quieter, but that was a bit too dramatic of an undertaking.  So I decided to step back onto the mat instead.  I went to Mindy’s Wednesday evening Anusara yoga class in mid-September and fell in love with it all over again.  We spent 40-minutes on an active, posture-intensive practice followed by 20 minutes of restorative poses and shivasana.  It was a perfect blend of on & off; quiet and more quiet while working up a good sweat and feeling very in touch with all the crevasses of my body.  I will admit though that my attendance record has not been perfect since that day but I did manage to get some classes in there.  And tonight was another one!  Tonight, Mindy talked to us about how much beauty and talent is around us every day here in NYC – on the subway, waiting for the bus, standing in line at the grocery store.  There are so many artists; singers, dancers, actors, who - in her words – seem to have been put on this earth for the sole reason to remind the rest of us of how much beauty there can be in the sound of song or in the movement of the human body.  The highlight of the class was when she was demonstrating a smooth transition into a handstand and she said, “You come to realize how your own movement can be artistic simply by moving with integrity”.  Perfectly awesome.  

I must also admit here that I am terrified of doing a handstand even though Mindy came by and said, “You got this, Jody”.  So clearly she believes I can do it, but I just don’t have that faith in myself.  At least not yet anyway.  So I made a resolution for 2012 (I know it’s a bit early) to work on inversions and overcoming my fear of not being strong enough to get myself up into a headstand or handstand and to hold myself up there and to not crash to ground and break my neck.  So on that note of feeling good about the things I can do and of being forgiving to myself for the things I can’t do (at least not today), I sign off with the sound of “ohm” – a sound filled with integrity.

Meeting President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Iron Lady of Liberia

This is a brief post and unfortunately, already a little dated as I was away last week on vacation. But I think the picture and headline from the New York Times says it all:

Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Three Activist Women
One of those women was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the current President of Liberia pictured below.

For those who don’t know, Liberia is a small country the size of Ohio in western Africa… The headline itself is extraordinary but what really gave me pause was the fact that I met Ellen Sirleaf in late 2008 when I was in Liberia with my college friend Karen doing some volunteer training work in hospital financial management and website development. We wrote about the experience for our college alumni newsletter JHU_Ruminations_2009
– if you don’t want to read the whole thing, no problem; but you can scroll to the last page to see photographic evidence of our meeting with the Liberian President! 

Now I’ve already written about Liberia previously on this blog here. You can see some cool pictures from that trip posted as well.  Ellen Sirleaf is certainly an incredible woman who has fought hard to get to where she is.  Much has already been posted on her that I don’t need to repeat. Instead, what I wanted to focus on was how Karen and I even managed to meet her in the first place.

In 2008, once Karen and I had put together our initial plans for the Liberia trip, she mentioned to me that when she had been a trader for Wells Fargo in San Francisco, she had worked with and trained one of Ellen Sirleaf’s sons. Now a few years had passed since that time, but I prompted (read “pushed”) Karen to go ahead and call him and see if we could meet with his mother while we were in Liberia. Karen balked at first, but I insisted that Liberia is such a tiny country (again, just the size of Ohio) so be confident!  Really, what’s the big deal?  Laughingly, she said she’d do it.  After a bit of back and forth, we were instructed by Ellen’s son to contact “Aunt Jenny”, Ellen’s sister, once we’d arrived in Liberia. Any meeting with Ellen has to go through Aunt Jenny who manages Ellen’s calendar… We were still nonchalent about it, thinking it would never really happen. And even when we were sitting in the dusty parking lot of the Liberian Presidential compound, we still thought things would fall through. But one moment led to the next and soon enough we were seated in Ellen’s living room drinking tea with her and Aunt Jenny. It was surreal and, admittedly, both Karen and I were tongue-tied in front of the “Iron Lady” who was pretty stoic before us.  Eventually, we started talking about the volunteer work that brought us to Liberia and that seemed to crack her shell a little. Overall, it was just a pretty cool experience made even cooler now by the fact that we actually shook hands and had a private homey moment with a Nobel Peace prize winner. Karen likes to remind us how the experience was also a good lesson in not being afraid to ask for things that seem impossible, because you never know - sometimes, you just might get what you ask for.

Book Review: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

I was left sitting in a state of wonder when I finished Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder.  Just quickly eyeing my book, I can see 11 tabs I placed marking especially great writing in an already well-written book.  From the 1st paragraph, I was hooked.  Ann’s description of a whisper thin blue aerogram instantly reminded me of letters my grandparents in India used to send my mom when I was younger.  But to say how it came to “mark the passing of a man”; this “breath of tissue so insubstantial that only the stamp seemed to anchor it to this world.”  Ahhh.  How I would love to have written that myself.

Ann’s character portrayals are deft; unfolding like onion layers and quietly surprising me every so often throughout the book. I found myself slowly pulled into their stories, tabbing here and there.  “A person could wash out the inside of a pickle jar with such a bird.”  Can’t you just see what she’s talking about?  Or how about this sentence, when they’re at the Opera House in Manaus: “They had tickets for XXX but only because there had to be tickets for something; the building itself was the performance.”  This wording made me laugh as Dr. Swenson decides how many apricots to purchase:  “Dr. Swenson waited a moment, as if making a tally in her head.  It was impossible to know how many apricots a person would eat once they had been removed from civilization.”

A little further into the story is an exchange my Spanish teacher would heartily agree with:

“One must not be shy where language is concerned.”

“I wouldn’t know how to start with this one.”

“You must first open your mouth.”

When Ann’s describes a baby in the Amazon, she evaluates it like one would evaluate a used car: “He was no doubt thinner than the average American model but very healthy, kicking and gurgling with pleasure.”

And just one more… Well, it’s actually a few sentences, but I won’t tell you who says them, who the sentences refer to or in what context.  But they resonated with me:  

“He was the man I wanted to be.  He was fully engaged with his life every minute that he lived it.  He didn’t trudge along doing what someone else told him to do…He held his head up and looked at the world around him.”

Eventually, the fast-paced plot overtook me and my tabbing became more sparse.  As I got closer to the ending, I didn’t see the twist coming and it snuck up on me the way an anaconda can sneak up alongside your boat in the Amazon.  The heart of the story – ouch.  I actually felt an ache as I read the words morph into sentences I did not want to believe.  And so it is – the sacrifices that get made in life. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be enough to just read the book and set it aside, especially since it made me feel very small as a writer.  But then I spent a little time reading about Ann Patchett as well.  Outside of some facts about her marrying someone much older and choosing very early on not to have children, I learned that it grieves her somewhat that 99% of her readership is female.  I laughed at that.  I’ve since left the experience realizing that there are all kinds of books that need to be written in the world and all kinds of authors that need to write them.  So on that note, I bow my head to Ann and return now to my own writing projects.

Midtown NYC Scene: Nanny+Kid+Mama in 5-inch Louboutins

Today, I wished I had an iPhone!  I’ve decided to submit and upgrade to the iPhone 5 when my contract with Verizon is next up (sadly, that won’t be until summer 2012!).  But today, I really could’ve used one solely for the purpose of taking a great quick picture.  But instead, I’ll have to try to explain it.

Alex (my work friend) and I were walking to get lunch when we happened upon a quintessential NYC scene.  

Imagine the setting; 50th street between Lexington and Park Avenue – Midtown Manhattan during lunch which is a bustling time.

Enter THREE people.  Main character is a blond woman wearing a tight-fitting black suit, 5-inch black patent leather Louboutins (you can’t mistake those red soles…), carrying a Starbucks coffee and a tan Hermes bag on her left arm while holding onto her son with her right hand.  Her son seemed like a normal 5-year old so not much to say about him.  The third person was a woman of color.  Clearly the nanny, wearing her functional sneakers, blue jeans and a blue denim jacket.  She carried the boy’s Elmo backpack on her own shoulder.  Now before I’m accused of stereotyping, the scene ends with the blond instructing the nanny to fetch them a cab; once nanny does, the blond mom tells her son to “thank nanny for getting a cab”.  But the blond also wasn’t a 100% stereotype because she had 3 flaws that we could see:

1. In such a tight skirt, you could clearly see her underwear lines.  If you’re going to attempt to pull off that look, you really just need to wear a thong.

2. Next, the blond’s hair wasn’t that well done.  It looked frizzy and it was very cool dry day in the city not even hitting 60 degrees.  There was no rain until much later in the day so humidity wasn’t a factor.  Either she just did a poor job with the flat-iron that morning or simply has bad hair.  Sidenote – I read that Lauren Graham of the Gilmore Girls has bad hair as well and was really rough on the show’s stylists, insisting that they get it as straight and smooth as possible for filming.  If I pay attention when watching reruns of that show, I can see how coarse her hair actually is… My sympathies to those stylists.

3. And finally, the blond tottered in her Louboutins.  Not owning any myself I can still admit that Louboutins are beautiful shoes made for strutting, not tottering.  The blond mom literally swayed side to side, her heels off-angle and seemingly worn down in such a way as well.  It looked as if they would snap at any moment… Yikes!

Black-patent 5-inch Louboutins in action. You really need to be standing and walking straight in these… Falling is too easy an option…

That’s all I got.  I wish I had more to say to describe this visual and really just wish I had the iPhone in my pocket since a picture from the back would’ve said everything I’m trying to convey.  But really a totally NYC moment in a nutshell.

On writing: Still working to get the outline of Book 2 for the YA started/completed.  Didn’t get much done this weekend since I was in NJ with the family and once the work week begins, carving out writing time during the day is really tough.  But I did read something today about a writer who gets up super early and writes from 5-7 before his work day gets going … Should I give that a shot tomorrow?  I have to be in the office by 7:45 at the latest since we have Tuesday meetings and it takes me 1/2 hour to get there (best case).  Backing up I would need to be in the shower and getting ready by 6:45 a.m. at the latest.  Well, getting some writing done between 5-6:45 wouldn’t be bad at all, but the question is, do I have that will power?  Especially when I know I have a long work day ahead of me followed by Bar Method class at 5:30 p.m.?  Hmm…

Book Review: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

I need to do this post now before it gets away from me.  I recently finished reading Graceling.  Now, I bought this book almost a year ago but somehow couldn’t focus enough to read it all the way through.  But sometime last week, I re-checked in on the author’s blog – Kristin Cashore.  She had some random mentions that resonated with me – her Bollywood movie suggestions (I was in the market for some), that she only maintains a blog and doesn’t Twitter or Facebook (two social media platforms I also don’t enjoy), and that she is economical and keeps her blog on WordPress which is what this blog uses as well (it’s totally free!).  Someday, if I actually move forward on the book front (getting an agent, getting published, etc.) I may invest in an actual website but I also sort of like the idea of just keeping it simple.

But I digress.  The connections made me pick up Graceling again.  And so I started from the beginning.  In summary, I can say that without doubt, KC is a very intelligent writer.  Her craftiness is in the details (e.g. that Katsa - the heroine – should make snowshoes now before they pass the tree line and have no branches).  KC created very memorable characters along the way and her story was not without sacrifice which I very much appreciate.  Life’s hard and things don’t always work out perfectly!  The world she imagined is rich in detail and it was entertaining to watch Katsa’s voyage of self-discovery, even through some of the coldest, most trying efforts.  Katsa is also not perfect which is refreshing.  But it’s the quiet crux of the story I enjoyed most – where telling lies lets the evildoer move through the world easily but telling the truth is what got him caught.   

For all the positives, I had a few peeves… I couldn’t help but compare Graceling to the Hunger Games – a series I adore.  There are several comparisons to make, not least of which are the heroines names:  Katsa in Graceling and Katniss in Hunger Games.  But I’ll save that analysis for another post… In Graceling, I felt that the concept of different eye colors indicating someone “Graced” was a bit kitschy (easy) and it felt obvious that Katsa would end up with who she ends up with.  Also, though I ultimately enjoyed the plot of Graceling, I felt it was rather slow at times, especially as they painstakingly moved through the woods – it felt real, but still slow… I think that might have been what put me off the first time I tried to read the book.  This time though, I also read it with an author’s eye to see how KC pulls the whole thing off.  I will thank her now for the lessons I learned on the craft of writing, because overall Graceling is a very-craftily written book. 

On that note time, it’s time to get on with my own writing.  Today is actually a bit of a momentous occasion since I am officially done writing and revising my young adult novel.  I started the rewrite in February and worked on and off, really hitting it hard from mid-July to now.  Now, I’m going to send an email to the one agent who is reading the first half and offer her the whole book for her review while also using it as a chance to check-in.  Finally, I need to begin plotting out Book 2 of this 2-part story while the details are fresh in my mind.  This way I can comfortably move on to other writing projects while I wait to hear back from my one iron in the fire!  

JM