Write Early. Write Often…Write Something!

Sustaining the Creative Life...

November 4, 2010 was the last post. So all those promises just went bye-bye? Yep, I guess they did. Let's see, since then, we've had ...nah, you don't want to know. It's been busy. But after SCBWI NYC Mid Winter conference when Sarah Zarr talking about sustaining the creative life, I've been treating my writing like a savings account. When I first started getting a paycheck, my dad told me to pay myself first, pay my bills and what ever was left over was for fun. And, amazingly, I did that. It got me to Europe a couple of times, I bought the sports car of my dreams, finished an advanced degree and it was great.

So why not do the same for writing? I write better in the morning before I'm totally clogged up with my life...the bills, appointments, house cleaning, all that STUFF  that makes up, no, takes up the hours of the day. So, starting with returning from NYC, I started writing first. That meant Tuesday/Thursday round robin tennis went away. But! it also meant that chapters started to come out in my MG story.

My new motto is to Pay My Soul First. If that means sometimes staring at a blank screen. So be it. But the truth is, the screen doesn't stay blank for long. 

And now…

Been a busy time.Last Wednesday we left the four puppies  at the kennel and headed out to Washington DC for a business conference. Ah, yes and if you're going to go to a conference do so at the Mandarin Oriental because it's nice. Very nice. We had a view of the Washington Monument from our window.    Dinner Wednesday night at Ristorante i Ricchis and the food was amazing, as was the service and the company. Hello Veronica and Guillermo Villa. Thursday was a trip to the Hillwood Estate. Marjorie Merryweather Post's estate in DC. 25 amazing acres   near Rock Creek Park. No pictures of the inside 18th century porcelain collection or the Russian icon collection, but the gold fountain outside the breakfast room was a wonderful treasure.    Dinner that night was a gala affair at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Can't resist those pictures with statutes. Here's Tom back in the 20th century and then me! 

   The Gala was a fun time and oh, ask me sometime about the dessert options. Let me tell you, Towers Watson does many things right, but they go way past right into incredible for dessert!!!  All good things end and we left the Mandarin Oriental for the Embassy Suites near the Convention Center and the Marine Corp Marathon. This 35 year old marathon started with just 1175 runners [four of whom have continued to run in each and EVERY marathon since] and this year there were 30K plus runners. It was amazing. Running on Sunday October 31, from Arlington Virginia into DC, past the Pentagon, Crystal City, The Mall, Lincoln Memorial to Rosslyn.  Here are our three marathoners: Lori Shannon, lovely niece and starter of the running craze in our family. Miss Meghan on the right and fiance, Greg Vogt on the left. A marathon time of 5 hours 37 minutes and 5 seconds for all three as they held hands and crossed the line. Limping and tired they were thrilled to have finished. A long walk across the bridge [because the Metro lines where HUGE] to Georgetown and a snack at Rhino Pub  on the main street with Mike Braun, Lori's boyfriend, Bayley and fiance, Dan Hockradle. All in all it was a great week. Not much writing on my part,  a little revision and a need to get home and focus. But I must say the puppies were most pleased with our arrival on Monday afternoon and were happy to be home. They each found their favorite part of the house. Missy, the coonhound on the far right, on the chaise upstairs. Marcus, middle back, on the couch in front of the TV, Sammy, the little rat terrier in front, who is afraid to venture up stairs stretched out in the middle of the bed and Grady, the Queen and old lady of the pack, just followed me around and sat where ever I was stopped.  

 So. home now. Emails answered and sent. Bills recorded, paid and filed. Clothes washed and ironed --well, not ironed. The wedding plans are four hundred and fifty miles to the north. Tom is at work. Just a couple of more SCBWI Carolinas stuff to finish off. But me? I can get my mind back to Aaron or Tommie or even Jerome Sue. I have three weeks, then its off to the north again. <sigh> I need a better system!  

Close, so close…

Finished 3800 words. Seventeen pages. All good stuff, but then DH read it over and where he has problems I have holes. Not exactly back to the starting line up. He marks the parts he likes.

So, apparently, according my first reader there's too much stuff and not enough clues. I don't need to start over he says, I just need to start better, sooner, faster. Let me know, he says, that there's a problem.

Well, duh, I respond. I thought I did. Nope. Didn't, he says.

So. If he can't get it, nobody else will either. And he knows the whole story.

A new beginning and wondering how many of those 3800 words and seventeen pages will survive.

Can software make a difference?

Maybe. Probably. But it depends. On Guppies and SinC-I Chapter I've heard discussion of various software to help writers. I don't want one that forces me into a certain pattern. I want it open-ended enough to give me some structure and not annoy my Inner Editor. She really doesn't like to be annoyed and sometimes it takes whole days to shut her up! 

Scrivener. It's a Mac only writing software. Which right there means these are not only serious people but they have a bit of dash and elan!

Designed by these lovely people in England who even talk about stopping periodically for tea. My kinda group, especially if tea means tea AND crumpets or a cookie or a biscuit. It's not just a cuppa, it's nourishment.

Anyway. Scrivener is a whole environment. It's my virtual binder with tabs for the writing, the research and the 'stuff' or whatever you want to name it. I'm using it on trial right now, you have 30 days to try it and that means either 30 days if you use it every day or 15 weeks if you use it two times a week so it really is thirty days. It makes index cards, but I haven't mastered those yet, and takes snapshots of your work so you don't have to keep saving different editions, and it outlines the work so you don't have to do that.

But what I like best, and I think this is because I've become a tad distracted as I've grown older, is there is this full screen feature. I mute the volume and I go to full screen. And when I type it's ALWAYS in the middle of the page--neat, huh? And there's nothing else. I can't hear the ding of incoming mail. I'm not tempted by the thought of a facebook update. I'm not curious as to who is twittering or tweeting what. 

The biggest problem is that I want to stay there, in that blanked off world, undistracted by my own life, living Aaron Hartley's adventure, worried about the missing week, his brother, his mom and dad and trying to figure out why he's the one to save the world. And what it's going to cost him. 

and now…back to full screen. 

Character, voice, want?

I've spent most of today working on five hundred words. Yep, the first five hundred are the hardest words EVER! Why? 

I'm a plot person. I love the intricacies of plot. First comes the small obstacle. Then a bigger one. Throw in a red herring and then a HUGE crisis and wow, there's your story. Regardless of how creative and wonderful the plot if the you don't have a main character someone wants to live with for the whole story, well, zilch, nada, zip, nein, nothing, gone, over.

Teen [YA] fiction is written many times in the first person. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't a short cut to getting voice into the story. Sometimes I wonder whose voice, especially when I don't know the author. Trying to get the voice of my MC for my time adventure story is driving me nutty. I've tried dialogue, and I think there's not enough plot. I'm trying talking to the reader and I'm wondering if there's too much setting and not enough of what is to come. 

Okay, so next I try third person limited. I'll let you know. 

 

'Nother Dimension

So. the conference is over. The golf classic is over. My study is clean [pictures at 11, or maybe on the 11th]. It's just me and iBook. Me and pen and paper. Whoa! No excuses. No obstcales! Nothing to stand between me and getting this book written. Ah. But which book.

After listening carefully to all the agents and editors I think I know. Mysteries, my favorite, are different at the MG/YA level. What passes for mystery these days has little to do with plot but are character driven. Can I do that? Maybe.The question is do I want to. Mysteries seem to be the hard sell. I feel like that TNT commerical that was on for a while. TNT We know drama!

I'm not going to get metaphyscial here. The order of the universe will not be upended. I'm leaving the mysteries for a different time, and moving toward the scifi adventure book.

The question is: Can I define Aaron Hartely as a character? Can I make you root for him? Okay, let's see.

 

Conference Overload

Whoa! Onto the third day of the conference. I need time to process, but I think it worked :) 

Amazing editors in Liz Waniewski and Alvina Ling, ditto for literary agent Chris Richman. Awesome Art Director Laurent Linn had us all wishing we were able to at least draw a solid story evoking, emotion ladened line and the presenters?  I have nothing but wonderful things to say about all of them. 

So. not much to write now. After I put this conference to paper and close out the year I have a place to go in my own writing and a better understanding of my character. It's my opportunity to see if I can take this an run! 

Head to Hand Connection

It's almost like an electric current. And at times, it feels a little painful. The tendons in my neck tense up. The muscles behind my ears feel tight and stiff. And I know I need to write. But there's a lot going on to take my attention, so in many ways this blog gives me the opportunity to express myself and expend that electricity!

Just finished reading the first book, A Maze of Bones, in the 39 Clues series. This one by Rick Riordan. It was a lot of what I loved as a kid in reading. Suspense. Danger. Helplessness. The feeling of not succeeding and then doing so. Somehow it seems more advanced in concept, language, structure and complexity than a middle grade book. Upper middle grade then? Okay, so now I'm hopelessly suckered in. I wasn't going to read them all, but <sigh> I guess I have to do that now! Yikes. No. Double Yikes! That's thirty nine books. Not that I'm complaining, but I have to read Gill's latest YA Sci-Fi and Bemis's 2nd installment and a couple of writing books that have been recommended. And, sheeze, Merlin third season is starting up soon! 

time is NOT on my side…

Down to nine, no seven days until I leave for Charlotte and the fall conference. I've made spreadsheets of just about everything. Had lunch today with Tammy at Marriott, planning menus, setting up rooms for sessions, ID-ing where to place the registration table and the breakfast table. Okay, so I think we're good. Registration closes on Monday. But we're in pretty good shape. Need to send out e-vites to faculty dinner and, oh, yeah, must remember to have some fun!

I really love this part of the process; the getting down to the wire, making this a worthwhile activity for so many people. I learn so much about people, stories and how to make them go together. There's a good nugget of knowledge in just about every day! That's a good thing.

Getting harder and harder to concentrate on Tommie, but I know she's sitting in my subconscious and she's plotting and planning and she's getting ready to explode! I hope I've got the time and the words for her to come out and play.  

Home Again, Home Again Jiggity Jog

So, the five days of renewal, rest and relaxation are done, over, nothing but a memory, a couple of pounds and some digital images stored on my camera and soon on my computer. But the lingering effects are mighty. I hope.

We ate, drank, visited shops, art galleries, street fairs and the Biltmore House. It is an exercise in mental acuity to understand the lifestyle of the Vanderbilts and their scion. Even in the twenty-first century. Today an  eight thousand acre backyard compared with one-hundred years ago and a one-hundred fifty plus yard. 'Cause that is what it is, it is their backyard. The Vanderbilt family treat it with care and respect and do more than their fair share in that regard, but Whoa! it's still their yard. Sort of like the ultimate 'living over the store' idea.

It defies the anonymous maxim 'Truth is stranger than fiction…." And we usually forget the ending '…but not so popular.'We were visiting after a major holiday, and school has begun and still there were a lot of people. I don't even want to think about what it would be in the middle of summer!

So, now. After leaving Tommie to her own devices for a week, it's time to get her going, moving to the next scene; finding mysteries where there may be none, bringing her own brand of confusion and dissemblance, working on her career goal of totally annoying her older sister right out of the house. <sigh> we have a ton of work to do!