Sara Zarr,

I am talking to you when I say there are some writers who make me wonder if I will ever write anything that feels that perfectly real and true.

I finished Sweethearts this morning and cried and thought about how somehow it felt like this book, when I opened it, had turned out to have my own heart, still beating, wrapped up inside. It's not that I had similar experiences to Jenna's specifically, only that I felt like she was me, like her skin was just a mask over mine.

It also made me think to myself how funny it is that the books that are about transformation, discovering yourself, about true love, difficult decisions, finding the right path, negotiating social networks--are about young adults. Jenna is a teenager, sure, but if you think that because you're 30 something or 40 something or 50 something you aren't going to have your life turned upside and how to rethink everything and come back to yourself, well, you don't live in the world I do.

I found out yesterday that I sold my first profession short story, "Pi," about a mathematician who gets his power from reciting digits of pi, and from perfect circles he makes. This was a great experience for me because I have believed for so long that I was only a novel writer, after literally a hundred rejection letters for short stories I wrote in the early years of my career.

But this story, I just sat down and let it flow out. I didn't have a plan for it. It just sort of created itself out of my head. I'm not saying I didn't do revision. I did. I revised it myself over a few days, then sent it off and the editor sent back some revision thoughts, and I looked at it again and fixed it the way I wanted it to be fixed, then sent it back. The necessary revision wasn't a simple, do this kind of thing. It was rather subtle, but somehow I figured it out and got it sold.

I feel much more confident about myself as a professional and as a storyteller. There is something great about the speed of response in short story sales that I like. I mean, a novel is a huge project and a wonderful thing and there is nothing quite like seeing a hardcover with a beautiful picture on the front and your name on it. But what short story lacks in flash, it makes up in automatic feedback. You can tell immediately if what you're doing is working--or not.

I recommend it highly to authors who need a break from novel writing, and who want to stretch themselves with a new form. Also, readers, look at short stories. Sometimes you get the same emotional hit from a short story as from a novel, and the same sense of wonder and world building, too. I've been enjoying reading short stories more lately, and I regret that I neglected them for so long. The market is struggling, so go buy an anthology or a magazine today!

By the way, I sold this to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, an online zine and it should be out in Fall or Winter of this year.

Thanks to everyone who came to the huge mass signing at the Orem Barnes and Noble. Quinn and Lauren, it was good to meet you and put faces with your voices here. A few aspiring authors came, some from Orson Scott Card's tremendous Boot Camp experiences.

The only sour part of the day was that two of the authors who had come to participate either had not been included in the sales team's list of authors or had no books available at the store. Both of these mistakes were avoidable, had better communication taken place. Even if the store couldn't get books, they should at least have told the author of their problem and offered to reimburse him if he brought his own books. Or something!

At least two people noted that they had never seen me in a skirt before, and that I looked good in one. Perhaps I should dress up a little more often!

This is a common phrase bandied about by authors, at least in part to protect themselves from the people around them shoving ideas at them and asking them to share profits on the published manuscript which the author now writes. It's also a way of defusing the tension over the oft-asked question "Where do ideas come from?" The truth is that authors don't know where ideas come from. Or, at least, they don't know why some ideas matter to them enough to write a book about them and others don't at all.

I think ideas matter a lot. There are some books that just don't have any ideas in them. Or if they do, they are so hidden under cliche that they don't matter. I get bored with these books.

On the other hand, I've read entire books that were not written in what seemed to me the best style, simply because the idea was so captivating. I had to find out what happened. The whole plot of a book or even a series can be based on a single idea brought to conclusion. I wonder sometimes if the idea popped into the author's head full-grown or if he wrote ten different drafts before he crystalized it into the perfect idea. But once that idea is set, the whole book revolves around it. It almost writes itself.

Of course, my favorite books have an incredible idea and then twine characters around that idea until the two are inextricable, there is great plotting, a great new world and magic (or science) set up around it.

So, ideas matter. The best ideas are incredibly valuable. But they can be improved on. And even the perfect idea still has to be made into a book, by someone who knows how to do it. A perfect idea, however, is actually pretty hard to find.

OK, for about a year now I have been debating in my head about the wisdom of reading reviews. At a retreat I was at last year, a bunch of writers said they no longer read reviews and had no "Google Alerts" sending email to them about on-line reviews. They said it only made them crazy, that they made too much of the good reviews and too much of the bad ones, too.

At the time, I thought that I did a good job of discounting most of the good reviews and most of the bad reviews, and that there was something to be learned in reading reader responses. I think I may have changed my mind on this, though. The reason is a simple one: that book is finished. As a writer, you spend years writing each book, from the first stage of it budding inside you, to the final galleys when you still pour over every word, and try to get it all exactly right.

And then the reviews come. But if, as I said recently, each book is its own book, what can you learn from criticism of the last book? You learn that you weren't perfect. That you could have spent another five years making the book better. That you have certain characteristics that come out in your writing and that some people are annoyed by them and others love them, just like when you meet someone, you don't know if they will like you or not.

Do you learn what mistakes not to make in your next book? I don't know. That is the kicker. I think I am leaning towards the thought that you don't, that you just become more anxious about things that don't have anything to do with this book, and make it the best it can be in the amount of time allotted for this book. See, the thing is, a working writer doesn't have time to make a book perfect. You've got a deadline and you need to meet it.

I remember in college that one of the professors I knew had the gall to say that the best thing Shakespeare could have done was write fewer plays. Well, guess what? Shakespeare had to eat, and so do I. It's the real world. Not every thing you write is going to be just the right book for everyone who reads it. Will it be the best possible? I think that is the thing I need to focus on, not on a reader who says that my character was a "wuss" and that I didn't have enough "action scenes" in my book. I know my book better than anyone, so why am I listening to those other voices?

I recently read a book where the phrase "with X and I" was used over and over again. I guess I am just a Grammar General about this, but it annoyed me to no end. I kept thinking, where it the copy editor here? (Because I know that lots of authors make grammar mistakes and that is no big deal to me). But then I wondered if the author had stetted the copy editor's corrections, and then it would be the author's mistake. Not only a mistake of ignorance, but of arrogance.

To be technical, this is a hyper correction mistake, where someone is trying to sound correct by putting "I" instead of "me" in every position, even when it should be "me" because it is the object of the preposition "with."

And then I tell myself to calm down. I am truly more of a descriptivist than a prescriptivist when it comes to grammar and often enjoy listening to the "bad grammar" of people around me because it is interesting to hear the differences of what works in a particular setting, but not in another.

Also, it is not as if I make no grammar mistakes. I just don't make that particular one, unless I let a character make it on purpose. But it was a good lesson, nonetheless. What it taught me was that sometimes a reader can get kicked out of the enjoyment of a story based on some trivial thing that really shouldn't matter. And some of those readers are critics who then rip a book because they didn't enjoy it, when 99% of the population would.

My husband asked me last week if I thought I am a better writer now than I was five years ago. In some ways, it's obvious to me that I am. I understand the business of publishing better and this makes it so that I see problems in my writing immediately, editorially or conceputally. I am more objective about my own writing than I once was. I let myself hit my head against the wall when necessary to get to the next place, instead of giving up for now and hoping to get back to the right answer later.

But in other ways, I wonder if I am better. I think that the very things that make me a better writer may also make me worse. I am more likely to cut and to tell myself that something isn't "marketable" than I was before. I have the editor sitting on my shoulder kibutzing almost constantly, instead of enjoying the process of writing so much that I didn't care what the product was. I think the patience is good, though.

And the problem is, every book you write is its own book. Did writing the other books you wrote make you better at this one you're working on now? I don't know. There is a kind of courage required in embarking on a new book that I don't know how to describe to non-writers. To believe that you can write this book, no matter how much success you had with that one--I think you just have to need to write the new book enough to get over it, for whatever reason.

It's a tricky thing with children, too, actually. A lot of the same good parenting skills will work on a lot of kids. But each child is different, too, and needs entirely different skills. But what if you don't have them? What if you can't see how to help a particular child? Somehow you have to get them. Invent them, mostly. And get it wrong a lot. And be willing to get it wrong.

I struggled this morning a bit in my duathlon. Without the swim, I tend to get hot and more tense physically and also am not in the front of the pack because I come from a swimming background and it is so easy for me, which leaves me plenty of energy for the other events. I wanted to beat last year's time at this race, but I didn't. I took 3rd in my age group, though, and last year didn't place. That's because you don't control the other people who enter a race. You can only control your own performance, and even that is limited.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed it. From first pedal stroke to the kick to the finish line, I felt a blissful peacefulness that I almost always get from racing. It is why I am tempted to race too often, and also why I do not taper or take time off as much as I should. Racing is the best, but other exercise will do the same thing for me. I don't think about other things. I don't wonder how the kids are doing, or if my career is stalling, or if my friend is mad at me about the last time we talked. I don't think, really, at all. Or if I do, it is a different kind of thinking.

I focus on this moment, and on the one coming up. I think about getting to that rise over there, and on how my legs feel right now, if I can push harder or if I am at maximum. I feel how fast I am breathing and how the wind feels in my face, or how badly I need to blow my nose and if there is someone behind me who is going to get covered in snot if I do. I feel how the pavement strikes my feet, and I listen to the sound of the person who is breathing behind me. Sometimes I know they will pass me, but they are going too hard and I will pass them back. Other times, there is no chance. There is the sound of Zipp wheels going by, and today, there was the sight of a Buffalo coming within about five feet of the racer ahead of me, then stopping and turning back.

No, I don't take it easy and enjoy the sights much. I was racing on Antelope Island, which is right in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. It stinks, and I noticed that when I first arrived, but I stopped even noticing it within a few minutes. There were few cars and a long line of white on the right side of the road. One hill and then another. The beat of my heart as it slowed and quickened. The man ahead of me who I could just barely pass, and then would pass me again, when we went by the official who was counting if it took more than 15 seconds or not.

Is this what people mean when they say that they are in "the Zone?" If so, it is a place that is very small, but clean. It is safe and empty of anyone but me. Quiet in a way that is not marred by passing sounds. Beautiful, but not because of the scenery without. It is the intensity of what goes on within that I love. It is not a time for reflection and decision. And sometimes I admit that I do simple math, counting steps to one hundred, or re-calculating my speed based on the mile markers I have passed. But I like it.

A friend asked me if what I liked best about racing was being finished. No, definitely not. When I am finished, "the Zone" fades and real life returns. I have to think about getting home and filling the car with gas and making sure I eat enough to finish the rest of the day's activities. I don't know if I feel more pain afterwards than before, but it is only the pain I feel when I am finished. And so I know that this race was a success, whether I bettered my time or not. I spent two hours either not myself or most fully myself. Maybe both.

My husband once swam 100 yards without taking a breath. He was in high school, and this was part of a challenge. He always had an incredible lung capacity, and I think he was pretty sure he was going to win. The thing he didn't know was that the next closest person would be able to swim about 60 yards without breathing.

I've never heard of anyone else doing this, but perhaps it isn't a world record. In any case, it is very cool. The thing is, lots of people just dive and hold their breath for a long time, but try continuing to swim while holding your breath. It's tricky. I can't even swim 25 yards without breathing. I could do maybe 10 strokes.

So, a cheer for Matt--Yay!

My oldest daughter (14) has been helping read my WIP and giving me comments. Last night, she even gave me a couple of pages fully edited, with lines circled, a bunch crossed out, and a couple added in or with comments and question marks. I swear, it looked just like pages I got from my actual editor.

And then she told me things like, "it feels like you put that chapter in because you were trying to stick your two versions together. It doesn't really make sense there anymore." Is that intelligent or what? And also, "if you want people to care about the danger in the climax, you need to show better how those two characters are so close. Right now they don't feel very connected."

I asked her this morning what she thought of the ending. She tilted her head and said, "Hmm, what was the ending again?" I reminded her. She said, "That's kind of lame." Yeah, well working on it. Asked how she thought about it over all, if it was better than the last version, she said, "Well, it's on a better curve, but it's still at the beginning." I definitely need to pay her.

Small Favor by Jim Butcher
Year’s Best Fantasy 7 edited by David Hartwell
Breath and Bone by Carol Berg
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
Predators, Prey and other Kinfolk: Growing up in Polygamy by Dorothy Allred Solomon
Renegade’s Magic by Robin Hobb
A Castle of Air by Diana Wynne Jones
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
IGMS #8
The Sharing Knife Vol. 3: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Curse of Addy McMahon by Katie Davis
Double Fudge by Judy Blume
Ender’s Game (again) by Orson Scott Card

I have had several experiences in the last year with authors telling either me or wannabes that the way to get published is to "know someone." I hate this advice. Hate it, hate it, hate it. And I also hate that there is some truth in it. (One author pointed out that a week before she went to a conference with the editor who bought her manuscript, she received a rejection letter from that same editor's assistant!)

I wish that the world were a place where editors and agents had time and energy enough to sift through the slush pile with clear heads and find the best books there. I wish that readers bought books solely on the basis of their quality, and not on the basis of a tie-in or a celebrity name or a blurb by an author that they like. I wish that booksellers had time to read the books they are ordering for their stores, and that they were book lovers, too. I wish that bookstores did not have their own line of books that they were trying to sell, with no royalties to the author, if there is one even listed. I wish that editors didn't have to be able to describe a book in ten words or less and make sure it had a "big concept" in it, and that they didn't have to bring an explanation of how many books they think you will sell. I wish that most authors could earn a living at doing this business, without having to supplement with school visits and workshops.

This makes me naive, I'm afraid. Does it make me a better writer? I have a fantasy that it does. How many people will notice? I suppose that is still to be seen.

When I was a junior in high school, one of the girls I knew was a passionate debater who campaigned daily in our high school on the subject of apartheid. Midway through the year, she announced to one and all that she was doing her "part" for the cause by refusing to shave her legs until apartheid was abolished. This was a great sacrifice for her, I think, and she would sometimes self-consciously pull her jeans back down over her fuzzy blonde hairs. Everyone admired her for her devotion to her cause, even if there were a few comments about hos gross her legs were (sympathetic ones).

A couple months passed and it was getting close to the time for Junior Prom. I was never much into shaving my legs, despite the fact that I was on the swim team, and I, for some reason I still do not understand, one day announced to one of my classes that I, too, was not shaving my legs for a cause. Only my cause was getting a date to the prom. If someone wanted me to shave my ugly, hairy legs, they would have to ask me out. I don't think I actually thought this would work (although maybe I hoped it would--I think I believed someone would ask me out of pity and that would turn out so well!). It didn't.

Needless to say, I stayed home the night of Prom, looking forlornly at my green velvet dress which my sister had hand-made for me as my Christmas present that year. All my friends went. Yes, all of them. Even my friend who had skipped a grade and wasn't yet sixteen (the age to which most Mormons are supposed to wait to date). It was a miserable night. I spent it shaving my legs.

I had a race this weekend and managed to meet my goal time, despite the fact that they added a minute to the run by changing the transition area. I took third place overall, only the second time I've placed overall in a race, and I got a cash prize. Not much, but I figure this definitely means I am a professional! Ha!

For those interested in the nitty, gritty details, I did the run (a little over 5k) in 23:30 (#5 among the women), the bike (about 10 miles) in 29:06 (and was #1 among women for that leg of the race) and the swim (350 meters) took me 5:30 (to make me #4 on that part of the race). I was on the 5th of 7 laps when a woman came up from behind me and blew past me. I'd been a full minute ahead of her when I hit the pool, but she was just too fast. There was no way I could keep up. She's done this to me in several races now. I guess I have to get a bigger lead.

I've done this same race 4 times now, and keep shaving another 2 minutes off my time. It's interesting how this works. This time I purposely went a bit slower on the run and was 90 seconds faster on the bike and 30 seconds faster on the swim, plus I picked up a little time in transition. The two women who beat me were age 22 and age 27, so it looks like I'm not getting too old yet!

When I got home I found my husband disappointed and in pain after his race. It was a good reminder that like in all parts of life, there are good days and there are bad days, and we cannot always control which happen when. You gather information and try to avoid too much stress, and too little, but you never know enough. I wish I could tell him what he'd done wrong, but I couldn't see anything really.

I got a rejection letter in the mail last week. The funny thing is, I was actually happy to see it. It has been a long time since I got a rejection letter, since my agent has handled submissions for novels for eight years. This was a rejection for a short story, but it came in a timely manner, only 28 days from when I sent the story off, and it was not a form letter, but signed by the actual, official editor of the magazine with a request for another story if I had one.

I know now, as I did not understand eight years ago, that ninety-nine percent of the submissions are returned with form letter rejections and that any nice comments are very rare. So, yeah, the story didn't sell. It's called "Blonde Brain For Rent, Cheap," and it's an attempt to be humorous, which I have been working at including in my writing. I'm not exactly Mrs. Saturday Night Live in real life, but I have a few humorous moments, which I don't know if readers of my rather dark books understand. Working on that.

When I was a freshman and on a swim team for the first time, we were coached by an attractive unmarried guy who used to regale us with tales of him beating Olympic swimmers in matches from his college days. I had a bit of a crush on him, I admit it! So when it came time to order our suits, and he asked us to write down our sizes, I had no idea what to do. I could see what the choices were: 30, 32, 34, 36. But for some reason, I could not figure out what my size would be and I was too embarrassed to ask any of the other, more experienced girls for help. So I glanced over at one of the senior girls to see what she wrote down, which was 38, and I just wrote down the same thing. I figured it couldn't be too far off, right?

The next day, Mark, the coach of the crush, tapped me on the shoulder after practice and handed me my form back. He said he'd looked at the size I wrote down and was pretty sure I wasn't that big, so he'd written in what he thought I would wear. He wanted to know if I thought that was right. What did I know? Blushing furiously, I handed it back to him. When the suits came, though, he had gotten me the right size. I was, indeed, only a 32.

People say all the time that teenagers think they will live forever. I guess they mean that teenagers do dangerous, risky, stupid things all the time. But when I think back on my own teenage years, I think that I really had no idea how long life could really be. It's not that I thought about death all the time, or that I thought that after thirty, there would be nothing interesting going on in my life. It was that I could not imagine what interesting things there might be. I was limited in my capacity to envision the future. I knew that I wouldn't go on being young and beautiful and fit forever. But I didn't know what would come after. I could see adults all around me and I could not imagine how it was that I would grow into--that.

In some ways, I haven't. I've refused to. But in other ways, it happens. And I now understand the transformation a little better. I see how you live through the passage. I'm not saying I enjoyed it much. But it came and I survived it and came out on the other end. All those embarrassing moments, which at the time, seemed like they would have to be fatal, that no one would ever survive such humiliation, or that if they did, they would never live it down, turned out to be small in the overall scope of things. They turned out to be "not-so-bad," all things considered. Scary, that I could look back on them and laugh, that I could reach a point where that stuff doesn't matter anymore.

Scary for the teenage me. Good for the old/new me.

It is so strange to have that young person nestled inside the skin of the other person, who sees fifty years stretching out into the future and can encompass that much time, can see how much will get done, how much will not get done, and how many obstacles may be in the way. Who can see that today's humiliations will someday also be nothing, even if that thought makes them hurt even worse this moment, because I am not big enough yet to put them away.

There are three kinds of professional jealousy that I deal with on a regular basis.

#1 They don't deserve that!
This is what I feel when someone writes a book I think isn't that great, and it wins awards, or sells a million copies. I usually alleviate the pain by reminding myself that the author must have done something right, and if I can figure out what it is, I can use it in my books and get all those readers to make me rich. Or sometimes there are just flukes and that writer was the lottery winner. Shrug. I can live with that.

#2 I can't believe how incredible this book is!
This is when I read a book I think is great, completely different from anything I would ever write, and wins awards and sells a million copies. There's a little jealousy because I wish it would happen to me, but it's not as intense because it's not my field, not my shtick. To make myself feel better, I tell myself that it will happen to me someday and I'm all right with that.

#3 That was my book!
This is what happens when you read that book you might have written and everyone else is reading it, too. It is the perfect book, with deep themes, characters with flaws and great hearts, a twisty plot, and rules of magic that are ingeniously true to life. A book that takes its time, but not too long, and that leaves me wanting more at the end. But also wondering if there's hope for my writing, because I can't do this. I may never be able to do this.

Is it enough for me to do what I can do, even if it's never as good as that? That's the question that haunts me on rare occasions. Rare because I don't come across a book like that except maybe once in ten years.

Maybe the best to hope for is that the writer is actually a very nasty person in real life.

When I was a new parent, I was very into "natural consequences" for children. One of my daughters was about eighteen months old. She was a (delightfully) stubborn and opinionated child. She started telling me what clothes she wanted to wear when she was about nine months old, about the same time she gave up breastfeeding cold turkey. At about five months old, when I tried to start feeding her oatmeal, I discovered her mouth only opened if she put her own fingers in. She could not use a spoon, of course, so for about six months, I lived with her feeding herself oatmeal with her fingers, and just spraying off her and the area around her.

So, another problem I had with this daughter was that she sometimes did not like to wear clothes. She would put something on, then take it off again ten minutes later, run through the house naked, laughing, and then put on something else. By the end of every day, there were piles of clothes on the floor and she still only spent half the day clothed.

One day, we had to take her over to the grandparents for a family event and I asked her several times to get dressed. She giggled and hid. What I should have done was grabbed her, held her down, and forced clothes on her, then strapped her into the car before she could take them off. What I did do was decide that since it was winter out, this would be a good opportunity for her to learn the natural consequences of not doing as your mother asked.

We let her walk out to the car stark naked. We buckled her in, drove to the grandparents, and stayed for some two hours while she ran around enjoying a lot of attention. Grandpa took a picture of her which the next year ended up as an 8x10 on the family calendar. I was mortified, not that she was naked so much as the evidence that he had of my obviously bad parenting skills. Of course, now I have that photo, I can use it to embarrass her. He, he, he.

So yesterday I got a magazine in the mail and in it was a small article on guess who? Mr. embarrassing moment #6. I know that I am evil because I looked at him and thought that my husband has aged much better. This is petty and really has nothing to do with him, I am sure, but only me. And yet, it still feels good.

Also, I am pretty sure that I could beat him in a triathlon. Probably a running race, too. Definitely in the pool.