This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

It's birthday week on the blog :o). This week I turn 42 (!!), and in case you're wondering, yes, I'm still writing my books out by hand. Today I inaugurated Notebook 28!


There's a blog post I want to write, about what happens when your life choices — or maybe it would be more fair to say, things in life you didn't choose — get in the way of your writing. About five years ago, I made a decision: I decided to prioritize my own mental health, and my own personal healing from something that happened LONG ago, in a way I never had before. I'm not going to get into my long-ago story here. I write fiction and I write musings; I do not write memoir, and feel no calling to it. What matters for the sake of this blog post is that the moment I decided to prioritize my own mental health and healing… my capacity to focus on writing decreased by about 50%.

Maybe another way to put this is that writing became twice as hard. Writing is always horrendously hard, so twice as hard…

Lateish last night, in the middle of the sixth revision of what will be my fourth published book, I inaugurated Notebook 24.

It's been a long journey to the middle of the sixth revision of my fourth book. First I needed to write all the other books, and revise them, and write this one, and revise it five times. After I revise it for the sixth time, I will probably revise it for the seventh time.

Confession: I'm tired and cranky.
BUT,
 I'm not the only one who was working hard in my office yesterday.
See the lily? (The tall, skinny one in the middle?)

Look what it had done by the end of the day.

How the heck did it do that? I don't know. But I'm guessing it started a long time ago.
Keep trying.

To make up for my recent lack of posting -- and to celebrate Bitterblue being named a New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2012 -- this post will be about something :).

Disclaimer: All the photos in this post are of my own work and are owned by me. If you use them for any purpose, please identify them and attribute them to me. Do not change them in any way or use them commercially.

What follows is essentially my tour presentation for Bitterblue... it is the story of how the book was written. Here goes.

As you probably know if you've spent much time on my blog, I write by hand.


Above is the first page of the first draft of Bitterblue. Note that the date is October 25, 2007. Also note -- if you've read Bitterblue -- that this is not how the final book begins. And also that not a whole lot from this page made it into the final draft. What you see above is fairly typical: I write, I scratch out a word here and there, I scratch out a line, I change things; th…

A friend recently told me that she can't bear the flying trapeze pictures on my blog, and was even starting to wonder if she was going to have to stop reading my blog because I kept springing trapeze stuff on her. You know, here I've been, completely oblivious in my love of jumping off things, not even realizing that I could be causing problems for my readers who are afraid of heights. I really am sorry! From now on, any trapezey posts will start with a warning of trapezey things ahead.

This post is NOT about the trapeze.... this post is about... I'm not sure, exactly. There's a lot going on these days, and I've been feeling ruminative. (Not to be confused with feeling ruminant.)


There were a lot of cows where I grew up. My favorite thing was walking past them while they stared at me intelligently, unmoving, with grass hanging out of their mouths. Every once in a while, one would move, and you would feel as if you'd been let in on some rare secret cow under…

Before I get to the FAQ, I like my friend Sam's short Tuesday post about climate change, blame, and responsibility. I also like this xkcd (though this one is still my favorite). AND I like watching those ladies luge. Have you been watching the ladies luge? The speed they achieve defies belief! And how about those snowboarders? Plus, figure skating! Tune in tonight to watch Stéphane Lambiel spin. ♥

I like this short opinion piece about gender politics and the Olympics: After Atalanta on alterations to the men's and women's luge tracks following the death of Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili. (H/t, J.)

This is a Visa commercial and it makes me cry and I'm not ashamed of that. BTW, the person at Visa who decided to hire Morgan Freeman to narrate the ads? I hope you got a raise. (Watch the Derek Redmond one, too, and click on some of the others! Love the Kerri Strug one, too.)

******
You post about music a lot, so I know it's important to you. Do you listen …

(from Simon & Garfunkel's "Leaves That Are Green")

Goodbye to my darling Super Conquerant 80-sheet hardback spiral notebook made in Spain by Enri. For years, we've had something special, you and I... but now my trusty neighborhood stationer, Bob Slate, tells me that you've been discontinued, probably by the importer. Alas! No more will I fold you over my knee and cover you with a thousand sweet scribbles. No more will you travel with me everywhere I go, simply because I cannot bear to let you out of my sight. No more... *sniff*... will I tuck you in to sleep at night in the fireproof, waterproof safe! Oh, my darling! *weeps; rends clothing*

*.....*

So, I'm not so precious about my writing process that I'm going to try to figure out how to get my exact brand of notebook from Europe. Actually, I'm slightly that precious, but it'd be a lot healthier to just accept that the notebook is no longer available, don't you think? So this means …

Dear Faithful Readers,
How are you?
I am fine.


Did you know that I write my books longhand?

Did you know that sometimes when people say they are fine, what they mean is that they feel like they're being beaten with a baseball bat?

Fondly yours, Grumpy McGrumpypants