Laurel Snyder

I woke up today and thought, POETRY FRIDAY!  Which must mean things are calming down a little here… if I’ve got room in my head for anything extra… anything besides groceries and  laundry.

Today, a little snippet from my novel, which comes out in about a month.  Not sure if it’s *real* poetry, but this is a great opportunity to try it out on people, whatever it is.  The book is full of silly little songs (sort of like Mary Poppins), sung by the main character, a milkmaid named Lucy.  This is what she sings as she begins her adventure up the mountain:

When climbing up a mountain, be sure to bring your feet—
You’ll need them to escape from hungry lions that you meet.
And if you make it past the beasts and thieves and snarly bears—
However far the summit seems, it’s twice as far as there.

And here’s another snippet, which Lucy sings after the Mayor and the Chief have “arrested” Cat, who is not a cat, but is actually a prairie dog:

Men in silly uniforms who get to make the rules
Should all be poked with wooden spoons, and sent away to schools,
Where wild beasts will teach them that it’s better to be free
Than it is be a grownup, stiff and stubborn as a tree!

(That second one really owes a debt to Mary Poppins.  I could not stop thinking, as I wrote:

Chief Professors all should be
Drowned in early infancy.

Anyone else still have Travers’ little songs stuck in their head from childhood?

It’s fuzzy and clunky, but I did it myself! I figured out how to do an imovie!  YAY!

Warning: This Video contains blueberries and a baby from Laurel Snyder on Vimeo.

(Hassle doesn’t seem to care at ALL,  but I’m thrilled)

Me, in Kirkus?

Kirkus?

Yep! And here it is!

This delightfully droll fairy tale features a feisty milkmaid named Lucy and her best friend, Prince Wynston. Wynston has been forced to swap berry-picking adventures with Lucy for lessons in the rules and rituals of courtship, as his father insists that he must find a proper princess to be his future Queen. Dejected and lonely, Lucy decides to embark on a journey up the Scratchy Mountains in search of her mother, who disappeared when Lucy was a baby. In an uncharacteristic act of rebellion, Wynston abandons his lessons and follows Lucy to the hilltop town of Torrent, a town so obsessed with rules and regularity that even the rain must come and go on schedule. On their grand adventure Lucy and Wynston learn the answers to Lucy’s questions about her mother and lots more, including the surprising facts that sometimes a prince in need of a future queen need look no further than his own best friend and that, while rules are very important and utterly necessary, so too are loopholes. (Fiction. 7-11)

Delightfully droll!  I’m DROLL!

YIP!

We picked berries!

And then had a picnic!

Lew graduated from his high chair!

Go, LEW!

While Mose is in the bath and Lew is busying himself with sucking on his blanket and considering sleep…I want to take a second to post about the bewildering and wonderful life I have at present.  It’s pretty weird, how split it feels.

See, right about the time I got knocked up, I also signed the contract for my first book, Half/Life.  And so it was that I quit my job and took a baby on a book tour. And so it was that childcare became a requirement for writing time.  And so it was that my kids got inextricably connected to my work, as they were both the justification for quitting my job (which didn’t pay enough to cover the childcare) and also my chief distraction for writing.  So the boys are kind of my vehicle, my motivator, my excuse.

No surprise I’m now a children’s author.

Maybe every parent/writer feels exactly like this, but in my case, I find it hard, sometimes, to transition from place to place, head to head. I can’t ever fully be where I am.It makes life wonderful and interesting, but it’s also a confusing identity.  I find I’m perpetually putting on/taking off hats.  Shifting my brain as I tear off a spaghetti-spattered t shirt to slip, sweaty, into a dress and dash (sweaty) to a reading.  Forgetting to take off a bjorn as I race, late, to the classsroom.  I go to professional events and end up talking about my kids.  And likewise, trying to talk to the mommy-world about my writing.

I thought about getting biz cards made up that just said, “MOM”.

Today I’m feeling this more strongly than usual.  It’s been 2 months since I had any babysitting, and 12 hours a day without a break is enough to force the writer-brain into the shadows.

But then… last night, I got to go to Wordsmith’s with the lovely Melissa, for a book launch for the Daily Candy Lexicon. I wore clean clothes and talked to grownups.  I drank a cocktail.  It was so much fun!

And then this morning I was up to take the kids berrying (also fun!), and by lunchtime was picking up poop , WHILE holding a kid on my hip and somehow also gripping a cheese sandwich.

And what I find is that while the transition from grownup-writer into mom is immediate, the transition from mom to grownup-writer takes about an hour.  I leave the house, take out the Oy Baby CD, breathe deeply, drive to event in silence, park, walk in, sip wine, and then– about 45 minutes later, I feel like I’ve finally arrived.

Whereas the second I get into the car after playing grownup writer, I feel panicked by my absence at home, and drive like a demon.  I’m a mom again the second I leave the other grownups behind.

And I wonder… I wonder how the other writer moms do it?  How they find the inner silence to write with kids underfoot? How they manage to “arrive” at the party without the need to talk about their children?

How do *you* divide your life?

(yeah, yeah, Em– I’m going to post pictures of the berrying. Soon as I figure out the iphoto)

Wow!

The art from Slidy Diner was selected as one of the winners of the 3×3 Pro Show. There were 4000 entries to this thing (!!!), and though I know NOTHING about awards for art and illustration, that sounds pretty dang good to me! 4000!

Jaime Zollars (the artist,duh)  is really something special, so I’m not surprised. In fact, I plan to ride her coattails to GLORY!

But still, wow!

Now we can say Slidy has “prizewinning pictures”, right?

The world now looks like this!

And, in  an unrelated story… did you notice I finally NAMED MY BLOG?

My friend Margo (also known to YA readers as M.E. Rabb) is blogging it up over here!  Show her some love…

And while it is nice to be here, it was really just sooooooo wonderful to be there.  Mose chased fireflies and bunnies. I drank an adult  beverage in a nice dive bar (as opposed to either a sleazy hole dive bar  or an ironic dive bar full of mullets and tight jeans). We saw music, and friends, and sat around and ate too much. 

It was hard to be there and have so many of the people I love NOT be there. I missed Thisbe something awful.  Sarah too.  How can it be Iowa City without those people?  And some things have changed.  The Hamburg Inn seems very different.

But Pieta came over and hung around in the yard with the babies, and so did Patrick and the amazing Sonya and Jeff, and Maria and Margaret.  And I got to meet Sarah!  And there really were goldfinches at the feeder, and wildflowers everywhere.  And…

Well…

I reserve the right to be wrong. Over and over and over and under…

Like the man said:

On a summer evenin’ when the corn’s head-high,
And there’s more lightnin’ bugs than stars in the sky.
Ah, you get the feelin’ things may be alright,
On a summer evenin’ before the dark of night.

Yes, things may be alright.