When I've used my words up...

...which, with all the books I've written over the last 5 years, would be often (I've written 8.5. And a screenplay. But who's counting.), I find that getting away from the computer and taking photos really helps me to re-fill the well.

And now that it's the week between Christmas and New Years, and now that I'm snowed in for the day, I decided to do something that I've always meant to do but have never had the time to do -- organize some of those photos on Flickr.

If you click here, you can see them.

Merry/Happy/Bonne/Feliz etc....

....whatever you celebrate, and whenever you celebrate it, I hope it's a joyful, peaceful time and that the new year brings all good things.

As for me, it's Christmas Eve and I'm curled up on my couch upstate with a cat on either side listening to Patty Griffin and thinking about everything that's transpired this year, and how, yet again, although I like to think I'm psychic and know what's going to happen next or that certain things will NEVER EVER EVER change, I was wrong.

And yet...even as I write that, there are certain things that I'm sure about. Like, say, that I'll NEVER EVER EVER get this Lucy B. pilot outline right for the half-hour sitcom that Nickelodeon is developing based on the book series. Or that I won't get all my writing projects done. And a host of other things.

And yet...if what I said in the second paragraph is right, then I'm probably wrong about those things.

It's been a crazy year. Crazy bad with my mom and her brain aneurysm (she's doing great now, thank God). Crazy good with my new house upstate that I get to escape to on weekends and life I'm creating here with amazing new friends. And as I sit here, I think about how next year will bring a host of other things that I won't be able to plan for. People I will meet who I don't even know exist at the moment.

If I could give everyone reading this a holiday gift, I would take away their ability to worry. I would wish them an entire day spent in the mindset that everything is perfect as it is at the moment; that all is as it's supposed to be...

xoxo

Pretty

Let's not talk about how many months it's been since I've blogged.

Instead, let's watch Katie Makkai's genius spoken word video where she talks about the word "pretty."

Wow.

Home

When I was 21 years old, right after I graduated from college, I moved to Los Angeles because I had wanted to be in the movie business. I had been there a few times before, and it always seemed glamorous, and sunny, and the palm trees didn't hurt, either.

So I got there, and I didn't end up in the movie business - I ended up in the TV business and I had a nice run. But LA never felt like home. Because you have to drive everywhere, it was very isolating, and there was no real sense of community and no downtown where you could walk around and be surrounded by people. I made do, but I always wondered what it would be like to leave. Then I got out of the TV business and I started writing. And because I was writing books instead of screenplays, I realized I really didn't have to stay in LA anymore if I didn't want to. The east coast had always felt like home, and as I got older I felt myself being pulled back there more and more. So I ended up moving to New York City. And the moment I got there, I felt like a duck hitting water. It just fit. And I thought "Ohhhh...so THIS is where I'm supposed to be." The nonstop activity, the nonstop noise, the fact that within a space of a block you can hear a multitude of languages and see a cross section of people from all walks of life.

It was home in a way that nowhere else had ever been.

Then, this summer, I started itching to go on vacation. First I thought I wanted to go to the beach and I looked around for a place to rent for a week on the Cape or in Rhode Island. Nothing. Well, stuff, but you'd have to be Stephenie Meyer to afford them. Then, one night at around 11pm I stumbled across a little farmhouse for rent for the month of July up in Columbia County, NY which is about 2.5 hours from the city. And my eyes widened and I just knew that was supposed to be my house. Lucky for me, the people who were going to rent it backed out at the last minute, so when I drove up that Saturday and pulled up and saw that, yup, I was right, it was indeed my house. At least for the month of July.

Every Friday morning I'd go to Penn Station and get on the Amtrak train and in two hours I was in the country. Instead of jackhammers, I heard frogs. Instead of waiting in long lines at Whole Foods, I stopped at roadside farm stands for just-picked blueberries and peaches. Instead of being slammed up against someone on the 2 train, I was driving down traffic-less country roads with cornfields to my right and mountains to my left.

My first weekend here I said to myself "Ohhh....so THIS is where I'm supposed to be, too."

Which, for a girl who had always yearned to live in the big city was pretty funny. But there's this thing that happens as you get older where, without you even knowing how it happens, you just change. And you like the country. And when you think about what kind of car you'd want to buy if you lived in the country, all you can think of is a station wagon.

A STATION WAGON. And I don't even have kids.

Three weeks later I had found my very own little farmhouse. Up on a hill with views of the Catskills to my left and the Berkshires to the right. The first time my realtor took me there, we couldn't get in because there wasn't a key, but just peeking in the windows, I kind of knew it was mine. And then when we went back again, I definitely knew it was mine.

So I finally had a house in the country of my own. And now I needed a car to get me there.

A few weeks earlier, I had met a really sweet guy named Tom. And when I ran into him one evening, I mentioned that I needed a car and if he had any leads or suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Turns out that people call him the Car Whisperer. So Tom, because he's a really nice person, did some research for me and sent me links to things that might be of interest. Totally went above and beyond and out of his way to help me, a person who was almost a complete stranger. Even if I had never found a car, the fact that he did that meant the world to me. My dad had joked "What you need is a car that was owned by an older person that has really low miles on it." So the other day, at Tom's suggestion, I called a dealership and asked if they had anything in my price range. Turned out they had a '03 Subaru with 36,000 miles. I called Tom to tell him and even though the place was about an hour away, he offered to go with me. The fact that he was willing to give up his afternoon and schlep over across the river with me to Kingston was so nice, I could barely wrap my head around it. And because the whole buying-a-car thing freaks me out, I took him up on his offer.

The car was exactly what I wanted, and I'm picking it up today.

AND it turns out that it was owned by a woman who just turned 83.

But even more important than the car, was the fact that because it took an hour to get there each way, Tom and I got to talk a lot and I realized that my initial impression of "I'd like to be friends with this guy" was right on the money. Which is way more important than a car.

Yesterday I went to my new house and spent two hours there with my landlord as he walked me through and explained everything to me. Like the WASHER AND DRYER which is the thing I've missed more than anything since I left L.A. And as we stood in the kitchen - a real kitchen rather than a tiny kitchenette that's in the living room, which is how I live in Manhattan - I looked out into my backyard - MY BACKYARD! I HAVE A BACKYARD! - and I saw a deer. We locked eyes for a second and then he leapt off and went back into the woods. Apaprently there are a ton of them, and they like to come eat the apples and pears from my apple and pear trees (I HAVE AN APPLE AND PEAR TREE!). Plus, there are otters. Which feels so random to me that I'll have to see it for myself. And rabbits. Lots of rabbits.

This photo is the view to the right of my house. If I can't be inspired to write looking at this, I don't know what will work.

Virginia Woolf talked about the importance of having "a room of one's own".

Now I have a house of my own. With a washer and dryer. And otters. And a station wagon in the driveway.

Satire? Irony? Parody? Anyone?

As someone wise once said - I don't remember who it was, but it was someone wise - if you're going to believe the good reviews, you have to believe the bad ones, too.

True.

But if you were really smart, you'd avoid reading reviews all together.

As those who read my books know, I tend to write with a significant amount of satire, making some of the characters somewhat bigger than life, as if were...Part of it is the fairy tale aspect of it...and part of it is...well, I can't explain it. It's just what I do.

When GEEK CHARMING came out, there were a lot of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads where people said they disliked Dylan and thought she was spoiled. Which meant that I did my job. Because it was a retelling of The Frog Prince - which is about a spoiled princess - you weren't SUPPOSED to like her. You were supposed to be rooting for Josh a.k.a. the frog, until Dylan began to change because of her relationship with him and she began to soften. That was her character arc.

Then my book LITTLE MISS RED came out last February. Another fairy tale retelling, it's a take-off on Little Red Riding Hod. This one, more than my first two, was a lot more steeped in parody. In the book, Sophie - the main character - is obsessed with romance. Her attitude about it all is over the top, and she's blind to who Jack a.k.a the wolf really is for a long time. Again, that's part of her arc. Because when she starts in that place, only to have the veil lifted as the book goes on and to see him for who he really is, then she has somewhere to go. For me to tell the story I wanted to tell with that one - about a girl who is so clueless about love and romance and so ingrained in the fantasy vs the reality - that's the way I had to tell it. Because to make her super grounded like Cindy Ella was wouldn't work. It's a different story. A different character. Is she silly with the way she compares everything to the plots in her books from the Devon Devereaux series? Absolutely. But does who she is as an overall character make up for that so that ultimately she's endearing and you're rooting for her? Well, that's my hope. Is Jack self-obsessed and narcissistic? Completely. But does his charm and his hotness and the way he makes Sophie feel like she's finally got some adventure in her life outweigh that? I think so. God knows I've lived that with many men in real life.

Maybe it's because I'm still relatively new at this thing. Maybe it's because I'm one of those sensitive people, but when I read reviews that make me feel like I missed the mark with my attempt, it makes me want to go find the reviewer and sit her or him down and explain what I was trying to do. Which is totally stupid. So the book wasn't their cup of tea. That's cool. Luckily there are bookstores full of books for them to choose from to find something they DO like.

Ironically, LITTLE MISS RED is my favorite of all the fairy tales. Probably because it's rather personal for me in that I got to work out my own stuff vis a vis my feelings and beliefs about love and romance.

I don't know exactly why I'm writing this. When people ask my why I write, I say it's an attempt to feel understood. And I guess, with RED in particular, I feel like people missed what I was trying to do. Not everyone, obviously, but a lot of people. Not that this is going to change their minds. But it did make me feel like I got my two cents in.

Am I the only blogger...

...who finds it hard to blog?

Maybe it's because I'm not actually a blogger, but, rather, a novelist. Because the truth is I'd rather write an entire novel than one of these. I think it's cause it just feels so...personal. And yet I have no problem whatsoever alerting the Facebook world about my whereabouts in status updates.

Anyway, what can I tell you...hmmm...well, I just handed in a first revision of Lucy 3 to my editor. And now I have to do another draft of Lucy 4. And I handed in a script rewrite to ABC Family.

OH - okay. So here's the BIG news....after three years of threats, I finally got my act together and rented a house upstate. In the country. With a koi pond. And FROGS. And a WASHER AND DRYER. It's only for the month of July, and because I'm one of those people who lives in the future, I'm already sad about the fact that I'll have to give it up at the end. It's totally perfect. Like something out of a fairy tale. Which, for someone who does fairy tale retellings, makes sense. It's in Columbia County which is about 2 hours from the city.

I'm trying to think of what else I can share. As I mentioned, I've been writing a lot lately so my social life--which is tepid at best--has been on the cool side.

God, I sound boring.

The Way I Am

The way I am is that, last weekend, when I was too tired to do much more than sprawl out on the couch because I was still recovering from the previous weekend's way-too-social for me agenda, I decided to pop in THE WAY WE WERE.

And yet again, after that first scene between Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand, I said to myself "God, I love this movie."

So I watched it. And I cried while I ate dried apricots. And then I got a stomach ache from the dried apricots. And then I cried a little more. Not because my stomach hurt, but because the movie is so good and I very much relate to it -- more than I'd like to, in fact.

And then after the last scene, when she says to him "Your girl is lovely, Hubbell" which is one of my favorite lines ever, I said again -- out loud this time--"God, I love this movie."