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Laurie Ann Thompson

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Cycles, balance, and making plans

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[Note: This was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Emu’s Debuts, but it seemed to res­onate with peo­ple, so I decid­ed to reblog it here in case you missed it. Sor­ry if you’re see­ing it twice!]
Late­ly, I’ve become some­what obsessed with the idea of cycles in our lives. Cycles in nature—life cycles, the water cycle, sea­sons, etc.—keep our phys­i­cal world in bal­ance. Man-made cycles keep the gov­ern­ment run­ning (usu­al­ly), pre­vent mechan­i­cal fail­ures and med­ical mis­takes (hope­ful­ly), even wash our clothes and dish­es for us. If you’re an author, you’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with the cre­ativ­i­ty cycle (see below). And as I’ve men­tioned before, one of my all-time favorite Emu’s Debuts post was Melanie Crowder’s The Run/Rest Cycle, about sus­tain­ing bal­ance as a writer. As cre­ative types, we often have some lee­way about how we choose to spend our time each day, so hav­ing a cycle in mind can help us man­age our activ­i­ties and main­tain bal­ance in our per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives.

The Creativity Cycle
The Cre­ativ­i­ty Cycle

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2013: What a year!

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EMLA Client Retreat group photo

I haven’t post­ed here for way too long, but 2013 turned out to be quite a year. I did man­age to squeeze in a few posts over at Emu’s Debuts, so I thought I’d share them here as a sort of roundup (and to par­tial­ly explain where I’ve been since the last post)…
In July, I had the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence of attend­ing my sec­ond Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary Agency client retreat, this time in Big Sky Mon­tana. Words can’t real­ly describe how won­der­ful these retreats are, but I post­ed a bit about it here.

EMLA Client Retreat group photo
The whole EMLA retreat gang (except me!)

Aside from that trip, I spent the sum­mer writ­ing, research­ing, writ­ing, inter­view­ing, writ­ing, revis­ing, writ­ing, revis­ing, revis­ing, and revis­ing to deliv­er the final man­u­script for BE A CHANGEMAKER. I wrote a bit about the process here.
A screen shot of the developmental edit
Tracked changes in the devel­op­men­tal edit stage

Despite the mad race to the fin­ish line, I feel real­ly good about how it all came togeth­er. And here’s a post about how it felt to get to THE END.
Done!
Then there was the dread­ed author pho­to, which actu­al­ly turned out to be sort of fun (and decent enough to share with the world, thank goodness!).

Laurie Thompson head shot

 
Oth­er news and high­lights from the year?

  • I got to see an ear­ly study for a scene from the pic­ture-book biog­ra­phy of Emmanuel Ofo­su Yeboah, illus­trat­ed by Sean Qualls.
  • The above book also FINALLY has a title, EMMANUEL’S DREAM!
  • I also got to see pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es for MY DOG IS THE BEST (sor­ry, I can’t share them here, but Paul Schmid’s illus­tra­tions are ADORABLE!).
  • I fin­ished anoth­er fic­tion pic­ture book man­u­script and it will soon be going out on sub­mis­sion (fin­gers crossed!).
  • I par­tic­i­pat­ed in and fin­ished PiBoId­Mo 2013.

Stay tuned for my next post on how I plan to tack­le 2014. 🙂

Email subscription changes afoot

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As most of you know, I’m under a press­ing dead­line to deliv­er the com­plet­ed man­u­script for CHANGEMAKERS by August 1st. I have three chap­ters left to write, plus a pletho­ra of bits and pieces scat­tered about and piles of notes to myself about things I still want to go back and fix… and only three weeks left to wrap every­thing up. So, what did I spend my day doing today? Mak­ing a new email sub­scrip­tion cam­paign, of course. (Gah! What?)
My brain seems to like hav­ing a burst of writ­ing activ­i­ty one day, fol­lowed by a burst of something–anything–else the next. I had an extreme­ly pro­duc­tive day yes­ter­day, so I pret­ty much accept­ed that today was going to be spent revis­ing, tight­en­ing, expand­ing, twid­dling, etc. Since I was­n’t in “flow” today, there was time for doing the dish­es, putting away laun­dry, and catch­ing up on some web browsing.
I hap­pened to come across this arti­cle about the 10 biggest Inter­net mar­ket­ing mis­takes made by artists and cre­atives. I’ve been want­i­ng to set up more of a newslet­ter for my email sub­scribers for a while now, so I’d already done some research on it and was plan­ning on switch­ing to using MailChimp instead of Feed­burn­er… some­day. Well, Mark’s arti­cle spurred me into action today. After all, I’m a tech savvy gal… how hard could it be, right?
Well, it took longer than I thought it would to get all the pieces to fit togeth­er (a few hours), but I think I have every­thing all con­vert­ed now. I think it looks more pro­fes­sion­al and it cer­tain­ly gives me more options, so although my tim­ing might not have been ide­al, I think it was worth it. If you were sub­scribed to my old Feed­burn­er feed, I’ve moved you to the new MailChimp one. I hope you’ll like it bet­ter, but you can always unsub­scribe if you’re not hap­py with it (MailChimp makes it easy for you!). From now on, any new sub­scrip­tions will go straight to the MailChimp list.  (If you’d like to sub­scribe, just look for the MailChimp sub­scrip­tion form on the right-hand col­umn just below my bio.)
Please let me know what you think! And, of course, let me know if you see any prob­lems. Note that I might not fix them until August, though. After all, that dead­line is still looming!

Another book deal: a how-to guide for teen changemakers!

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Europa Park Roller Coaster Up
Although we recent­ly spent a week in Dis­ney­land, last week was def­i­nite­ly the big­ger roller coast­er ride for me: I had surgery on Tues­day, then my sec­ond book deal was announced on Thurs­day! There’s noth­ing like good pub­lish­ing news to cheer up a writer who is feel­ing down, and noth­ing like a book sell­ing on proposal–with a short deadline–to make her want to recov­er as quick­ly as possible.
Here’s the announce­ment from Pub­lish­er’s Mar­ket­place:

Lau­rie Thomp­son’s CHANGEMAKERS, a teen hand­book for social activism and how to effect change, with tips, instruc­tion, and prac­ti­cal case stud­ies, to Nicole Geiger at Simon Pulse, by Ammi-Joan Paque­tte at Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary Agency (World English).

And here’s the fab­u­lous write-up my amaz­ing agent put up on the agency web­site:

Quick show of hands: Who here has ever dreamed of chang­ing the world? Okay, now one more: Who’s actu­al­ly sat down and put togeth­er a spe­cif­ic plan for chang­ing the world, com­plete with guide­lines, prac­ti­cal tips, and hands-on expe­ri­ence from those who have gone before and actu­al­ly done it?
Let me intro­duce you to Lau­rie Thomp­son. Last year, Lau­rie’s first pic­ture book was signed on by Schwartz & Wade. This week, Lau­rie has accept­ed a pub­li­ca­tion offer for her newest book, a non-fic­tion man­u­al for teens and pre­teens, ten­ta­tive­ly titled CHANGEMAKERS. Focus­ing on the expe­ri­ences of teens and young peo­ple who have made a con­crete dif­fer­ence in their own neigh­bor­hoods, coun­tries, and across the world, CHANGEMAKERS will be the defin­i­tive guide for kids who want to make a dif­fer­ence but don’t know how to get start­ed. And I have a feel­ing the rest of us non-kids will enjoy it too!
This book was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly signed on by Nicole Geiger at Beyond Words Publishing/Simon Pulse, and is slat­ed for pub­li­ca­tion in Fall 2014. Huge con­grat­u­la­tions, Laurie!

Even though this is my sec­ond book deal, it looks like it will actu­al­ly be my pub­lish­ing debut. My first book, a pic­ture book, isn’t sched­uled to launch until spring 2015, but this one is sched­uled to come out in fall 2014. Since this one sold on pro­pos­al, how­ev­er, I have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time if that is going to hap­pen. So, please for­give me if I’m even qui­eter than usu­al for the next few months.  As soon as I am recov­ered enough, I’ll be back on my tread­mill pound­ing out words!

It’s time to get busy

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Cybils 2012 logo

I’ve been work­ing like crazy late­ly on a revi­sion for the edi­tor of my first book. I’m simul­ta­ne­ous­ly blown by away by how much work she’s ask­ing me to do AND by how much bet­ter it’s going to make the book. Most of her com­ments feel so utter­ly, obvi­ous­ly right–AFTER I’ve read them–that I’m left won­der­ing why I did­n’t think of them myself.  (I’m also left won­der­ing why she ever bought the book in the first place, but in that way lies mad­ness, so let’s not go there, okay?) I thought I had giv­en every­thing I had to this book, thought there was noth­ing more I could do, but now I real­ize how lazy I’d actu­al­ly been. A few days ago, Mitali Perkins wrote about being grate­ful for tra­di­tion­al edi­tors. I could­n’t agree more. The process is not only mak­ing a bet­ter book, but mak­ing a bet­ter writer. That’s not to say there has­n’t been some gnash­ing of teeth, bang­ing of head on desk, and wine and choco­late binges, of course. And I’ll be over-the-moon hap­py when I think I’m final­ly done. But it’s get­ting there. I think I can see what it might one day be, and it sure feels good.
Cybils 2012 logo
As soon as I wrap up the big revi­sion I’m look­ing for­ward to ful­ly jump­ing into two more excit­ing activ­i­ties! First, I’m thrilled to be judg­ing the Non-Fic­tion Pic­ture Books cat­e­go­ry of the Cybils again this year. We have just over 100 nom­i­na­tions to read. I’ve had a slow start giv­en the revi­sion, but hope to be pick­ing up steam soon. I’m max­ing out my check-out lim­it at the library and build­ing huge stacks of beau­ti­ful books to indulge in. What could be better?
 

And, I’m also attempt­ing to do agency-sis­ter Tara Lazar’s Pic­ture Book Idea Month (or PiBoId­Mo). The goal is 30 pic­ture-book ideas in the 30 days of Novem­ber. I had a great big bunch of them right before the chal­lenge offi­cial­ly start­ed, and today, on the first offi­cial day, I had two more (and I even ful­ly draft­ed out one of them–WOOT!). This is a fun chal­lenge with a ton of sup­port and cama­raderie for all lev­els, and I can’t wait to see what else comes out of it.

The Call

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In case you missed it, I made my debut post over on the Emu’s Debuts blog ear­li­er this week! Emu’s Debuts is a group blog main­tained by debut authors rep­re­sent­ed by the Erin Mur­phy Lit­er­ary Agency (get it? E. Mu.?) We blog about that neb­u­lous, murky area between an author’s first book offer to the pub­li­ca­tion of that debut book: Con­tracts! Revi­sions! Reviews! Oh my! It may seem like it’s easy once you’ve signed on the dot­ted line, but it’s a whole new set of prob­lems, anx­i­eties, and rewards.
Any­way, it’s tra­di­tion on Emu’s Debuts for the intro­duc­tion post to be about “the Call.” So, please click here to read how my first book deal came to be.
Have you got­ten “the Call” yet? If so, what was it like for you? If not, what do you imag­ine it will be like when it final­ly hap­pens? Let me know in the comments!

Book launch for Kim Baker’s PICKLE!

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table full of food

Every book launch par­ty I’ve ever been to has been a ton of fun. If that’s not enough rea­son to go to as many as you can, how about just just sup­port­ing our local authors and illus­tra­tors? You want them to come out and sup­port you on your big day, don’t you? If you did­n’t make it to Kim Bak­er’s PICKLE launch par­ty at Secret Gar­den Books last week, here’s just a taste of what you missed:
There was food!

table full of food
Can you spot all of the pranks here?

 
There were friends!
crowded bookstore
How many faces of SCBWI do you rec­og­nize here?

 
There were prizes!
Kim holding prizes
I believe those are the bro­ken-glass stick­ers and the trick pen­cils. Lat­er, I won an explod­ing can of snakes!

 
There were books!
Kim even read a scene from PICKLE to us.
(I think I snort­ed out loud.)

 
There were even pickles!
Wait a minute, I don’t think those are real­ly pickles.

 
But don’t wor­ry, if you did­n’t make it to this book launch, there will be anoth­er one com­ing soon to a book­store near you. Make sure you get out there and see what all the fun is about! And if you still need to pick up a PICKLE, you can always click here:

 Shop Indie Bookstores

Signed, sealed, delivered… S&W, I’m yours!

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signing the contract

A few days ago I signed  (with my super-fan­cy pen–thanks Joni Sensel!) the offi­cial con­tract for my first book, to be pub­lished by Schwartz & Wade at Ran­dom House, and dropped it in the mail­box. Woohoo! What a fan­tas­tic feeling.
signing the contract
Armed with the Authors Guild’s Mod­el Trade Book Con­tract & Guide, I sat down to pick my way through the legalese if only to know that I had done my due dili­gence. Thanks to my super-awe­some agent, Ammi-Joan Paque­tte, and the equal­ly awe­some Erin Mur­phy, there real­ly was­n’t any­thing left for me to nego­ti­ate, although Joan did read and reply to a rather long list of prob­a­bly most­ly stu­pid ques­tions from me. The rea­sons why I’m absolute­ly thrilled and relieved to have these won­der­ful peo­ple on my side just keep mounting.
There was only minor stick­ing point: what to call MYSELF! I know, that does­n’t sound very hard, does it? Well, it was for me. There are just too many of us Lau­rie Thomp­sons in the world. How could I stand out and be unique, with­out con­fus­ing the issue one way or the oth­er? Well, after run­ning in cir­cles for a few days, we (yes, I even made poor Joan weigh in on this one) went for adding my mid­dle name, Ann, to the mix. Lau­rie Ann Thomp­son. Excit­ing, huh? I know, it real­ly should­n’t have been that hard. Oy.

My first studio recording

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Laurie giving thumbs up at the studio recording

My love­ly and tal­ent­ed friend Tina Hog­gatt recent­ly put out a call for par­tic­i­pants for an art projects she is work­ing on called Sto­ry Chairs. Basi­cal­ly, there are these super cool-look­ing chairs that she helped design that have speak­ers in the wings and auto­mat­i­cal­ly play sto­ries when you sit in them. I sub­mit­ted one of my own sto­ries, Inva­sive Species, and she took it! So, last week I had the expe­ri­ence of read­ing it and being record­ed and edit­ed on-the-spot at Jack Straw Pro­duc­tions. Wow! How cool is that?

Laurie giving thumbs up at the studio recording
Here I am giv­ing a thumbs up that we’re ready to go. The amaz­ing Mo is at the controls.

I also has the great hon­or of read­ing a deeply mov­ing true sto­ry by anoth­er friend and agency sis­ter, Audrey Ver­nick. I’d just met Audrey for the first time a few weeks ear­li­er at the EMLA client retreat in Port Lud­low, so it was espe­cial­ly poignant for me to read her beau­ti­ful, heart­felt work. I hope I did it justice!
Here’s me read­ing inside the studio.

Thank you Tina and Audrey for one fun and very mem­o­rable day!
 

My treadmill desk office setup

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TrekDesk straight-ahead view

I’ve been singing the prais­es of my new tread­mill desk set­up on Twit­ter recent­ly. My first full week in action, I noticed:

  • I logged 23 miles, with­out even think­ing about it. Wow!
  • I noticed great­ly improved focus and concentration.
  • I felt much more ener­getic, both while on the tread­mill and off. No more after­noon ener­gy slump!
  • My aching shoul­der and numb left arm (due to a bulging disk and pinched nerve in my neck) vir­tu­al­ly stopped their hurt­ing and tin­gling. Pain relief was an unex­pect­ed, but much appre­ci­at­ed, bonus.
  • Last but not least, walk-danc­ing to a great song on Pan­do­ra is much more fun (and bet­ter exer­cise) than chair-danc­ing! (I’m thank­ful I work at home, though, as this could be major­ly humil­i­at­ing in a more pub­lic space.)

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly (or not? maybe it was prompt­ed by my enthu­si­as­tic Tweets), a friend post­ed a link to Arthur Slade’s hilar­i­ous and inspir­ing post about his tread­mill desk set­up. Who knew there’s a whole move­ment out there? Thanks for unit­ing the Tread Heads, Arthur!
Any­way, a few of you have asked what my set­up is. Not being as handy, patient, or thrifty as Arthur and oth­ers are, I splurged for the instant-up store-bought solu­tion made by the good peo­ple at TrekDesk and put it on top of a Pro-Form 505 CST Tread­mill. It was super easy to assem­ble and set up. Here’s a look at the result:
TrekDesk straight-ahead view
The TrekDesk comes with a stur­dy met­al doc­u­ment hold­er, which serves as a lap­top hold­er in my set­up (above, on right). Then, I added a Plu­gable USB 2.0 Dock­ing Client and an extra mon­i­tor, rotat­ed to por­trait mode so I can see a whole man­u­script page at once, or a whole web page, or what­ev­er. I can’t image work­ing with­out a dual-mon­i­tor set­up, and the dock­ing client also allows me to grab my lap­top and go and come back again with­out deal­ing with tons of plugs, cables, and cords first.
TrekDesk treadmill desk side view
This all takes up quite bit of space, unfor­tu­nate­ly, so I had to move out of my tiny guest-room/of­fice and into the fam­i­ly room, which means head­phones are a must now that the kids are out of school for the sum­mer. And it means we need a new, small­er couch as the ancient behe­moth no longer fits. Darn.
So, I still have a few adjust­ments to make to the room, but I am lov­ing the desk itself and the new work­ing expe­ri­ence that comes from it.
I’d love to hear about your expe­ri­ences with or ques­tions about tread­mill desks. Does it, or would it, work for you? Why or why not?

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