Monday’s Muse

I had an amazing weekend. One full of inspiration and awesomeness! And it’s all because I was able to attend the annual SCBWIAZ Welcome to Our House Conference.

The faculty was amazing! I threw out a few highlights on Twitter, but really, there was so much to absorb, that I’m still pouring through my notes (and wishing I could have recorded it because I just know I couldn’t write fast enough to capture it all).

Still, what notes I did manage to scrawl are full of amazing insights. Now I’m ready to pour myself into writing. Unfortunately, I still have other obligations. Like my eighth and fifth graders who are doing online school and are home all day needing my assistance. And then my sixth grader who comes home and needs help with her homework. And dinner and washing clothes and all that other “mom” stuff that needs doing. *sigh*

But, I’ve made a plan. Starting tomorrow (when they all have school again), my two at home are getting up at about 9:00 and we are going to get through school by noon (let me dream, people—let me dream). Then I’ll have about two hours to write before I have to go pick up my sixth grader from school and get started on her homework (I’ll find some time to eat something in those two hours—I hope). And on those miraculous days when sixth grader doesn’t have homework, I’ll be able to have more writing time before dinner. As for the cleaning stuff, the rest of the family is just going to have to pitch in more.

This is my plan. It probably won’t work, but my main point is that I’m going to find ways to adjust things so that I do have more writing time. Because I haven’t been writing every day or even once a week—sometimes two weeks go by—and I need to get back into it. I miss it (and I’d like to pretend that it misses me).

On a totally unrelated topic, I’ve been using an app called My Fitness Pal to log my daily calories. It’s been eye opening! I’ve been watching how much I eat and have started exercising (because when I exercise, I burn calories and can eat more LOL). And just by doing this—and eating less of what I normally eat—I’ve lost 8 1/2 pounds over the last couple of months!

So, what has inspired you lately?

Write on!

Monday’s Muse (sort of)

Writing is like . . . Yeah.

I’ve written previous posts in which I’ve compared writing to anything from gardening, to an amusement part, to a road (with agents as a GPS). While those posts still apply, lately I’ve come to think of the whole writing process as something more like the Winchester Mystery House.

For those of you who aren’t aware of this phenomenon (okay, maybe it’s more of an oddity), here’s a brief summary (from what I remember off the top of my head—so if I’m inaccurate forgive me). After the death of her husband (who invented and produced the Winchester rifle) and young daughter, Mrs. Winchester is reported to have visited a medium who told her that the deaths of her family were due to the ghosts of those who were killed by the Winchester rifle. In order to keep the ghosts at bay, she needed to build a house—and not stop building it. So she did. If I remember correctly, she built onto the home for about 40 years (constant construction that went on 24/7). She would draw up plans and the builders would construct it no matter how strange the request. And some of them were strange, for sure.

There are doors and stairs that lead nowhere—supposedly to confuse the spirits and make them become lost so they wouldn’t find Mrs. Winchester. Anyway, you can look up more about the house if you’re interested, and I included a link to their website above.

So, how is writing like this crazy house? Let’s face it, we are very much like Mrs. Winchester. Of course, we may not be writing to keep the ghosts at bay (or maybe we are), but—much like her daily building that only ended upon her death—we too continue on in our writing. Day in and day out we keep working. Perhaps we’re a little crazy (some believe Mrs. Winchester was).

And like some of the staircases and doors in the house that lead to nowhere, sometimes the things we write don’t take us anywhere. We get rejections, but we construct a blueprint for a new work and get right back at it. We keep trying and building and learning and growing in our craft. Mrs. Winchester wanted to achieve success in keeping the ghosts away—and we want to achieve success in being published.

And like the crazy maze of rooms in the Winchester house, getting to our goal can be a crazy maze too. As I said, we usually have many false doorways and stairs that lead nowhere in our pile of manuscripts, but each one serves a purpose. Each new door and stairway and room kept the ghosts away from Mrs. Winchester, and our writing keeps us moving forward. We learn more and more with each thing we write.

So, writing is like the Winchester Mystery House. We’re never done doing it (at least not if we’re truly invested in our goal). Mrs. Winchester achieved her goal of keeping the ghosts away, and we, too, can achieve our goal of publication.

We just have to keep building.

Write on!

Monday’s Muse

See, I didn’t abandon the blog completely even though Holly Root and Barbara Poelle said I could.

I was going to post a contest today, but I’m not quite ready with all the pictures I need. First of all, I injured my ankle on Thursday (“it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt”—truer words were never spoken). According to the x-rays (yes, it hurt enough that I went for x-rays), nothing is broken—just severely bruised (they called it acute bruising, but there’s nothing cute about it). They gave me an air cast (a brace that has inflatable things on each side for support—it’s weird and probably alien made) and told me to stay off of it for the next 2-3 days. So I did—mostly. I was a good girl and propped it up and wore the wrap and the cast, but they also gave me crutches.

Yeah. In case you weren’t aware of it, using crutches takes upper body strength. And I learned just how little I had. *sigh* My arms ached within minutes of crutch use. No kidding. And every time I used them my poor arms burned and begged. And I was huffing and puffing like I was going to blow down the little pigs’ houses (like I had enough breath left for that?). So I gave up the crutches, spent most of my time in bed, and hobbled/hopped whenever I needed to walk anywhere. In spite of my walking on it, it’s doing much better today. So why no contest?

Things got crazy with J’s online school today and I haven’t had time to take pictures (yes, I need pictures of the prizes to entice and excite—I hope they will anyway). I’m going to take pictures now though and should be all ready for contest posting tomorrow morning. YAY!

Okay, enough about that. This is supposed to be a Monday’s Muse post. Let’s get to it.

As many of you know, I’ve been taking some classes from Joyce Sweeney. It’s a ten week course and today was lesson nine. I’m sad that there’s only one more week to go, but I’ve learned so much I’ll probably need another ten weeks to absorb it all and get my notes typed up.

In addition to the course by Joyce, I’ve also been studying some books on writing. Right now I’m reading James Scott Bell. And I’m amazed. It’s crazy that after almost eleven years of writing, I’m still learning new things about the craft. It’s true that you never stop learning. And some of the things I thought I knew, I realize I wasn’t as knowledgeable as I thought.

For example, at the beginning of the class with Joyce, she had us grade ourselves (A-D) on these novel elements: Plot, Voice, Structure, Concept.

I gave myself the following scores :

Plot- B

Voice- B

Structure- C

Concept- D

Okay, so I have a big ego.

After taking the course and learning about each of these four elements, I’d rate myself thusly:

Plot- C

Voice- B

Structure- D

Concept- B

I always thought I was pretty good at plot, but I discovered it’s one of my weakest areas. Yikes. There’s a lot more that goes into plotting that I realized. And for some reason I had it in my head that plotting and structure were basically the same. Yeah. WRONG. Joyce said structure is the vehicle that carries the reader through the story and plot is the road the structure travels upon. Who knew (probably you, but it was news to me)?

So now my eyes are open and I’m moving forward armed with knowledge and Joyce’s awesome plot clock. I so wish I could share that with you! It changed the way I’ll plot forever. But it’s her secret weapon and she only shares it with those who take her class. Sorry. No, truly, I am!

All this knowledge won’t guarantee me a perfect novel with amazing sales, but it sure has improved the way I write and even the way I think about writing. With what I’ve learned from these newest founts of knowledge, I’ve come up with some new methods.

Two of my favorites are my book planner and my scene planner. These will be huge in helping me organize my structure and make sure my novel is delivering the emotion it needs (did you know that structure is what delivers the emotion? I didn’t). Once I get the planners typed up, I’ll share them with you.

I’m excited about writing again and can see ways to revise my past work and write future work that I never before imagined.

Hope things are going well for all of you! See you tomorrow for the contest posting (seriously, it will be here).

Write on!

Monday’s Muse

Chocolate.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Many of you know my brain works in mysterious ways (I know, you thought only God did that). Some of you might question whether my mind works at all. Let me explain my chocolate muse. (hmm is that kind of like a chocolate bunny?)

As I ate chocolate today (part of any balanced diet), I started thinking about chocolate—and writing—and chocolate—and writing. Yes, they’re two of my favorite things, but that’s not the point (I do have one, I promise).

I thought about all the different kinds of chocolate out there on the market—way too many to start naming—and yet there are new chocolates hitting the market all the time.

With so many different chocolates, there’s something for everyone. Sure, there are best sellers out there, but there are also specialty chocolates or lesser known brands/kinds that still have a small to medium sized following. And all that chocolate on the market doesn’t mean they should stop making chocolate—they just need to make it different than the chocolate already out there if they want greater success.

Let’s take Hershey’s Kisses, for example. The company didn’t stop with the basic Kiss in the silver wrapper—it was great, but could be so much more. So they added white chocolate and called them Hugs. They added caramel, cordial cherry crème, airy chocolate, etc. They changed it up and made it new (and they keep doing it).

Now, there are people out there who only like the original Kisses, there are others (myself included) who prefer the “filled” Kisses (cordial cherry Kisses are my favorite). Something for everyone (well, except those chocolate haters out there—you’re DNA is messed up ).

You probably already see what chocolate has to do with writing, but I’m going to explain it anyway. Just like the chocolate makers have to make their product different, so do we as writers. Not every new chocolate concoction will be a hit—and neither will our writing. In spite of all this, chocolatiers continue to make chocolate, and we should continue to make stories—we’re told to make them unique.

Ugh! There’s that horrible word that’s thrown at us by agents and editors. It’s awful because it’s so open to interpretation. Okay, dictionary.com says “unique” means:

1. existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics: a unique copy of an ancient manuscript.

2. having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable: Bach was unique in his handling of counterpoint.

Three and four deal with species and problems/solutions so I left them out.

5. not typical; unusual: She has a very unique smile.

So we use the Kiss recipe (let’s pretend we read it somewhere) and make a cordial cherry filled chocolate, but instead of shaping it like a Kiss, we make it a square. According to definition five, that’s unique. It was also a fairly simple change—all we did was change the shape. And that’s the problem.

Writing something unique is easy. Writing something unique that an editor or agent would want is much harder. They have so many different varieties of chocolate thrown at them everyday that your product has to really stand out—and making it similar to something else but changing its shape isn’t going to cut it.

Your voice. I’m not saying you can rewrite Twilight using your voice and have it be a bit hit. (would you even want to?) First of all, vampires are way over done—baked to death (which is what used to happen if they went out in the sun).

Still, your unique voice is what will have agents and editors scrambling to represent your writing—well, that and good writing. But I’ve read/heard some agents and editors say that if the voice is there, they can fix everything else. How do we get our voice to be the one they want?

There are books, vlogs, webinars, conference talks, etc. about this topic—but it’s often the most difficult thing to figure out. This post is already way too long, so I’ll stop here for today and discuss voice further in my next post(s).

If you’ve already mastered your voice, fantastic! Please feel free to share any tips or tricks I might miss in my future posts. For those still searching (or if you just want to do it), here’s some homework:

Grab a few (or several) of your favorite books (or bring them up on your e-reader)—they don’t have to be best sellers, but it would be great if at least one was. Make sure they’re from different authors. Read the first page of each book. Compare each author’s work to the others you’ve selected. Do you see a difference in voice? What makes them different?

Now print out the first page of your novel or work in progress  and read it (reading it off your screen is cheating). Compare your writing to the work of the published authors. What does it tell you about your voice? Is your voice something “unique” that would catch an editor’s or agent’s eye? Write down why you think it would or wouldn’t. Hang onto that paper—we’ll come back to it.

Happy Monday!

 

Write on!

Monday’s Muse

Today’s muse comes from Jon Gibbs (An Englishman in New Jersey). He posted seven lines from page seven of his WIP. They are completely awesome and you really need to go read them. You can click on his blog title above and be taken to the post.

I’m taking the challenge and posting seven lines from page seven of my WIP. I wasn’t sure which WIP to choose, but after reading through page seven of my WIPs, I settled on these lines from my YA Horror, Behold The Dead:

"So, Angel boy, you came all this way to tell me I'm going to Hell because I don't have a physical body to finish my unfinished business, and I can't possess a physical body because I'll go to Hell?"

"Yes—I mean no—there are people put on Earth for this very purpose. If you're ready, I'll send you to your assigned Beholder."

I look over my shoulder. My murderer is continuing his dissection by pulling veins and arteries out of my right arm. "Sick," I say. "Yeah, get me out of here."

 

Not as intriguing as Jon’s, but there you go. This exercise opened my eyes. Each page seven of my WIPs was mostly dialogue—so I wondered about some of my favorite novels. What are their page sevens like? So I looked.

There were many page sevens to choose from, some heavy on the dialogue like my WIPs (which made me feel better), but I went with The Healing Spell by Kimberley Griffiths Little. I chose this because her page seven is filled with great lines! It was hard to choose, but I went with these as my favorite:

I glanced at her name tag. NURSE WADE.

Her gaze landed on me and she wiggled a finger. One of her marble-green eyes was staring off at three o’clock. I’d-a sworn she had a glass eye, which made me wonder if she could pop it in and out or if she performed demonstrations.

“Young lady, you can unpack,” Nurse Wade told me. “Put this card table right here against the wall next to the bed.”

My legs felt stiff, like one of Crickett’s Barbie dolls. Breakable if bent in the wrong direction.

 

Such great images and beautifully crafted sentences. That’s why Kimberley is one of my heroes.

What about you? Will you post seven lines from page seven of your work? What does page seven of your favorite novel say? Feel free to post in the comments or post on your blog and leave a link so I can check it out.

 

Write on!

Monday’s Muse = I Got the Point—and It Hurts!

I stabbed myself in the hand yesterday. Yes, this takes amazing talent, I know. Let me explain my stupidity. A few months ago, I purchased one of those forever sharp knife sets. Yesterday I decided to open it. I took out all the knives, but still felt something in the box. I put my right hand under the opening so whatever was inside could fall into my open palm and not onto my glass stovetop. I tipped the box upside down and shook it a little to dislodge the object stuck inside. Out came the fillet knife--yeah, the real sharp, pointy one—and straight into my hand. OUCH!!

It came right back out again, so I’m not sure how far it actually went in, but it hurt and bled quite a bit. I imagine it wasn’t too far in since the stab wound is small (about 1/8”), but the pain begs to differ. At least it’s off on the fleshy part about an inch beneath my pinky finger and not in the center of my palm. For some reason, thinking this makes me feel better.

In my defense, all of the other knives in the box were also in their own individual boxes so I had no idea there was a box-less instrument of pain awaiting me. Also, there were orange juice drinking things in the box. So I really wasn’t expecting to be wounded by whatever would fall out of the box. Still, I should have at least looked inside before shaking the box over my hand. S-T-U-P-I-D.

So, I’m in pain and it radiates out from the wound to share the agony with my pinky finger and on down my wrist, but I refuse to let it win. And, after reading this Monday’s Muse worthy post from Dawn Metcalf, I’m inspired to hope I can use this pain in my writing someday (though I admit it wasn’t something that crossed my mind before reading the post—the only thing on my mind in relation to the incident was PAIN! Owie, owie, owie).

I’m still typing in spite of the aching (though a bit more slowly with lots of breaks). And I still graded the spelling papers for K’s class last night (that hurt much worse than typing—something about the way I needed to hold the pen, I guess). And today I’m going to (hopefully) finish up a critique I’ve been doing and then dive back into my own writing again.

So, how has your week before Christmas started? Hopefully not with any stabbing pain.

 

Write on!

Monday’s Muse

Today’s muse comes from this super inspiring post on the Operation Awesome blog. The post talks about how writers are strong and not neurotic. Speaking for myself, I do tend to be obsessive about certain things—like checking my email, folding my towels a certain way, loading the dishwasher a certain way—but I don’t consider myself neurotic. The Operation Awesome post points out that it takes strength and bravery and resilience to be a writer.

I agree. It’s hard to sit in front of a blank page and create a world and characters and storyline to tie them all together. And after the writing comes the submitting—which is often harder than writing the work in the first place. And the waiting—oh the waiting!!

And when the replies do start rolling in 95% (give or take) will likely be rejections. Does the writer give up? Okay, some might, but those who don’t will continue to send out more queries. Then they will write more work, send it out, and start all over again until someday they break through. An agent signing or book deal! Hooray!

But it doesn’t end there. The book gets published and the reviews start rolling in. Not all of them will be “I loved this” and that’s not always easy to take either. But the writer doesn’t give up. They write more and publish more (hopefully) and take the good with the bad.

And there WILL be bad. We’ve all had those days and will likely have more on our road to publication (and beyond). It’s okay to feel down now and then. The trick is not to stay down! We have to pick ourselves up and get back to work.

If our dreams are slammed against the harsh reality wall of the world and shattered into millions of pieces, we must pick them up, reshape them, and make ourselves a new dream!

I think an excerpt from a song in Disney’s Cinderella says it best:

“No matter how your heart is grieving

If you keep on believing

The dream that you wish will come true.”

 

Write and Dream on!

Monday’s Muse

I don’t have a link to an inspiring post because today’s inspiration comes from the SCBWI AZ “Welcome to Our House Conference” I attended on Saturday.

It was great! I learned quite a bit about marketing and MG and YA fantasy and so much more. Karen Grencik from Red Fox Literary had a great list of reasons you get rejected. Joanna Cardenas from Viking busted some publishing myths. Liz Pelletier walked us through what happens from the time we query to when a book is published. We had some amazing panel discussions and even more amazing break out sessions. Unfortunately, we could only choose three—though I would have attended all of them if I could have.

Making a choice was tough, but I decided to attend Jordan Hamessley’s MG & Chapter Books craft session. She was great, and I changed my plans for the second session to stick around and attend her shop talk session about Penguin Publishers. For the third and final session, I went to Joanna Cardenas shop talk session to find out more about Viking Children’s Books.

After lunch we had great fun learning about marketing from Bobbie Combs (We Love Children’s Books—Independent publishing consultant) and learning from the panel as they did the first look/first page.

Conferences are a great source of learning and a great way to connect with people. If you haven’t attended a conference, you should try to! I haven’t yet made it to one of the “big” SCBWI conferences (summer and winter), but hope to one of these days.

This local conference was a huge inspiration, and I can only imagine how much more inspiring it must be to attend a huge SCBWI conference. The conference was just what I needed to give me a bit of extra excitement. We all know writing can be a solitary, lonely thing. Sure we have online or in-person critique groups (or both), but there’s something about a large gathering of fellow writers and industry professionals coming together to learn and grow that really inspires.

Plus I got to meet Angela Fox—I’ve been friends with her online for years, but had never met her in person until Saturday. She’s hilarious!!

And then there was the end of the conference where I was blessed to get a critique of my first chapter (MG Fantasy) and have a face-to-face meeting with one of the editors (I’m not saying which one). It was great to talk with her—and she loved my work—which is always nice to hear. Very uplifting and inspiring—especially since she requested I send her the full MS as soon as I’m done revising (hopefully by the end of the week).

Inspiration = Writing Conferences

Have you been inspired lately? If so, what inspired you? If not, get out there and find some inspiration!

Write on.

Monday’s Muse

Another month has passed away and a new month is born. What wonderful things will October have in store? Only the passing of each day will tell. On this wonderful morning, the muse brings inspiration from the always inspiring Dawn Metcalf’s post, "The Little Successes."

The inspiration: Harvest Time

Writing a book is like gardening. You plant, tend, and ultimately harvest the fruits of your labors. In the case of writing, the harvest is often publication (though it varies with your own goals).

In "real" life, a garden is planted in the spring (usually after the last frost has passed), grown during the summer, and harvested in the fall. It would be nice if our writing mirrored this relatively short time frame, but things in the writing world move more slowly (most of the time). Still, there is a season for everything.

Spring/Planting

The idea forms in our minds. Depending on the kind of writer, it’s either jumped right into and the writing begins (pantsters) or planned out in some form of outline or something (plotters)—or sometimes a combination of both (pantsplotters). Whatever the method, the writing happens at this stage. It’s a tough time, preparing the soil and getting the seeds into the ground/idea onto paper. But we persevere and get it done. YAY! Go us. Our springtime is over. We did it. Celebrate for a bit and wait for something to grow—in other words, take time away from your freshly written manuscript.

Summer/Tending

We’ve completed the planting, let the MS rest, and now it’s time to check in with it. Oh, look. There are weeds. It’s time to revise. Pull those weeds out and water the plants that are left. This season tends to last the longest—at least for me. It seems like the novel will never be ready—and it won’t if we don’t let it. Sometimes we just have to stop revising and let it stand on its own. Each writer is different when it comes to this. There are authors who wish they’d revised a scene or sentence even after publication. But you do have to eventually STOP revising if you ever want to be published.

Just as there are certain vegetables/fruits that can be harvested in summer, so too can you do a bit of light harvesting on your MS. Light harvesting is when you send out the manuscript to agents/editors. If you’ve planted and tended right, your manuscript should attract a few nibbles (requests for more) or, if you’re lucky, an all out feast (offer). But it’s not harvest time until you’ve landed a contract with a publishing house. This is why summer is the longest season.

Autumn/Harvesting

*Disclaimer: I’m still stuck in Summer so I don’t have any personal experience with this season—I’m going by my vicarious living experience here*

Oh the joys! The planting and tending are over. You (or your agent) sent it out and landed a contract. It’s time to harvest that garden/manuscript. This is where you work on the line edits your editor has given. You make the suggested changes (or not), send off the completed manuscript (as completed as you can get it—remember, you have to stop revising sometime), and your work is done. The gardening is finished. Hooray!

Or is it finished?

Yes, you’ve reaped all you can from that particular garden, but, just like “real” gardening, it will soon be time to plant another one. I wouldn’t advise jumping right in—unless you have a deadline or something. Do as Dawn Metcalf suggests (you read that post I linked to, right?) and take some time to breathe. Enjoy the world around you, involve yourself in a different form of creativity. Read that book (or books) that have been tempting you from your to-be-read pile.

And, when it’s time for Spring again (this varies by writer—YOU, not Mother Nature decides when the writing spring arrives), plant a garden and start all over again.

Write on!