I do intend to get back to blogging. If nothing else, it’s served as a great project diary. But my husband and I are going to be moving soon. I’m going to have to dedicate almost all my time to packing, sorting and cleaning and unpacking for the next month or so. But I’m hoping to steal a few minutes here and there for my novel.
The Google Map of Venice has been particularly useful as I plan various incidents for my Italian Chase Novel.
There’s something to be said for prolonged meditation on a scene. As my husband and I have been hunting for houses and preparing our house to go on the market, I haven’t had a lot of time for my own writing. So today I sat down for forty-five minutes and popped out about 400 words. I still need to add in description in order to make the scene three-dimensional, but that will mean studying Palladian architercture in Vicenza from my photo albums, Flicker and Google images. That’s fun research when your plot demands it!
My friend Jeanie Franz Ransom just received some eggs-citing news! Her picture book WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO HUMPTY just won the New Mexico Land of Enchantment Award for best picture book narrative. So right now her eggstremely funny book is sitting on a website just to the left of THE HUNGER GAMES. I’m proud to be an official aunt to this book. It says so in the dedication! What does a literary aunt do? She offers support and encouragement just like the biological ones. Literary aunts are also extremely proud when they see a manuscript hatch and go on to really great things.
It was such fun to see SAVING THE GRIFFIN turn up on a master list of fifty or so books for kids to read before and after Harry Potter. Susan Fichtelberg and Bonnie Kunzel pulled this list together for their June, 2011 ALA presentation. A quick cruise through Susan’s website, Encountering Enchantment, made it clear that she’s extremely knowledgable about fantasy and science fiction. In fact, School Library Journal thought that her Encountering Enchantment: A Guide to Speculative Fiction for Teens should be a part of every YA collection.
So if you’re trying to find some quality fantasy novels for middle grade readers, you should really check out this list!
I’ve known for some time that Calyn’s story came to an end rather abruptly. More than one critique group has told me so. But I was defeated every time that I tried to come up with one more chapter. Every possible scene seemed to be wrapped in cotton candy while the cutesiest unicorns and bunny rabbits danced around it. Really. But I did take my friends’ complaints quite seriously, especially since there were some readers who felt that SUSPECT ended too quickly. I noticed that there were still a few plot issues that could be resolved. I expanded the last chapter by about two pages and then sent things off to my agent.
But no. She confirmed that the ending was still too abrupt. So I didn’t have a choice. I had to write it. I tried a lot of angles of attack and finally found a way in. Most of the failed attempts did provide a line or two that made it into the end as I encouraged my characters to talk to each other. So it’s another case of “Bone-headed stubbornness pays.” Jane Yolen’s classic advice for how to pursue a career also works for writing the chapters and scenes that don’t want to be written. The chapter still needs tweaks, but it’s a matter of smoothing and polishing.
I was one of the writers who shared a few techniques in Sue Bradford Edwards article, “How to Avoid Parenting Your Characters.” It was the lead piece in the 11/1 WRITER’S DIGEST e-mail newsletter. Congratulations, Sue!
When my good friend Gina asked me to do an interview on Swagger, I couldn’t say no. Feel free to buzz on over if you’d like to check out my answers and maybe even win a ten-page critique.
Thousands upon thousands of writers are gearing up for National Novel Writing Month where the goal is to produce at least 50,000 words of a first draft. It’s described as Thirty days and nights of literary abandon. I won’t be joining them. And it’s not just because I’m in the middle of finishing the latest round of revisions to Calyn’s story for my agent. I tried NaNoWriMo about five years ago. I managed to produce 11,000 words before I stopped trying to get through what was turning into the thorny hedge of my story. Then it took me a couple of months to first untangle and then relink all those words. In the end, I would have come out ahead by proceeding at my normal, plodding pace. I do believe in the power of writing with literary abandon. Donna Jo Napoli shared some insights on that at a recent conference on Mackinac Island.
I believe in the power of the amorphous blob that she talked about, but I can only stay in that zone for three or four hours. Then I have to sort things out and smooth them together so that I know exactly what happened to my characters before I move on. Even though NaNoWriMo doesn’t work for me, I know that it has worked for thousands upon thousands of writers. I’ll be wishing them well as they come up to the starting line with their outlines and character sketches. On your marks. Get set. Write!
A friend of mine, a writer who managed to make me laugh AND get teary eyed at the same moment, has started group-blogging as Swagger. This bunch of writers came together at a Highlights Foundation retreat and really bonded. Collectively, they’re an interesting bunch. Rich Wallace, for example, has written lot of great middle grade and YA novels. (On a personal level, he edited the first short story that I sold to HIGHLIGHTS.)
I plan to watch these people get their swagger on.
