Children's Lit Class

Wow. Hi. I've sucked at blogging lately. I have excuses- start of school, having bronchitis for a month (still got it), three trips to New York city in three weeks, my brand-new computer crashing (and taking a good 15 pages from my novel with it) etc. But I'm not going to detail them.

I want to talk about my children's writing class. I almost didn't get to take this class because it runs at the same time as my required stage make-up class. Fortunately, my advisor is letting me work around this and take the writing class. It meets once a week for three hours and I'm totally in love with it.

We cover everything from picture books to YA novels, including writing for magazines and non-fiction books. At the moment, we just finished reading and discussing The Tale of Despereaux, which I loved (and had never read before.) We're reading so many great books and I get so excited during every class. During yesterday's class, I had a bronchitis-related fever and I still thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The thing I love about it is that it inspires me not just to write, but to write what I love, and outside of it, too. Sometimes it's hard to be a YA writer in a school full of people (and a group of friends) who don't read YA, but my teacher is so passionate and supportive of children's lit that I feel I'm given permission to do my work. Also, after reading Despereaux, I think I'd like to write a middle grade novel some day.

As with my last writing class, it's a critique class part of the time. I'm not being critiqued until November, but I need to start getting my stuff together now. One scene that I wanted to present was deleted when my computer crashed, so I need to start putting the pieces back together. I'm excited to get their feedback, though. The response from my professor on my first (ever) non-fiction magazine article was much better than I expected. I was afraid to look at her comments, but aside from a few words suggestions here and there, it was received quite well. At the end, she wrote that she could see it being published, which caused me to happy dance in my brain :)

Speaking of things that cause happy dances and inspiration- if you haven't bought Maureen Johnson's The Name of the Star, DO IT NOW. I've always been a fan of MJ; she hasn't written a single bad book. This one, though, is simply amazing. She writes with a bravery I can only dream of. Plus, it takes place in London (almost exactly where I went to school, down to the street) and there are ghosts. What more could you want?

Writer on Campus!

Tonight, I went to an awesome talk through the Writers Return to Campus program at my university. The YA author Frankie Mallis spoke tonight about the publishing business, the process of getting an agent, networking, and a few other things. I thoroughly enjoyed the talk and took pages of notes! It was inspirational to see someone from my own school doing so well! Frankie, if you're reading this, thanks for coming!


In other news, I'm sorry about being so lax with posting lately. I've been super busy with the start of rehearsals for my next play and continuing rehearsals for Alice. But still, I don't want to be slacking, considering that I'll be doing both shows during NaNoWriMo- which is only two weeks away! Ahhh!

Just Chatting

Today I went with most of the film crew I'm involved with to scout locations. When we finished with that, we went for bite to eat and ended up talking about writing, and, in particular, our novels. While I'm not going to outline our whole conversation, since it was a good two hours long, I will just say that having someone (or a few people) to talk to about this stuff is really nice. At the risk of sounding holier-than-thou, sometimes people who don't write, even just casually, don't understand what it means to be surprised by a character or the way a scene had to go. It was just really great to talk to people who are in the midst of doing the same thing.

Also, the one of them who is editing my novel right now is being really, REALLY thorough. As in, he edits a paragraph a night, is on page ten, and comment 40. While this is daunting, it's also good, for two reasons. The first is that I edit the exact same way. Well, I go much more quickly, because I like to get the flow of the story as I edit, but I am also usually up to comment 40 by page ten or so. It's good, too, for the reason that I need this. As my editor mentioned, my first editor did all the basic stuff, so now it's time for a more in-depth look at the story. I'm pretty sure his edits are going to kick my butt, and I'm positive it is going to be for the best. I'm equal parts nervous and excited.

And now I leave you with a picture I took with my new camera while we were location scouting:

Talk of Nooks and Editing

Hello, everyone. I hope you had a wonderful Chrismahannukwanzika! I know my Christmas was lovely. Though I love all of my presents, my favorite is the one I have not yet recieved- a Nook! My mom and I had been discussing the possibility of my getting a Sony Reader/Kindle, and it was between those two for many, many months until I was shopping at B&N one day and saw that they had something, as well. My mom was still pretty gung-ho about the Sony Reader until she began to read reviews about the Nook, and by that point, they had already been sold out for awhile. So I will have it before I go back to school but not before I leave for the theatre festival (it arrives the day after I leave!) I am so excited to (eventually) have this because it will eliminate an entire suitcase when I study in England next year! Seriously, I was despairing over which books I would have to leave behind, because I am the type of person who brings fifteen books with me on a weekend trip to the beach in case I feel the overwhelming urge to read page 47 of this or that book.


But I digress. I am very excited about this and that is all. Because I had a point in writing this blog, and that point is this: I began editing my NaNo novel today.


It hasn't been quite a month since I locked my novel away in the bottom drawer of my desk at school, but I had time today and it's close enough. Additionally, I have people waiting to edit it that I am sure will do a far more thorough job than I am doing.


Editing is an interesting process, and actually, almost a brand-new experience for me. Though I have been writing forever, I rarely ever finish my stories, which is odd because I am a person who does not like loose ends. But, as a friend and fellow writer and I were discussing just today, sometimes reaching the end is what we are afraid of. A work in progress is safe because it's still in progress. But if you type that final word of your novel and think, "I'm done,"... well, that's a little frightening.


If course, as I am learning in this editing process, a novel is not nearly "done" once you finish the first draft. There is SO much work to be done on this story... so, so much. I am not a person who generally makes a ton of grammatical and/or conventional errors, but believe me, they are present in my first draft. I have marked so many things I want to change. For it being my biggest writing pet peeve, I repeat words an awful lot. And I discovered about an hour ago a huge chunk of a scene that I just never wrote. I kept flipping pages, looking for the missing part, and then realised that that was a section of the scene I had meant to get back to and just never did. I would have been so embarrassed if I had sent my novel off with that chunk missing.


As odd as it sounds, as I read, I am realising that plot is one of my weaknesses. I am very insecure in my writing and tend to have ideas given to me that I then work my characters around that story, and I feel safe because it's not MY story, it's just my words put together to form that story. But this novel is completely of my own imagining and I am scared that I have no plot. As I mentioned in my very first entry, I failed at NaNo last year because I didn't really had a plot. I had a few good scene ideas, but beyond that, nothing. And somehow, I feel that even though I have over 50,000 words of a plot of my own creation... I feel like I am in the same situation. Am I the only one that suffers from this insecurity?


However, I have been told on more than one occasion that character development is one of my strengths, and I am proud of that. I feel like my MC is a strong character. There are a number, however- Gloria, Mrs. Grady, Suzanne, Billy, Ethan, and Annie, just to name a few- that I feel can be developed further. Only about two and a half of them are main characters, but I come from the theatre world where there are no small parts!


Tomorrow, I shall finish my editing, including my chapter breakdown, and then I will apply those edits to my novel as best I can. I could rush this and do it in a day, but I am making myself draw it out for a few days. I have promised the novel to my editors after the new year, so I am thinking by the third or so, I will send it out. I am very nervous about their opinions, but I know they will be helpful- and I much prefer pages of notes to a passive "I liked it."


And now I must to bed, for it is late and I am tired. Bonne nuit!


P.S. Another one of my presents was a NaNoWriMo t-shirt! I love it!

Chapter Fifteen: In Which I Return

Word Count: 26,008/50,000

Wow, Reader- it has been a crazy, crazy couple of days. Beginning on Tuesday, I had a whirlwing of stage management duties as we opened and closed our show- in fact, I've just returned from striking the last one.

But I promised I wouldn't talk about that stuff on here. This blog is about WRITING. So let's talk about writing. Today, I'd like to discuss some of my writing inspirations. Here they are:




LIBBA BRAY: A bundle of awesomeness (and I know- I've met her) in both person and writing. I don't really know what it is about her books, but all of them are so incredibly well-written. While I prefer the gothic-ness of the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Going Bovine was funny, touching, and shocking. I supposed I like her writing because it's so fearless... and yet, she's admitted to crying while writing it. She's a brave writer, I suppose, and I strive to be like that. I also love her dark humor- Gemma and I are like twins in our sarcasm.



MAUREEN JOHNSON: Another awesome YA writer. I love Maureen's writing style. Her humor is always laced into the story but in a different way each time- Jane in Devilish is a darker than Scarlett in Suite Scarlett who is much different than Ginny in 13 Little Blue Envelopes. I have yet to be disappointed by one of her books. She is so skilled at mixing quirky comedy with serious dramatic events- such as the death of May's father in The Key to the Golden Firebird- in oe book. I admire her so much!



IAN MCEWAN: I've only read one of this books, Atonement (and yes, before the movie came out!) and I love his attention to detail. He is also in the category of fearless writer. Amazing.



EMMA THOMPSON: Wonderful actress, yes, and just as wonderful of a writing. Her adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is so great and Nanny McPhee was a great film too. I really want to do what she does- act AND write.


DAVID AUBURN: Playwright, author of Proof. I love Proof- it's so true to life. I just love how true his dialogue is.



NEIL SIMON & TOM DUDZICK: Amazing amazing amazing. Dudzick has often been called "the Catholic Neil Simon" and it's so true. They write completely real scenes with real life problems and are funny as they do it.



There are a bunch of other writers that I admire, but those are the main ones. I strive to their level of greatness.


Now, even though I have been crazy busy with the show, the great thing about being the stage manager of this show was that I didn't have to do anything. Most shows have lots of light and sound cues throughout the show that the SM has to call, but since I didn't have any, I wrote. That's at least an hour and a half of writing- usually around five pages or so- for four days, and on these last two, we did two shows a day. And wow, did I get a lot of writing done. I am ahead of the recommended word count.


My novel keeps getting darker and darker... maybe it's because of the show I was writing during (The Exonerated... lots of death), but my poor main character, Ruthie, has now been tortured. It is not pretty, and I don't know where it's coming from.


Now, an excerpt:



For a week, life went on as usual, which struck Ruthie as incredible. How could they all manage to forget what had begun just seven days before? How could they forget that every second, their lives were at risk?
She wondered, and yet she did it too. She talked and laughed with Nora and Annie. She teased her brother. She complained about small things like homework and chores when people were making much greater sacrifices not so far away. And when she swore she saw Jimmy in the library and the soda shop and grocer’s, she told herself that it was just her imagination and looked in the other direction.
As much as everyone managed to return to their normal lives, however, there were reminders of the losses that had already been suffered all over the city. The buildings that had been hit were still in shambles. Ruthie overheard someone on the street say it could take months to clean up the wreak age, and only if no other buildings fell victim to the Germans. The air raid drills were constant and could happen at any moment. People were now using the underground as a make shift shelter and sometimes, the people waiting down there had to sleep in the station over night. Each time she walked home or to school or to the store or the cinema, Ruthie prayed that she would not have to run down to the tube station and take cover.
There were also the posters. Since the bombing, missing persons posters had gone up all over the city, tied to telephone poles and tree trunks, pinned to community bulletin boards. Some had even been shoved through the Halperts’ mail slot so that when one of the family entered, they would see someone’s black and white photograph staring up at them from the floor. Ruthie always studied these blurry pictures closely. If she saw one of these people on the streets, she wanted to be able to recognize them. She did not know what she would do if this did happen one day – certainly shouting, “I found you!” or chasing them would do no one any good. But this was a dilemma she had not yet faced. Though she tried to look at every face she passed, none of them were those lost people in the pictures. She looked especially hard for Jimmy and Arthur Henderson. Her heart hurt every time she passed one of their flyers, with “HAVE YOU SEEN THESE CHILDREN?” written in large letters above the brothers’ smiling school photographs.
It was the pictures themselves that made the posters so upsetting. While the word missing reminded you that that person was no longer at school or at work or sitting at the dinner table with their family, Ruthie was bothered by the grins, smirks, and shy smiles that looked out at her from the paper. When she looked at those faces, she remembered that these were past events – this person, this parent, child, brother, aunt, might not be smiling like that anymore. Whenever these thoughts came over Ruthie, she could not help picturing those people with scared expressions. What must they be feeling now? Or were they not feeling at all?