In the world of self-imposed deadlines, I assigned one chapter to be written during December. Seems reasonable, right? I’m already behind, and it’s only the 3rd.

Min says that he has time off soon, and that will help. But I’m thinking… family members are wonderful in oh-so-many ways, but they are the black holes of writing time.

You know that feeling when you’ve just stubbed your toe and it doesn’t hurt yet, but you’ve already clenched your abs and pulled your foot into the air because you know that the nerves have fired and, any nanosecond now, the pain is going to explode in your brain?

If you could slow that down by, oh, a trillion times or so, it would be the exact feeling between submitting a piece and receiving the rejection.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much I hated young adult books when I was a young adult. It always bothered me that there were anorexia-focussed books and boyfriend-focussed books and teen pregnancy-focussed books but none that captured the reality of being a teen.

Reality, as in, one friend has anorexia and another is getting beaten up by her no-good boyfriend and another’s boyfriend is drunk all the time and another friend thinks she’s pregnant but then the waitress she knows gets her a pregnancy test and it turns out she’s not, and the two guys on steroids are fighting at the house party while another friend gets thrown through the window and someone slipped acid in another friend’s drink and now she thinks the tree roots are attacking her and you have somehow managed to get yourself stranded at the gravel pits with only a girl you vaguely know and her drunk boyfriend who offers you a ride home and that doesn’t seem like the best option and your dad did give that speech about how you can always call, no questions asked, but there’s a distinct lack of phones at the gravel pit so you may as well take the ride, but get dropped off at a different friend’s house instead of your own house and then get to watch her throw up in her kitchen sink.

That’s the kind of book I pledged I would write. One that really reflected small-town teen life.

The problem: it’s impossible. You can’t fit even a single day of teen angst into a young adult novel. The readers would all end up as confused and lost as they were at 15 in real life.

Still, I feel as if I’m betraying my young adult self by not making the attempt…

I finished Having Faith in the Polar Girls’ Prison this weekend, fully in love with the main character. It was much less heartbreaking than I feared. One of those books that ends too soon, and you wind up reading the acknowledgements, the author bio, and the illustration credit on the back flap, just because you can’t quite bear to put the book down yet. (Does that happen to anyone other than me?)

During my neurotic aprés-read, I came across the following quote From Bill Gaston on the back cover:

“If ever I need a guide on the dark side of the moon, I want it to be Cathleen With.”

Isn’t that a wonderful compliment?

It’s Buy Nothing Day. Thank God I sent Min to buy milk yesterday. And shush, I know my computer is on. But my lights are off, okay? And if you see me at lunch, pretend it’s someone else. Because a girl’s gotta eat. But I’m definitely not buying any Snow White figurines. Definitely.

(Check out Amazero. Funny stuff.)

I’m reading Having Faith in the Polar Girls Prison, which is by Cathleen With, who is a good friend of a good friend of mine. (Hmmm… maybe she’ll write a collection of letters one day and mention me.)

So far, Faith is intriguing and entertaining, but I have this sneaky suspicion that it might prove heartbreaking. I don’t know what makes me think this… except maybe the small issue of the newborn BABY in the PRISON.

Onwards. But if I don’t post tomorrow, it’s because I’m sobbing in a corner somewhere.

Yet another book I won’t be listing on my daughter’s reading olympics form.

I ordered The Elements of Murder from the library, and it’s actually quite fascinating — all stories of poisonous chemicals and the lunatics who used them.

There’s only one strange thing about the book: it’s cover. Doesn’t it look like it’s from 1965? It was published in 2005.

When I first saw it, I thought I must have accidentally ordered something ancient. Dear Oxford University press: there’s a difference between “retro” and “ridiculously old-fashioned.”

But maybe they were marketing to Agatha Christie fans…

November 21, 2009

The Honourable Jim Prentice
Minister of the Environment
Les Terrasses de la Chaudière
10 Wellington Street, 28th Floor
Gatineau, Quebec K1A 0H3

Dear Minister:

I listened to your appearance on CBC’s The Current yesterday, and I was appalled. I am writing to ask that you change your approach to climate change before the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.

You spoke of Canada providing leadership in this area, and I can see that you are right. You appear to be working hard to lead other countries in the wrong direction. It was clear that you were trying to shed our own responsibility to change, and delay deadlines until as late as 2050.

In 2050, I will be 77 years old and my children will be living in a world without polar ice caps. I take a tiny drop of comfort in the fact that I will be able to look at them and say, “I wrote letters to politicians, I went to climate change marches, I grew vegetables in the backyard… it just wasn’t enough and we couldn’t make the governments listen.”

You, on the other hand, will have to look at your daughters and say, “I tried to make the tar sands viable.”

On a purely personal level, I don’t know how you sleep at night. On a political level, I am embarrassed to have your representing Canada in Copenhagen.

I would like to suggest that you change your approach to climate change. In fact, I would like to suggest that you resign your position, and tell Mr. Harper that out of respect for your daughters, and their need to live on this planet long after we are gone, you will not be supporting Canada’s current climate change plan.

Sincerely,

Tanya Kyi

Min: It’s great that the workshop people liked your book.

Me: They only read the first four chapters.

Min: Maybe you should just make it shorter.

Lee Edward Fodi and James McCann (whom you may remember as Carl’s favorite bookseller) have teamed up to create Authors Like Us, a podcast offering everything you ever wanted to know about various children’s authors.

I listed to the first episode at the gym, while pretending to listen to the latest hip band. (I would have put in the name of said “hip band” but am musically illiterate and don’t know of any.) The podcast was highly entertaining. Let’s just say that soon, anybody who’s anybody will be secretly listening to Authors Like Us at the gym.

You know, for cartoon drawings, the likenesses in this logo are shockingly accurate…