Still At It

It’s been a while since my last post in March for Vivian Kirkfield’s #50PreciousWords contest. I ended up getting an honorable mention! That’s the second year in a row I’ve gotten on honorable mention. Maybe next year will be the year!

Since March, I stopped working on the adult fantasy. I ended up cutting out the last 20,000 + words, and have written a few hundred more here and there. I wrote, and have since worked on, a flash fiction piece that I’ve submitted to a few places, all ending in rejection, though one was a positive rejection. I’ve also been rejected on a few different picture book manuscripts.

But, that comes with the territory. I’ve only gotten rejections, but that’s bound to change, and can only change if I keep working, and keep submitting.

I restarted The Right to Write by Julia Cameron, got to about a third of the way through, but am taking a pause. Sometimes her writing bothers me- she comes across as full of herself, and I can only take it in small doses. I do like her prompts, though. I do recommend reading the book and doing ALL the prompts as you go!

I’ve been listening to the Book Smitten podcast as they read Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul, discuss the chapters here and there, and follow each assignment as the podcasters write a picture book manuscript. I’ve been doing the same, working on a new manuscript, but have fallen a few episodes behind. It’s amazing how much getting back to teaching can throw my routine into a loop.

I’m still reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders with a reading group. The discussions we have each month are extremely valuable! The book focuses on Russian Authors, and a select few short stories by them, but we also work towards translating this to picture books.

I’ve been reading The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker as well, examining her poetic style, and slowly making the attempt to move my poetry into a more formal style- well, any style really. I have yet to examine her short stories as my reading group has been doing with A Swim by our dear friend George (not really, but it’s how we feel!).

What have you been up to lately? Let me know in the comments!

NaNoWriMo My Own Version

Yeah, doing things my way.

NaNoWriMo is upon the writing community, again. 50,000 words in the month of November towards a novel. I’d tried it in the past, but never succeeded. The closest I came was my first attempt when I still had dreams of making it as a self-published author of fantasy. What I wrote was not that good. But, it was a draft. That said, I self-published it anyway after some editing. And quickly removed it.

In the few years after, I had grandiose plans to write 50,000 words towards a variety of fantasy novels, all of which fell waaaaaaaaaaay short of the goal. I still have the drafts I’d started, and still have a desire to finish them, but not strong enough to stop writing children’s books. I do dabble in them once in a while.

After moving to children’s books, I changed my goals of one novel to a couple drafts of middle grade or chapter book stories, mixed with several picture book drafts. Anything that would total 50,000 words.

Yeah, that never worked, either. I never finished one MG or Chapter Book draft during the NaNo allotted time.

Not an image of me sitting on my ass.

This year, I’m doing something different. Something I’ve won aged to write and now have a dedicated month to make myself sit on my ass and create.

My goals?

Plot out the second early chapter book in a fantasy, write the draft (about 9,000 words), create a map of the world, and create character charts for the main characters and reoccurring minor characters.

It’s three days in and I’ve done the outline, along with a couple ideas left over for a third, and written the first chapter of eleven.

Not a bad start. And? I’m motivated to keep on going!

How about you? At you NaNo-ing?

Movin’ And Groovin’

This is how I’m feeling right now. A manuscript has moved to territory I’ve never experienced before and I’m excited. But it’s more than that…

My critique group? I love it already! I’ve gotten some great feedback and I cannot wait to delve into that manuscript some more. I went through the checklist for critiquing I set up for myself and it seemed to work. It takes a bit longer than I hoped, but I felt like I was able to offer a deeper critique than I may have in the past. I did get them their feedbacks within our ten day timeline :)

What else…Oh! I FINALLY typed up a handwritten manuscript for a fantasy novel I started in the 1990’s! It’s pretty bad as it’s one of the first things I’d ever written/ started that was not a poem. I have quite the detailed notes for the main character and other characters as well. There’s also a character list with brief description and a map. It was 30+ pages handwritten on a yellow tablet (the old fashioned kind). I think it ended up being about 6,000 words or so. The main reason I did it was to hopefully find some things I could use in other stories, or maybe, someday, turn it into something. But, either way, step one is done!

And then there’s the poetry. I’ve been editing several poems I’ve written for adults. I’ve got around eighty or so of them in various states of disrepair. Poetry was my first writing love, and I still enter the occasional contest. Having a chapbook one day would be a dream! For me, poetry is an excellent form of therapy.

Oh! A chapter book! I exchanged critiques on the Eastern PA SCBWI Facebook site and got some great feedback. I’ve gone through the manuscript a couple times since then, but really need to hammer it down and give it a major revision. Overall, I’m very pleased with the direction of this MS, and loved the feedback I got.

Being back in the classroom and the beginning of the year things to do are subsiding a bit, and I’m getting back into a normal routine. Routine is good.

How’re things going for you? Let us know!

Running and Writing

Running and writing have so many things in common.

1. They both hurt.​

2. They both really suck at the beginning​, but get better the more you do it.

3. They’re both fulfilling.​

4. I love them both.​

5. They both help me drink more coffee. I’m not sure how that works with running, but any excuse to drink more coffee is a good one.​

6. They’re both (for the most part) calming.​

7. I hate them both (at times- coffee helps me love them).​

                        Proof I ran today :) 

I was hoping to get to 10, but 7’s good, too.

I used to run a lot, before writing.  Not being able to run (hip/ knee surgeries, and lack of knee being able to recover) led to more writing. How? I’ll explain.​

I had hip and knee surgery, couldn’t run, so I started writing.​

The end.​

I had wheels, but then one fell off.  That’s me on the right, with the runners 15 years younger than me.

That was six years ago or so.  My hip has been great, but my knee did not recover so well.  I tried on and off for a couple years, but the constant recurring pain became frustrating, and I gave up on it for a few years, until last Spring when I ran a few times (about a quarter to a half mile) after HIIT class.  I had no pain, but I didn’t continue like I should have.  Fast forward 8 months, to the past couple weeks, and I’ve run four times, for about a mile to a mile and a half and have had NO pain at all!​

In fact, I am sitting here, with a coffee in my Tinker Bell mug, of course, writing after a run. It was cold, rainy, and I loved every single step of it.  And so did my knee.​

Besides writing, what else do you do?​

StoryStorm 2019

I’ll be joining many others for StoryStorm.  For those that don’t know, StoryStorm is a challenge to come up with 30 picture book ideas in 31 days. Originally, it was called Picture Book Idea Month held in November, but creator Tara Lazar switched to to January a couple years ago to give everyone a fresh batch of story ideas to work with for the new year.

I first did StoryStorm back in 2015, when it was PiBoIdMo.  I have “won” the challenge each year, and some of those ideas have been turned into manuscripts. For the ideas that do not get turned into a manuscript, I keep them on file on my iPad, and also as a small booklet in my bag. 

I create a file on Scrivener for each year, with each idea following the same format:

Idea # 7

Characters:

Setting:

Problem:

Adventure:

Solved:

Notes:

I used to keep each as a separate notecard on scrivener, but putting them in one file is so much easier. From there, I just fill in the info that comes to mind when an idea slaps me on the back of the head.  The idea might just be a location, characters, or a problem.  I rarely end up with just one part filled in.  I usually get three of them filled in.  Many of my ideas come from Storybird.com For ideas that come from there, I write in the notes what pic it was.  On my account, I try to remember to favorite them so I can look back at them.  Sometimes I’ll e-mail myself a link for the pic.

Do you participate in StoryStorm?  Where do you get your ideas from?