On writing

Last week I was listening to NPR on the way to the grocery store and they were talking about the subject of writing. There were two quotes that have stuck with me all week.

“I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.” - James Michener

and

"Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days." - Paul Auster

They both seemed quite true and particularly relevant as I chug slowly uphill, knee deep in revisions...

Naked at the Golf Course - A Naughty Fad Hits the Fairways

Remember planking?

About a year ago it was quite the fad.  For several months you couldn't go anywhere on the internet without running into the image of someone's rigid body, face down arms with arms their sides, in an incongruous location.  The craze was completely global, and for a while people were planking everywhere, from the Pyramids of Egypt to the floor of the NY public library. The more dexterous among them could be found perilously positioned in overhead luggage bins, on top of towering billboards and high in the branches of trees.  Golf courses presented creative plankers with numerous options, as well. 

However like most internet memes, planking's popularity was short lived, and after spawning some interesting off-shoots, ( teapotting - owling - Tebowing) it's settled into internet oblivion where it will languish while other fads step up to enjoy their fifteen minutes. So along comes... Dogging.

In fact, dogging's been around for quite a while, but it now seems poised to reach planking-like levels of popularity.  With dogging, the supposedly staid and solicitous Brits have taken things to a naughty new level, and they've got one golf course doing some emergency reputation management.

Dogging... in a nutshell... is a variation on planking that incorporates sex, nudity and some very social networking.  Also included are elements of swinging and voyeurism... all in the great outdoors.  As with planking, the object is to produce a photograph... or video... that will ultimately be posted to the internet.  But an effective "dogging post" must illustrate a sexual situation, either with nudity or with something a bit more graphic blatantly pornographic. Unlike planking no particular body position is required, though, not surprisingly, some degree of rigidity is often featured in dogging posts.

Once practiced almost exclusively in cars at rural parks, or on isolated lover's lanes, dogging has transcended those cloistered confines and is now taking place in public parks, suburban parking lots, on village lanes... and on golf courses.  Till now, most of the "golf dogging" was done on anonymous fairways or in ubiquitous pot bunkers, but last week Lincoln Golf Center in Thorpe-on-the-Hill, found itself in a rather embrassing position when a curvaceous female dogger boldly flaunted her assets in front of their facility's sign... and then posted photographic proof on her "dogging profile page".  Not to be outdone, several of her fellow doggers made a beeline for the golf center and posted similar shots. Now the family-friendly course is scrambling to "clean things up".  Hopefully legitimate patrons will understand the situation and continue to patronize the center.  Meanwhile, with evidence that dogging is finding its way to the US,  course owners here may want to stay alert to avoid their own dodgy dogging dilemmas.

By the way, in case you're wondering how this fad came to be known as dogging (I certainly was), it seems "walking the dog" was often used with unsuspecting spouses as pretext for clandestine encounters that resulted in cyber-exhibitionism.  As the practice became more popular it came to be known as dogging... and the rest, as they say, is history.

CBC Diversity

For the past year or so, I've been meeting about once a month with a group of children's book editors from other houses. Founded by Nancy Mercado of Roaring Brook, we called ourselves DIBS (Diversity in Books), and we were hoping to help increase the diversity within the publishing industry, and also in the authors, illustrators, and books published. We started getting a website together and grand plans of doing school visits, job fairs, conferences, and more. But, of course, we were all so busy with our jobs and lives that it was hard to get things going. Well, a conversation at a Children's Book Council cocktail party brought these two groups together, and the CBC Diversity Committee was formed. We had a small kick-off party last week for agents, media, and publishing folks, and we talked about our mission, the importance of it, and what everyone there could do to become a CBC Diversity Partner. Here's a picture of me speaking:

I talked about not being able to fully see myself in the books I was reading as a child.

Diversity is a mission I am absolutely passionate about--it's important not only for children to be able to see themselves represented in the books they read, but also important for children to be exposed to other experiences and viewpoints. It increases empathy and tolerance. And as I said at our kick-off, I hope to live in a world where we can have an Asian Harry Potter or a black Bella without anyone even blinking an eye. We'll get there, I know it!

Please, won't you all join us? I linked above to our mission and how we can all help, and we'll be keeping the CBC Diversity blog active with at least two posts each week. I'm posting this week, so stay tuned!