Margaret Fieland: Poetry and Prose

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New Year’s Writers Resolutions

1. Read poetry. This was one of my resolutions last year — and I did well with it. I haven’t read as much over the holidays — time to get reading again.

Trite but true — one of the best ways to improve one’s own poetry is to read lots of other people’s.

2. Write poetry. Write or revise something every day. This is not a problem. What is a problem is remembering to vacuum the house and empty the dishwasher..

3. Finish the draft of my second MG novel. I stopped working on this one when I broke my wrist — but now that my wrist is out of its cast I have no excuse.

3. Submit the math poetry collection to more places — I have some more publishers to check out.

4. Submit more poetry. I did start organizing my poetry — pretty overwhelming. I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of poems. Even though I keep them online in Google documents, the sheer number of poems I want to work on — and want to reorganize — has my head spinning.

Merry Christmas, everyone. My after-Christmas present will be to get my cast off next Wednesday. Then I’ll have no excuse for not getting back to my latest MG novel.

Have finished putting together my chapbook for Robert Lee Brewer’s November PAD chapbook challenge. I plan to read it over again and then send it off.

Cast is fraying and ends are giving me blisters — ugh! Have tried padding end with a cut up sock. Let’s hope it helps.

PS: My sister says I forget to tell her I broke my wrist and she had to find out by reading my blog. Oy!

thats how much longer i’m scheduled to be in this cast — can’t wait.

am working on poems for chapbook challenge — lots of them need tweaking, but I have decided on the first and last poems i’m going to use, as well as several of the others. the google docs folder i’m keeping them in needs bigtime organizing — each poem needs its own document, titles need fixing, etc. mucho work.

and it was terrific. After going through Lisa Gentile’s and Beverly McClure’s forums, I decided I needed to email a friend who’s a music director at a local middle school about my work in progress, and I got lots of good ideas. So now I’m off to:
— make cards for each chapter of present version of book
— note revisions
–start revising

I also found a website with math history information aimed at middle school students. Hot diggety!
And I started reading my Number book and making notes.

Oh, yeah, and I may have started another series of poem..

All I need are 36 hour days.

I’m in the middle of working through my new work in progress, tentatively titled “Don’t Ask Me Why” and here I’ve been struck with another idea — one that won’t seem to leave me alone. It’s to write that book — quite possibly for kids — on the history of mathematics that I looked for and couldn’t find when I started writing my math poem collection.

The problem is that it’s going to be a lot of work, and involve a lot of research. I’ve tried telling it “down, little idea,” but it won’t cooperate.

Here it is: Interview with Nancy Famolari

1.Can you tell us a little about yourself? (i.e. Pets? Where you live? Special interests of hobbies?)
I live on a farm in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. We have dogs, cats and horses. I must admit horses are my favorites. They’re kind, gentle, and loving. At times, they seem almost able to read your mind. We’ve had horses for almost 25 years. I don’t know what I’d do without their friendly presence. I love watching them in the field, and of course, riding and carriage driving.
2.What inspired you to write this story?
When we lived in New Jersey, we raised Standardbred racehorses commercially. Both my husband and I worked full time, so it was important to have help. A Swedish couple owned the farm adjoining ours. For a few months each year, they hosted girls and boys from the Scandinavian countries to work on the farm and get to visit the U.S. One year, she had an extra girl, one who was interested in the breeding aspects of the Standardbred business, rather than the racing. She asked us if we would host the girl for a few months. We were delighted, and Malin became part of our family. She was excellent with the horses, and it gave the boys a sister. When I decided to write a young adult book about horse breeding, the interesting aspect of having a foreign visitor living on the farm seemed perfect. For several years, we had hosted exchange students from Europe and Japan in the summer. Meg’s reaction to having someone new living in the house is the same reaction some of the boys had the first time we hosted a foreign student. In the end, it worked very well for everyone. The boys learned a great deal about several foreign countries and made friends.
3.Do you have a favorite character, if so tell us why?
That’s a hard question. Both Meg and Katrina are wonderful characters. I can’t say either is my favorite. Meg is a typical teenager, and Katrina is such a basically nice person. There is one other character in story that I, and everyone who’s read the book, love, Nicky. His character is based on my Morgan gelding, also named Nicky, and in many respects, he’s the favorite.
4.Tell us a little about your writing schedule. What do you find most difficult, easiest?
I try to write 2000 words a day when I’m doing a first draft. When the draft is finished I put it away for months, then send it to my critique group and finally, do revisions. The hardest part for me is after the book is published, trying to promote it.
5.What are your future writing plans?
I plan to write two more books in this series about Meg and Katrina. In the second book, the girls go to Arizona for two weeks on a dude ranch. In the third book, it’s horse show season and Meg hates watching Cindy, her major rival, drive Nicky in the shows.