Zodiac House: Monkey chapter

Hey, I'll bet those of you who were paying attention thought I wasn't writing this book any more. Well...I kind of wasn't. I didn't decide to not write it, I was just feeling like other things were more important to get to first. But this morning was a monkey kind of morning, so here we are. For those of you who weren't paying attention, I'm writing a children's book with the chapters themed around the Chinese zodiac, and I'm musing about writing children's books in general and this one in specific as I finish each chapter, sparked by the Chinese Cultural Center pages for the different signs.

The Chinese Cultural Center page says, People born in the Year of the Monkey are the erratic geniuses of the cycle. Clever, skillful, and flexible, they are remarkably inventive and original and can solve the most difficult problems with ease. There are few fields in which Monkey people wouldn't be successful but they have a disconcerting habit of being too agreeable. They want to do things now, and if they cannot get started immediately, they become discouraged and sometimes leave their projects. Although good at making decisions, they tend to look down on others. Having common sense, Monkey people have a deep desire for knowledge and have excellent memories.

This book is kind of a monkey-book that way: it's too agreeable. I know, I know, we're not supposed to say that about books, but the hard part has been finding chewy bits to be hard parts, rather than anything more typical of book-writing. And as a children's book, it'll be short -- so by the time I would have reached a real mid-book doldrum, I'll be done. Except -- except that I'm wrestling with keeping the whole thing from being mid-book doldrum, because it feels like it's a bit pat and a bit gimmicky, and I'm having to poke it pretty hard to get it to stop.

It's not that no successful children's book has ever been gimmicky -- far from it. The ones I'm thinking of right now are Encyclopedia Brown. Amazon seems to think they're still selling them, but I'm having a hard time thinking of anyone who would want to reread Encyclopedia Brown books as an adult (speak up if I'm wrong!). Each episode is short and, if I recall correctly, features a gimmicky solution in the end of the book. I don't think I'd be happy writing Encyclopedia Brown-type books more than once or twice, and that only as a challenge.

Then I think about the book I'm reading right now: Garth Nix's Lady Friday. I love this series. It's got a central gimmick -- each of the entities the main character is dealing with is associated with a day of the week -- but while it remains "clever, skillful, and flexible," the heart is still there.

Oddly, I think the heart went back into this book with the monkey chapter. So...yay, maybe?

List mumblery

Have been doing getting-ready-to-travel things and life-maintenance things and dog-soothing things and so on. The dog is convinced that there is Something Up. She has been trying to sit directly on me whenever possible, including when I'm at the computer. It is hard to type with a dog pressing her head down on my wrist as hard as she can manage. I don't care that she's small, she's determined!

She also, poor bop, has an ear infection. I'm really glad we have a good groomer who could spot it right away and have the vet swab it right away and have everything go as smoothly as possible...but the dog needs to stop getting sick, is the long and short of this one.

It is finally, finally, finally supposed to snow here...starting tomorrow afternoon and ending Sunday evening. So yes: neatly straddling the time when we're supposed to be flying out. Sigh. This state is like your very own perpetual toddler: you love it, but some days....

I need to rethink my list for the week after our return, I think: one of the reasons I have lists on a weekly basis is to tell me what I don't have to try to get done in a week, because it can wait for next week. It's okay if one or two things carry over from week to week, but if there are five to ten things getting transferred over every single week for months on end, that's a sign that I'm not using the list the way I want to, and I should shift that somehow. If it's okay for these things not to get done in a given week, maybe I should be spreading out how I write down that I want them done in the first place. Some of this has gotten better this week in particular because a lot of longer-term pieces got finished all at once, so I could remove those from the list rather than sighing and moving them to the next list.

Maybe there would be fewer to move to the next list in the first place if there were fewer on the first list, if it wasn't "ack, look at the list of things I'd like to get done this week" but rather "ah, here's something I'd like to get done this week." And with stuff like that, I can always "work ahead." (Some list items do not permit for working ahead. "Call grandparents," for example, is something I want to remember to do every single week. If I do it three times this week -- which I did -- that doesn't mean it's fine to blow them off for a whole fortnight after that. So it doesn't get crossed off the list in advance. They're my grandparents. That's not how my priorities go.)

It occurs to me that I don't really have a list for while we're gone. I mean, I have the beginnings of a schedule, and with it some intentions. (Anyone who hopes to see me in the Bay Area: please contact me if you don't have my cell phone number. It will be a better contact mode than e-mail for anything time-sensitive.) I'm bringing stuff to work on, but I don't have a particular set of goals in mind for the week -- no X thousand words, no finishing Y, no Z chapters of Q. I'm not even bringing things that count as research reading in the near-term. What is this called? Is this what is known as "vacation"? Is this what they call "realistic expectation" and "relaxation"? How very eccentric.