best names for eels and best books I'm reading
Animal Crossing and Eel Pits
I like to begin this newsletter with something about eels. Because there’s always something about eels, even if you haven’t thought about eels before or in awhile. Sometimes it’s about eels in general, but today it’s about video games and eel pits.
Animal Crossing had a moment during the pandemic and especially during lockdown, but like many popular things, it has taken me at least two years to catch up to what is cool, and I just started playing Animal Crossing-New Horizons this Spring. If you haven’t played Animal Crossing, it is a simulation game where you can “build” a house, create a community, and gather shells, wood, catch fish, and other things and exchange them for money in a cute, little, capitalistic world.
Dear Reader, now that it is a new month, it means that there are new Animal Crossing species to catch. And you know what that means? It meeeeeaaanss… that I caught a spotted garden eel, screamed, and took a photo to document the occasion.
Thank you, Nintendo, for including eels. I love Animal Crossing. Very late to the party, but a huge fan.
My favorite thing about the eel section of this newsletter is when the eel information and highlights come from friends and family. My friend Claire sent me a link to an eel pit video, and I was like, eel pit? What. Is. This.
It’s a pit of eels. A pit of eels in an old rainwater cistern underneath a garage that Cow Turtle converted into a fish pond. You just need to watch the video yourself.
This is also the kind of thing, where I immediately needed to know more. So luckily for me, and all of us, there’s another video explaining the eel pit.
Incredible names for eels and gars. My personal favorite, the spotted gar named, “Jason.” But also a big fan of, American Eel, “Crunchy Wrap Supreme.” When I saw that Cow Turtle added sturgeons, I was like, oh my gosh, he has eels AND STURGEONS! In fourth grade I wrote a report on sturgeons, and have remained a fan ever since. I hope you enjoy both of these videos, they are 100 percent worth it.
If you were going to name an eel, what would you name them? I started a list:
For fun, you can write you own eel names. If you want, you can send them to me. I feel like there should be more eel names referencing the Brontë sister’s novels.
Books sort of about the Creative Process and Book Joy
I read and loved a handful of books for adults that were also about characters writing or creating something, and it felt enough like a theme to group them all together even if the books maybe don’t feel like they’d go together. But I loved reading about characters struggling through the creative process in Romantic Comedy, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and I Have Some Questions For You. Character’s addressing the ethics or importance of what they were creating, the process, the way social media access and fame was always lurking on the sidelines or in some moments front and center. Excellent books.
Clint Smith’s poems about new parenthood and fatherhood sprinkled throughout his newest poetry collection, Above Ground, hit me so hard in the parenting memories and made me ask myself, Eija, why didn’t you write more poems when your children were so little? I am sure I can try, but some of these poems took me back to 2am diaper changes and toddlers in the grocery store that I felt smacked with the intimacy of these new parent memories and poems.
Books take a long time to make, from ideation to writing, to holding the final book in your hands kind of moment, which is why celebrating books by friends and colleagues feels special in all types of ways. This spring has felt like book joy and book celebrations one after the other witnessing friends from graduate school publish novels. These four books: A Bit of Earth, Shannon in the Spotlight, Saints of the Household, and Where You See Yourself, are the books I’ve been reading and cheering on from my fellow Hamline alums this spring. I am a million times biased, but also, the writing is really good. These books are really good! Heart and bookshelf full.
I’ll be cheering on more books from HamFam friends as the year goes on with these titles: Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic, The Wishing Machine, and Wand.
Sort of book things but not books that I’m reading: always trying to stay on top of what’s happening right now with book bans across the county. PEN America is a great place to get information on book bans.
This is also my reminder to: support your local public library, attend board meetings if you can, vote in library board elections, get informed about what’s happening with book bans in your own community, and to please support books by marginalized authors who are overwhelming affected by the book bans.
Eija Book Updates and News
I found out on April 1st (not a joke!) that Crocodile Hungry had been shortlisted for the Joan Betty Stuchner Oy Vey! Funniest Children’s Book Award, a Canadian book award celebrating funny books for kids.
I’ve been reading all the nominated books and am honored to have Crocodile Hungry included with so many great titles. Looking forward to celebrating with all the nominees this weekend on Frog Jumping Day!
I did not know about Frog Jumping Day, but Frog Jumping Day is a day to hop around like a frog—amazing, will definitely do, but also a reference to ye old humor boomer, Mark Twain, and his frog jumping story.
I can’t wait to share more about my NEXT picture book, so subscribe if you want all the details. It’s so good. Like I can’t believe how it is turning out.
Being Organized and Rewriting All the Things
Last newsletter, I let you know that I finally revised and sent a longer project off to my agent. And since then, I have received notes; thought about the notes, and realized I needed to rewrite the manuscript again. So I pitched the rewrite to my agent and her assistant, received their blessing, and jumped back in.
There’s this moment during the revision process where you realize the work that needs to be done, and there’s like a standing on the edge of the pool moment, before you finally take the plunge.
So that’s how the Spring went. Writing and rewriting.
And then I started organizing all my picture book files. For any and all picture book authors out there, I’m so curious how you organize your files and drafts. I try and save every new version as a new document, but this all depends on my level of commitment or abandonment— it is a huge range!
I guess this is where I share that I also keep a spreadsheet of all my stories and picture book drafts, with inspiration, dates, structure, theme, progress, etc. A spreadsheet totally separate from a submission list, but you can link spreadsheets if you want to get wild and organize files and create spreadsheets in-between projects. Join me!
Anyway, I’ve been doing an inventory of all my picture book writing, and I decided to reorganize and sort stories out by whether I think they are:
Dead projects (died in submissions or no ticket on the submissions train);
Shelved (more purgatory like);
In the process of drafting but I don’t have a full draft yet (ideas I love but that need more work, research, and writing);
Currently revising (yay! not dead or shelved yet!);
I need to revise (I know it needs work, but not ready to go there, and also not ready to send to purgatory);
Ideas that have been abandoned that never became full drafts (v sad. and v weird file folder tbqh).
A sample of what my picture book folders look like:
I am hoping this isn’t bad luck to send out folders and titles of unpublished picture book manuscripts and ideas out into the universe, but I also like to think about that moment in Big Magic where Elizabeth Gilbert writes about ideas finding the right author. I hope someone writes a cute and fun pickleball picture book about an active grandma absolutely killing it on the pickleball courts, I’m sending that idea out into the universe. I don’t think I’m the author to do it.
On the horizon, more writing and problem solving for me this Spring and Summer. I know this writing business is a marathon, or more like twenty marathons stacked on top of each other. Cheers to everyone running all the writing marathons, we might be bananas, but I hope we’re all having fun. Or at least I hope we all have very organized files while we figure out what we’re doing!
If I don’t see you next month, it’s because I’m finally reading all the Discworld books (in numerical order!) or finally reading The Broken Earth trilogy. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m revising and writing. <3