I’m delighted to be back home in Jakarta. It was an eventful, joy filled holiday season. I relished the time with family and friends. I am ready for some this-is-my-space-my-time-is-my-own-and-I-can-do-whatever-I-want time. (And, frankly, I was sick of every thread in the five+ mix-and-match outfits I had been lugging around for the past month and was perilously close to jettisoning the whole mess and buying new when the truth is more winter clothes are definitely not what I needed to cart back to my muggy close-to-the-equator, fabric eating/molding/decimating cupboards.)

And I am eager to be where I have the time and space to write more than blog postings. Although I am puffed up proud to report that I, Kelly Bennett, kept my 2009 New Year’s resolution to begin a blog and to post at least one blog posting each week. My official posting count as of Dec. 31, 2009: 65 notes: 8 announcements: 4 drafts; some photos (not enough, but I’ll fix that in 2010). I not only met my goal, I surpassed it. Yeah!!!!!

This won’t be a long stay in Jakarta as I return to the states Feb. 1st. I’m presenting at the IRA regional conference in Oklahoma City and spending a few days after in Tulsa with friends (Lexi is meeting me there.) The Bright Sky folks are supposed to be setting up promotional events for my picture book Dance Y’all Dance in the Houston area from the 10-18th, but I haven’t heard a word— so no clue what is happening with that. I’m not going to sweat it; what will be will be. My mom isn’t feeling well, so if worse comes to it, I’ll use that time to go to Reno and visit her. The hardest part about this being a published author biz is this constant pressing feeling that I am supposed to be promoting/visiting schools/organizing all the time–while I enjoy sharing my books, the organizing takes so much time and energy, and even more of both is spent coping with the worry that I am not doing “my part.” Now here is where I lapse into my version of the “in my day we had to walk 7 miles to school” bit: Back in the 80s and early 90s, when I was first published, aside from autographing at stores on occasion, authors were not expected or encouraged to do promotional stuff–because childrens’ book publishers primarily sold to school and library markets–sales reps did the work. The author’s “job” was to write more books. What luxury compared to this market or perish publishing world of today….Enough already.

2011 Resolution:

Be grateful I am physically able to write. Be grateful I am mentally capable of stringing letters into sensical order. Be grateful I have the time and support I need to write. Be grateful others want to read what I write. Be grateful that on some certain days, when the mood is right, the muse is willing, and the stars are just so, I write magic.

Henry David Thoreau wrote: “A man has not everything to do, but something…”

I get so caught up in getting through my to-do lists that sometimes, like today,  I get mad when I catch myself doing nothing. But doing nothing is something.

Years ago, at an SCBWI Conference in Los Angeles, E.L. Konigsburg discussed creativity and how we need negative space—white space, blank space—in our minds, in our lives, in order to allow new ideas to emerge. The only author to win the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year (1968), with her 2^nd and 1^st books respectively: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, and then 27 years later win a second Newbery Medal (The View from Saturday, 1997) Elaine Konigsburg is my hero. She is who I want to be when I grow up: a brilliant, accessible, prolific writer. All this being said, you would think that I would take her advice to heart and embrace the white space, allow myself to make nothing that something—sometimes, anyway.

Occasionally, when I consciously try, I give myself that nothing space…really I do. But often, like today—right now—instead of giving my mind time to empty, and the extra time needed for my imagination to kick up to high gear, and even more time to see where it leads me, I take over and get busy doing something—say writing a blog entry.

Earlier, when I was supposed to be doing nothing, I stumbled upon this passage by Brenda Ueland. I believe Julie Larios shared it at a Vermont College residency:

Long, Happy Dawdling

The imagination needs moodling–long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: “I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget.” But they have no slow, big ideas. And the fewer consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and down stairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.

And so, on this the 31st day of the old year, at the dawning of a new year, 2010, with the hope of allowing for plenty of “moodling” I make this bold and italicized resolution:

The next time I catch myself daydreaming or look back after an afternoon spent…how? and I feel those raging Puritan Ethics Monitors shaking their scabby heads over the wasteful way I spent my day I’m going to set them straight: “Nothing is something! It is what we are supposed to do. ..Elaine said so! ”

I opened with Thoreau, so it feels fitting to close with his blessing. And now, as soon as I post this, I’m going to get busy doing nothing, promise!

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”

Happy Moodling!

Last Saturday, because I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses, I misread a name in a magazine. I though the name was Tru-something. Curtis laughed and corrected me. That was that. I haven’t a clue what the correct name was, who it belonged to, or why I read it. But I recall thinking what a powerful name True was. What it said about a parent who would name his/her child True. And what it would be like to have to grow up with and into that name the way the man in the Johnny Cash “my name is Sue/how do you do/you’re gonna die” song did. I tucked the name in my I’m-going-to-use-that-someday brain file.

Today, this morning, I was milling about, making calls, eating, drinking coffee, printing things, doing everything but pulling up the file with Otter Song to continue revisions, because I really, really didn’t want to work on it anymore. I had reached a place where I was just sick of the whole mess. As far as I was concerned Lena, her mother, the otter and aquarium and the entire coast of California could crack off the way everyone is always threatening it will and I would have cheered. Damn the zillion hours and years I have already put into this story.

Finally, when there was absolutely nothing more I could pretend needed doing beside work, I opened the Otter Song file. Nothing had changed. It didn’t send me. I had absolutely no desire to read on. I didn’t care what Lena wanted or needed. What I really wanted to click the X and do something else–maybe go shopping.

Instead…

I clicked the Find and Replace function and changed the main character’s name–in 492 places! (No, I did not go through them one at a time. Yes, I had been looking for ways to keep from working, but really….not even I am that desperate!)

ZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!  With that click of a button, my main character went from boring to –interesting, exciting, even. It’s as though she has suddenly come into her own. True is so much more now. She has a name to live up to. And I am charged with helping her realize her potential.

A rose by another other name might smell as sweet, but that’s only if it compels one to sniff it.

It is all in a name.