(image courtesy Mile Mathilde)
Ugh. *yAWn* {insert sound of creaking bones here}
The holidays are over and I’m left with glut, bloat, and lingering guilt. Is this what January feels like? It’s been so long since I wrote I don’t know what to do any more, so please forgive me while I rub these sticks together and share some bits of news with you.
The Girl In the Hat just won two shiny new blog awards. Tantara! One from Rastelly, who shares her writing (including her novel-in-progress) and illustrations at her blog and another from Sam Flowers, who blogs about popular culture at Rest and Play. If you haven’t already checked them out, do- they are definitely worth the time (and money) (if only that was how these things worked). Thanks again, dear blog friends (Rastelly, Sam, Ré, Lisa, Kevin, my mom Gail, and Averil), and to everyone who writes and reads and leaves the occasional comment. I hope we all get, if not giant piles of money and attention, at least the notice and appreciation we deserve.
Two of my short stories have been published on Fiction365: Wait and See and Vow of Silence.
Also, my short story titled Down River is included in the winter issue #12 of ElevenEleven, a biannual journal of literature and art produced by the MFA Program in writing at the California College of the Arts. To me, this feels huge.
Plus, if the subject comes up, my husband and daughters tell people I am a writer, and some of my friends and family have read my blog. For me, 2011 felt like the year in which my writing self (aka the Girl in the Hat) began to become visible; not notorious or conspicuous, but at least discernible. I hope 2012 will add some color and definition to her edges.
Recognition is one of the most important things we can give to one another, isn’t it? To be seen is to be real, after all, so raise one last glass with me, if you can: Here’s to seeing and being more in 2012.
What did 2011 look like to you? What were you looking at and how were you recognized?
Congratulations Anna! (Natalie, Irene, Christopher and Thomas all pass theirs along). Ees gewd yew re geting peepul tew reed yew
Thanks, Jess! Oi am sew appie! xoox
Congratulations on your awards and being published! Very exciting and well deserved. When you said goodbye I thought your blog was leaving. Oh NO ! Glad it is still around and you’ll keep writing.
Thanks and oh- you’re right, that title can be read wrong, huh? Oops. I am so enjoying your blog, Carla, and look forward to meeting you one day, perhaps for some crafts?
That’s what I thought too for a moment! So glad it’s not true!
yep I’m working on the crafts
Anna, that’s wonderful! I’m so glad your year was so fruitful and that your writer self has come out to play so visibly. Here’s to more in 2012~ I look forward to reading you!
Thank you, dearest, for reading! I look forward to playing soon. xoox
It wasn’t bad at all. I received some recognition and comforting words of understanding regarding my writing efforts, some of them positive and even flattering. I was looking for someone to “get” what I have to say and that happened.
I have decided not to call it fiction, but ‘revisionist history’ instead.
I’m so glad your beautiful blog has been recognized but my feelings are hurt that you unfollowed me. You were one of my firsts.
Ugh, ugh, how horrible and embarrassing and wrong. I never unsubscribed but just went to check and it said I was already on the list? Confusing but hopefully right, now….
Hello and yes and yay to all comforting words and being “gotten” (but when I write it in quotation marks, that doesn’t even look like a real word). I followed you to your blog from Betsy’s one day because your comments there were so deliciously pithy and blunt I had to read more. I like it when people tell the truth.
Bonne Année Anna and Girl in the Hat. Congratulations on your well deserved awards.
I will eat a little cheese on the baguette and I will raise my glass of red wine to celebrate your success. 2012 tells you that all successes are possible. Keep your inspiration and thank you.
Oh, Josette, the cheese, the beautiful cheese…. a billion thanks for bringing it (my love handles are shaking with delight) and I am making it last as long as possible, but what is the best place to keep this delicious cheese on life support? You must give me your French tips on how to make it last. We must have a little coffee soon- school starts tomorrow (mice away, cat can play). xoox
It’s so good to hear about your short stories being published. One of them I remember as a work in pogress here, so I’m anxious to get to its published version. I want to read each of them. Yay you!
I wish 2011 had brought more to me than the tiniest whisper of a financially secure present and a few steady readers to my two little sites, but I know that’s me being ungrateful for small miracles. I don’t mean to be.
It also brought the idea for a novel that my daughter thinks is stellar (which from her to me is great and unexpected praise.) I hope 2012 brings me the patience and absence of weirdness I need to complete it and an agent who thinks the way my daughter does about it. Do you think I can type with my fingers crossed?
How deliciously exciting to have a novel idea, Re! 2012 sounds like it’s going to be huge for you- full of imagination and work and hope and excitement. If I believed in astrology, I’d say that the year of the dragon is the right time to pull it all off. Luck to you and thanks for all that you do- I am grateful for our writing connection!
You are an amazing writer and I applaud your courage and commitment to make your gift more and more visible. Congratulations on the fruits of recognition that are coming!
Losing one’s invisibility is a tricky thing. Thanks, Dana- for reading and for nice words!!!
I’m so pleased for all your successes in 2011, Anna. You’ve had a prosperous year where writing is concerned. Three short stories in a year is nothing to sneeze at, and your writing voice gets more defined by the day.
Also, you’re a complete sweetheart. But that’s something else altogether.
Here’s to 2012. May it be filled with words.
Words to you, too, Averil! Delicious, perfect words that ring like clear bells. I’m impatient for your next chapter.
hey, wow , that’s quite a list of accomplishments, what a year! may the next grow even more.
You too, mom! Smooch.
Anna, what an exciting 2011! So glad we met and can keep following each other (no, that doesn’t sound creepy at all…) through our lives and work.
I can’t wait to read your stories! Many congrats to you!
For me, too, 2011 feels like a good year for recognition — not just recognition from others, but also my own important recognition that there’s more to “success” than just that particular brand of it. I still want to achieve a lot as a writer-artist, but I’m no longer hanging on to recognition as the marker of whether I’ve “made it.” (I read a book in which the author described a conversation with a snooty friend. “Yes, my book made it to the NYT bestseller list,” the author said, and her friend asked, “What position?” That’s exactly the kind of mindset I can get into, when it comes to recognition, so I think I should just set it all aside as a plus and not a requirement.) I’m so much happier when I can think of readings or publications as nice things and not as signs of my value as a human being.
Thank you for the kind words about my blog Anna.
I am certainly looking forward to reading more from your blog in 2012.
Happy new year and I raise a glass to whatever happens to be your poison!
A glass of good poison to you, too, Sam.
I didn’t obey the letters of the award rules, but I hope this will suffice.
I feel terrible that it took me so long to comment on this post. To say that I’ve been tired lately is like saying that I’m 6 feet tall, of Scandinavian ancestry, and uncoordinated. It just seems like a part of me lately-tiredness that is. I can’t think of anyone who deserves to be published more than you do, Anna. There are certainly other quite readable, quite talented bloggers and writers out there (several I consider friends), but you seem to be the most, I don’t know, accomplished, I suppose.
Thanks so much for mentioning me; you are too kind.
I hope that 2012 brings more success.
Well what a nice thing to say!
(Perhaps I should thank you for your thanks and then you can thank me for the thanks and then I’ll write you a little note to say how grateful I am…)
Here’s to success, all around.
The “thanking cycle” somehow reminds me of an old Dear Abby or Dear Ann, where an office worker had a cold, sneezed countless times, and her co-worker said “Bless You” each and every time, to which the snotty one felt obliged to say “Thank You”, to which the other one said “You’re Welcome.” The real reason they invented sick days, I would say.
Exactly. Although I prefer “gesundheit” because it sounds sneezier.