Bush Foundation grant

I'm throwing my hat in the ring for the $48,000 Bush Foundation grant. With everyone else in the known world, I'm sure. But I will always say, time and again: Apply for everything and all things, no matter how far out of reach they seem. Something will stick at some point.

Weekly Reader

My Oct. 9 guest, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian/author James McPherson, was recently a guest on the New York Times Book Review podcast. The Weekly Reader leads to good things, ha ha!

Writer's Digest competition

In the mail on Monday I received a certificate for an honorable mention in the annual Writer's Digest competition. I entered "Dad Digs Uncle Davey's Grave" in the memoir/personal essay category. I entered the competition in 2007 but didn't place. This was my second attempt.

That makes four selections from the memoir that have received recognition and/or have been published. Now, I have to finish it!

Thank you, British Medical Journal

The editors at British Medical Journal have dared to point out what too many people are afraid of saying in this global-warming conversation: Fewer kids, smaller carbon footprint. No kids, really small carbon footprint. Thank you.

Read more here.

As I was doing the laundry one day, I was feeling kind of good about myself because I do three, maybe four, loads of laundry a week. In the summer, I try not to run the dryer at all, prefering to let the clothes dry outside. Then I was thinking, how many loads of laundry a week do parents with kids have to do? How many dishwasher loads? How many dirty diapers? I wondered why no one had been talking about this. Then comes the British Medical Journal article. I don't know really what I want to do with this information, since obviously the U.S. isn't going to become China anytime soon. But I like that it's being pointed out. I've made an active, conscious decision for 14 years to not have children, though global warming hasn't factored into the decision. But I like that it's a byproduct.

Great point about authors

Just read this post today (pointed out to me by the fine folks at Brevity).

What goes around, comes around in the world of literature. I guess I've been practicing this karma for years but never knew it.

Research trip

I've recently returned from my research trip to the Bay Area to investigate further the life of Camilla Hall. I'm pleased with the information I came across. I talked to a good friend of Camilla's from the Berkeley days, and I have the names of three others. Tracking them down may be another story, but I have to try.

I'm pretty excited to begin writing. In a way, I don't know where to start. I think I'll just approach it as I approached my memoir in the beginning: write a series of individual chapters and then link them when I think I have everything I need.

But before that, there's a lot more reading to do. I'm always so eager to start writing and I get impatient. Hopefully I can tell myself that it's OK to take a little time with this and complete ALL the research before getting too far into the writing.

I don't have a ton of writing time, anyway. I thought I was going to take the summer off to write! I guess June ended up being fairly free, but not really, as we threw in a quick road trip to Chicago. The week after that I had a Mentorship residency and a weekend in Duluth. Now I'm staring down a deadline for Capstone Press and I need to make a syllabus for the Bethany comp classes and retool the editing class. Aaaargh!

Junior Library Guild

I recently received word that my book for Capstone Press, MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA, will be a Junior Library Guild Premier Selection for the fall.

I got the email when I was busy and just glanced at it. As I'm pretty new to the children's nonfiction world, I didn't really know what the Junior Library Guild was. This morning, I had a little more time to investigate, and I think it's kind of a big deal! A selection committee reviews more than 3,000 books, and 336 make the final cut.

You can find more information about the JLG here.