I've challenged myself to writing some poetry for kids. What is so great about this project is that I can do it with my boyfriend - he loves to make rhymes. So.. I sat here today writing my stuff, then reading it to him. Then he composed some lines off the top of his head, and I wrote them down next to mine. From all this I got one verse I thought was good.. about one of our cats:
Socks is a master, Of birdie disaster, His eyes penetrate, You wonder what he just ate.
Recently I read that humor is the lead-selling genre for children, which in a way, distressed me because I have no humor manuscripts written for kids. At the same time it interested me, because I think I'm pretty good at saying funny things. I don't know if I can do it consistently enough to get through a whole novel, but I want to give it a try when I'm done revising the work I'm already doing. Better yet, maybe I could work some in with my current projects.
I was going to read The Renegades of Pern by Anne McCaffrey, but then I turned to the front of the book where there's a note from the author saying I should read the Pern series books in order... so I'll have to backtrack if I want to read through them. I can tell, from what I read so far, that she's a master at what she does.
So.. I'll have to chose another fiction title... how about A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck?... I've got that here on my desk right now. It was a Newbery Honor Book in 1999.
I'm still working on fleshing out The Seagull Rebellion and now have 55627 words in the manuscript. Tonight I wrote a bit of exposition for the prologue to the novel.
I finished reading Fog Magic this morning. The first thing I felt as I closed the book was a sense of intense dissatisfaction because not all the questions were answered. For example, there was this:
"There were some questions that Greta was sure her father could answer. What, for instance, had happened to the village of Blue Cove itself? Prosperous villages didn't turn into a cluster of sod-covered cellar holes over night. If some persons in such towns made fortunes and moved away, there were always others to stay on and live and die in the homes of their fathers. But it was a question she could never ask."
The way she put that, it made me wonder if she left multiple unanswered questions intentionally, just as fog leaves a lot of questions, like "what's over there?" ...and "how do I get home from here?" ...and where's the road?"
The book is written for kids - it would go over big with the typical eight-year-old. Though I think it might not have achieved such great fame if it had been written in 2002 rather than the early 1940's... I can see why it has been a much loved childhood treasure of thousands of growing girls over the years. With the combination of magic, mystery, and whimsey, this was like a collection of snapshots of village people in a time long gone.
Next...
I decided to read a book I've been putting off for months. I didn't want to look at it because I knew it was about the death of a child:
This was a short novel, I estimate about 22000 words. I read it in just a few hours.
I sure would not want to write such a sad story. I think stories like this one and Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia should have warning labels. At least this time I knew the subject matter before I read the book. When I read Paterson's book I was blindsided - thinking I was reading a nice cozy story about the friendship between two children just to have the rug pulled out from under me when one of them died. You see, I don't like to cry. I really, really hate crying -- the painful eyes, the runny nose, the inconvenience of it all. These books both made me cry. With On My Honor I did pretty good until page 79... then I couldn't stop the tears.
Though I didn't like the subject, I have to say that it was very well written. The character descriptions were great - and I knew right away how very different the boys were from one another. The first paragraph of the book is this:
"'Climb the Starved Bluffs? You've got to be kidding!' Joel's spine tingled at the mere thought of trying to scale the sheer river bluffs in the state park. He looked Tony straight in the eye. 'Somebody got killed last year trying to do that! Don't you remember?'"
Right away we know we've got a daredevil boy and a more conservative boy. The author stands out of the way for the entire journey and the characterizations are very realistic, as are their actions.
One other good thing I can say about this book is that any boy that reads it is much less likely to ever want to dare his best friend to do something dangerous. While I was reading it, my own 12 year old son was out riding mountain bikes in the hills near here with his friends. I couldn't help but say a few prayers during the course of this reading, asking God to bring them all home safely.
Next I plan to read... The Renegades of Pern by Anne McCaffrey. Wish me luck. I've never read any of her books before, and it is far from what I usually take interest in. Despite all that I feel it may have some elements common to the kinds of things I've been writing lately, so I want to take a look. Right now I'm only a few pages into it and see it is much more complex (aimed at adults or teens, not children), and situations are mature, including violence. Like in two of my manuscripts, she's created her own world with its own terminology and name forms. I don't know if I'll finish this novel, but I look forward to seeing how she develops it. This particular McCaffrey novel was published in 1989, the year my 13-year-old daughter was born.
It is a great book to read to the kids just before Christmas! If you're not used to reading middle grade novels out loud to the kids - this is a good one to start with because it is shorter than most.
So is Fog Magic - I would guess about 25000 words. It was first published in 1943. The first line is "From the time she was a baby in her cradle, Greta had loved the fog." Now there's a good example of a sentence that would probably never be published these days. The "had" would be cut in an editorial hot flash. Novel writing is so much more competitive these days. It is imperative to know the rules of the road... and those have changed a lot since 1940.
I've been wanting to read Stephen King's book about writing for a long time, but there are so many other books out there. I got those first... and sure enough never bought the King book.
Lucky me, at the library here in the middle of the forest (where I live) I found an audio-recorded copy and took it home and listened to the first tape. It was hard to find time for it. My house is so noisy most of the time. Soooooo, I decided to buy a new Sony Walkman and that did the trick for me - I listened to the other five tapes all in one night... tonight. I am so tired now but ... of course just had to say something about how great the book is.
Thank you, Stephen King, for telling us your thoughts about writing!
I want to get as many of these as possible, to see what some of the top middle grade and young adult novelists are doing these days:
Feed by M.T. Anderson
Postcards from No Man's Land by Aidan Chambers
Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn
This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen
The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Stoner & Spaz by Ron Koertge
A Corner of the Universe by Ann M. Martin
Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay
The Same Stuff as Stars by Katherine Paterson
Blue Eyes Better by Ruth Wallace-Brodeur
My Heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr
The One-Eyed Giant & The Land of the Dead by Mary Pope Osborne
When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park
Loser by Jerry Spinelli
What kind of word is that? When Dennis picked that for the word - the word we members of the Klamath River Writers Club would have to write something about - I didn't know what it meant. I had to go home and look it up on Dictionary.Com and later I looked it up at Visual Thesaurus which was a lot of fun, but nothing simple or simply irascible came to me for a writing project.
Therefore I decided to write the story of an irascible man. Fiction. I created Irascible Ian, an actor, and my life hasn't been the same. I've had this elderly guy telling me about things that happened to him years ago - it is a real hoot. I'm writing this first-person so it is like I'm channeling this imaginary irascible character's comments. This is such a change from The Seagull Rebellion and the other children's writing I do. I've worked on the project for two days now and am glad I started early because so far it seems like a lot of what I've written will get edited out. Right now I'm just putting down Ian's thoughts as they occur to me. That's how I want to write it. Of course I have an idea where the plot is leading, but I'm letting my character show me the way.
The next writer's club meeting isn't for another 2 months so I have plenty of time to work on this.
I swear fiction writers may sound nuts to the rest of the world but we do understand each other. I feel this is something I prepared for all my life and now that it is happening I'm just so happy.
I worked more on The Seagull Rebellion again today and spent some time at the forums there at NaNoWriMo headquarters. I'll really miss them if they close down at the end of the month.
I've been working on the description and dialogue in The Seagull Rebellion and it is slow going! I've officially turned on my editor-self now and am picking every paragraph apart unmercifully. It is so very tough for me to learn this part of the craft of novel writing.
Meanwhile I divided my first novel into chapters and loaded it into the Rough Draft software so I can go over it the same way. I tried to edit it before and didn't get beyond chapter two. This time I'm going to be harder on the manuscript and get rid of some references that are not needed. Probably I won't work more on that until next month at the earliest because I want to leave the rest of November open for working on The Seagull Rebellion. I'm adding to the word count still, even though I passed the goal (50,000 words) and want to get as much done as possible so I can update my word counts until the end of the month, when that ability will be gone forever. Right now I'm at 50994 words.
I joined a critique group on AOL where I'm surrounded by awesome published writers of different genres... ie. romance, suspense, young adult, etc. I think there's one other children's novelist, at least. This should be interesting. I just love the way this group works together... I was part of the group last winter too but had to quit when I took two college classes last spring. To date, I still haven't had the nerve to submit one of my own chapters - I'm waiting until after the first major revision. The main reason I still have AOL is that the writer's resources there are so good.
Here I am after a full night of writing and housework. (Sometimes I wait 'till dawn to sleep but I'm always awake again before noon.) I worked on my Alyssa Project, doing character development in preparation for the first major revision. What I'm planning to do is scrap what I had and rewrite from the beginning in first person POV, using the other manuscript as reference. I'll be adding new elements into the plot... it will be great by the time I get done with it or else. LOL... What I didn't like about the other manuscript was (1) dialogue too stilted, and (2) characters not developed enough.
Last night I tried an exercise I found posted on an AOL message board for writers. The thing to do: choose one animal and ten things you can see right now. List them... then write a piece using all eleven elements. I did this and wrote a cute poem about my dog, Bear, waking up in the middle of the night. It turned out so good, I'm not going to post it here because I'm planning to polish it up some and send it to some publishers. Wish me luck on that one!
Today was my monthly writer's club meeting. We were supposed to write something on "character" for reading out loud at the meeting. I naturally rushed to do it at the last possible moment. I decided to interview myself on the topic. It was a lot of fun, interviewing myself. This was the first time I'd tried it, and I noticed I knew all the right questions:
An Interview About Character
With Linda Martin November 18, 2002
What makes a good character for a novel?
It may be their legacy. If the character is memorable, it succeeds in a novel. However if you forget the person you read about within a week, it’s a clear sign it wasn’t well developed enough.
Do you think your characters were developed enough for this newest novel?
No, not hardly. I feel I still need to study character development and work on that part of the art before I revise the novels I’ve got rough drafts for.
How many novels now?
Three complete rough drafts and one that is unfinished - that I’m working on completely redoing now.
Of all the characters in your most recent novel, who do you think will be most memorable?
Hopefully it will be the protagonist – a young girl named Maralin. She’s a freedom fighter – she was raised to value freedom and has to deal with having her freedom taken away over and over again during the course of The Seagull Rebellion.
So this is a novel about freedom?
That’s right.
How do you keep track of your characters?
I started The Seagull Rebellion in a kind of haphazard way starting with an unfinished character summary for Maralin. During the course of the novel I felt the need for more organization because I remembered – during the writing of my first novel The Scribe of Irohila, I got very confused about my character and place names and how to spell them – so when I get around to revising that novel - I know I have a confusing mess awaiting my attention. I didn’t want that to happen this time so I started an index card file for characters for this series. I would like to write at least five more novels in the series and maybe more, and develop them and reuse characters from one novel to the next - so it is essential that I keep track of the people - and their character traits. The index cards are an easy and manageable tool for me and much cheaper than printing out character sheets with dozens of items that don’t apply for these people.
So when you started the novel, your only character that you summarized was Maralin – none of the others?
That’s right – I was in such a hurry to start – I didn’t take time at the beginning to plan everything. I had Maralin and her father in mind – and about seven chapters worth of plotting which was a list of scenes. Even that didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, since the scenes I’d planned were all used up by day two (chapter four) and from that point on I was winging it with my protagonist, Maralin, leading the way. For a long time there – I didn’t know what to expect from day to day – but Maralin was such a strong character – I just developed the story along the path of what I knew she would do in the various situations.
What will you do differently next time?
Near the end I discovered a software program available online called StoryWeaver. Next time I’ll use that to better develop the plot and characters before I begin.
Just like last year, I wrote my 50,000 word novel in just 17 days! I'm so very happy and excited about passing the NaNoWriMo finish line today. I'm at 50083 words right now... and have a little bit of the conclusion left to write... plus I'll be using the coming days to go through the rest of the chapters and add description and more dialogue. When I write a first draft, I find I'm doing what seems to me like 90% action and very little description. I need to go add in more details now... so I know my word count will increase as the days go by, but for now, I feel like a winner. Now it is time to verify that on the NaNoWriMo website.
I looked through the newspaper today to see what I could find to inspire me. I've kept putting problems in the path of my protagonist, but I don't feel they are organized enough. Shouldn't all the complications directly relate to the main theme? I have a long way to go in becoming the writer I want to be.
Today I got a little box... and on the top wrote "Writing Ideas and Inspirations". Inside I put news clippings and will put my index cards there too when I write ideas on them. Let's see if that helps organize my fiction planning any better.
I just want to mention that my boyfriend brought me an ergonomic keyboard today. He found it at the... er... dump.. but it looks brand new. I want to thank whoever threw it out because it was just what I needed. I do a lot of typing! ...But I'll probably never know who ditched it. Well, everything works, even the touchpad though my daughter and I agreed we like using the mouse much better.
I spent about two hours today trying to get this thing to work - had to download the driver from the website - but I still got over 5000 words written! I feel so good about that!
Last year when I wrote The Scribe of Irohila I started feeling pains in my right arm on about the second day. I thought I was done for and my writing career was ending just as it was getting started. It was awful and I endured a lot of pain to pound out that novel. This year I'm happy to report there's been almost no pain. Getting this keyboard is like a confirmation for me - that everything's going to be okay and I'll be able to type out new novels over and over again into my happy old age.
I just love my new keyboard!
About that... dump... we've gotten so many great things there. People around here toss some of the nicest stuff, knowing it will all be recycled to people who pay lots less than the local second hand store charges. The very nice office chair I'm sitting on came from there. It still looks new. My son paid fifty cents to get this for me. My stereo across the room cost all of two dollars. I don't know what they paid for this keyboard, but whatever it was - it was worth it!
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Racing to the finish
Now that novel writing has become my motivating force for getting out of bed in the morning, I'm racing to the finish. My total is now at 46094 and I should be able to cross the finish line tomorrow, but... it will take an effort. This time I think I'll not be done with the novel. I still have a lot of plot left in my heart. I wrote 5291 words today.
Last year I finished my NaNoWriMo novel with 50132 words and never felt a need to write beyond that point. This time I feel the novel will be longer.
Goodnight is all I have to say since I have lost track of how many words I added today. I'm sure it was over my goal of 2500 anyhow. At one point today my name got to the bottom of page 2 (in word count) but I got bumped back down soon enough. If you do NaNoWriMo too you'll know what I'm talking about, probably.
Yay, I did it! I passed the 80% mark! My new word count is 40010 and it is only 5:28 in the afternoon! I added 1824 words since starting again at 3 this afternoon.
I went out of town again yesterday - to Yreka. It is a two hour drive each direction, and takes most of my energy. By the time I got home yesterday at 7 the sun had set and I was so very tired... but I wrote about 1000 words before falling asleep at midnight. I slept only 3 and a half hours, then got up and started working on the novel with a refreshed mind. Here's my new word count:
Yes, I took a screen shot of my NaNoWriMo site progress graph! I figured if I don't get it now - it will be gone forever. My word count from last night's writing (and this morning's) is 3313 words. I'll probably add more before the morning's over.
Right now my confidence level is up. I know where the novel is going, and have in mind some good scenes to work on later today.
I've started an index card file to record details about my characters as I dream them up. I am so glad to be this organized, since keeping character names straight has always been hard for me. I name my characters unusual things because none of them (from this series) are from our modern culture... and I don't want to spell them different ways in different places. The index cards are a handy place to record things like ... for Fallan (Maralin's mother) I wrote she is excitable but not a complainer and talks quickly when excited, but most often stoic and dignified even under stress. Also, she never liked the pet shop her husband owned and is happy to get away from it when they move to another city. When I go back to my earlier novel to revise, this information will help me do a better job of writing her part of the novel (she just had a tiny part in that novel but still it is good to know who you're really writing about). I want to work a lot more on character development before I revise the novels.
I started writing more on The Seagull Rebellion late in the afternoon. By one a.m. I'd written 5673 words and so my new total is 34603 words (almost 70% to goal). I also transferred my manuscript from Word Perfect 9 to Rough Draft which is kind of fun to use. I had to change my backup method because now there's 15 chapter files instead of just one big manuscript file (as I was using in Word Perfect). I used to just send the file as an attachment to one of my many email addresses. Now ... my new method is to upload the 15 files to one of my many websites, via FTP. I'll probably transfer it all back to Word Perfect eventually, but for now I'm enjoying the change of scenery this new software provides.
Meanwhile, I think my writing is getting much better at the end of this novel. Some sections of what I wrote tonight were very difficult - in that I couldn't use dialog and had to simply describe the events. That's what happens when your character takes off into the woods and hides out by herself for eight days. Maybe when I re-write I'll have the girl talking to herself. ...gotta do something to spice up the action.
I introduced five new characters tonight and took the girl's mother on a long and exciting journey.
I had a much better experience of writing tonight than I did last night. I just took it easy, and got into an interesting conversation between Maralin (the protagonist) and Amma (a grandmotherly type). Maralin was pumping Amma for information about her childhood. This took me out of my main story and gave me background on the old woman... it was interesting, and filled with emotion and description.
I finished 2525 words tonight, bringing the total to 28752 words.
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Tuesday, November 12, 2002 ( 3:59 AM )
Tonight was pure torture
Trying to get through 2500 words was so difficult tonight... I actually, at one point, thought that maybe I'm not cut out to be a writer. Then I remembered I need an income, and well, work is work, what can I say. This is at least something I can do here at home while I'm not working anywhere else.
After just 600 words I was thinking about my dire need for a vacation.
"Just one night off," she said, wistfully looking at her pathetic word count.
"No," the editor said, "You must persevere. Be strong, go forth, hit the keys."
"I don't know if I will make it this time," she said, but nevertheless, started writing more trivial passages to add to the scene.
Eventually it all took off in an interesting direction, she got interested in the task, and amazingly made it through 2509 words... just nine words over the nightly goal. Then she cashed it in for the night, recorded the word count on the NaNoWriMo site, updated her blog, and said, "Good night."
I had my doubts about my novel, but the more I write - the better I like it. Tonight I wrote 2786 words, for a new total of 23718 words. Almost half done!
I just finished another great night of writing, and am at 20,932 words now with the Seagull Rebellion manuscript. That's more than 41% done!
I don't have many ideas for the second half of the novel, but it does seem to be getting more exciting now. I've chosen a definite villain (finally) and brought some serious bad problems into the village.
On the third, I wrote all day long. This scored me over 4000 words and I totaled out at 12636 words. I wrote so much because I was coming up on a busy week and knew I'd fall behind. I had to go into Yreka on the 4th and 6th. Recovery from Yreka drives takes at least 24 hours. (I must be getting old.) Thus, I wrote nothing on my NaNoWriMo novel for three days.
Today I got back into it and added 3203 words to the manuscript. This brings me to a current total of 15839 words out of 50000.. or 31% done. Not bad for working just four days!
Now for the bad news. My protagonist, Maralin, stepped out of my pre-determined plot and is now writing her own story... which is far different than what I'd imagined. Now I don't have the foggiest idea where this story line is taking me.
Tonight's total on The Seagull Rebellion is 2514 new words, for a grand total of 8572 words. I know there's others over at NaNoWriMo who are far ahead of me - and others far behind... but I am comfortable writing just 2500 words each day. I wish I could keep up this pace all year long! Having the company of thousands of other working or aspiring novelists each November is very helpful.
Okay, I did it - I added more words. Now my count for the day is 2547 words, and my total is over 6000. If I can keep writing at this pace I should be done in twenty days - however next week I have to drive to Yreka twice, and that is sure to mess with my writing time by wearing me out. Last year when I had to drive into town I took the day off from writing. Will I do the same this year? Time will tell...
Tonight I added 2168 words for a total of 5673. I really should write another 332 words to make it to my goal of 2500 words. Okay, I'm hard on myself, but I have to be. How otherwise will I get this novel written in less that a month? If I slack off a little, later I might slack off a lot. That could lead to the big terrible F word... "failure"... a really awful thing. That's one thing I can't accept. Okay, I'm forcing myself to go on... to conquer.. to write.
There's that word again. I want to stop the novel right now and do a good character development evaluation on each of the characters I've introduced so far.
That sense of newness and excitement helped me get off to a good start tonight. I finished chapter one with 2545 words - exactly where I needed to be. Then I couldn't help but be too thrilled to quit. I started chapter two, ending at 3505 words for the night.
Already I'm wondering if I have enough plot to fill up an entire novel. As I plot the scenes (five scenes per chapter) I come up with new events, sub-plots and adventures. Hopefully all this will help me move toward my goal of 50,000 words before the month is ended.
When I wrote chapter one I got at least 500 words per scene, which is what I wanted and intended, but the scenes I planned for chapter two didn't work out that way. I need to put in more detail... usually my writing is more action-oriented, which isn't bad in a children's adventure novel, but it helps to slow the plot down now and then to let people know where they are and what its like there.
The Seagull Rebellion is the working title of my new NaNoWriMo novel. It is now twelve minutes after midnight and I'm ready to start the 50,000 word effort. Earlier this evening I did a scene outline for the first four chapters. I've got a generalized outline for the entire novel, but the scene outline tells me what each scene will be like. I found it very helpful last year to jot down scene ideas.. especially after 30,000 words when I was floundering and wondering where to go next. Somehow it all came together at the end (amazing!) and I hope the same thing will happen this time.
