Rainbow

We don't see many rainbows in Michigan because the sky is often overcast after rainstorms. This photo is cropped strangely, because I was trying to delete the neighbor's roof.

SCBWI-Michigan Spring Conference

On Saturday I attended the SCBWI-MI 2010 Spring Conference, The Tortoise and the Hare: Journey to the Finish Line. There was a star-studded line-up, and the conference was packed with useful information about writing and illustrating.

I was reminded of ideas that had been put aside while I struggled with writing or revising, and the speakers organized information in a way that made it fresh. Here are the pearls of wisdom I gathered.

Jay Asher explained how to build suspense by creating overlapping subplots, so that when one problem is resolved, other issues remain to keep the reader turning pages.

Beth Fleisher advocated mapping arcs for plot, character, emotional development and setting.

Ruta Rimas discussed analyzing a manuscript word by word, at the level of sentences and by paragraph.

Donna Gephart suggested we fill in the blanks in this sentence for our protagonists: I’ll do anything to ___, just don’t ask me to ___.

It was an action-packed day, and unfortunately I didn’t get to hear all of the speakers.

Sunday

Overheard #91

"The pan is mightier than the swordfish.”

(sad but true)

Self-Centered Saturday

I ignored the urgent email requests to help chaperone Jeremy’s high school band’s trip to the State Music Festival. (They got along fine without me.) I didn’t attend Sam’s promotional belt test at the Tae Kwon Do studio. (It was an intermediate-level test, not one of the biggies.) Instead I went to a book signing by Laura Resau.

Laura has been one of my favorite authors for some time now because I admire:

• the rich, accuracy of the settings
• the complexity of the characters
• the beauty of the language
• the opportunity to find out about other cultures
• her knack for total-immersion storytelling

A few other writers, including Ruth McNally-Barshaw, attended the signing, and we had a terrific afternoon discussing the writing process and its many challenges. Not only that, I got signed copies of The Indigo Notebook and Star in The Forest.

Indulge yourself. Pick up some of Laura’s books, sit back and enjoy.

Sunday

chorus line

Ask a Ninja

On Thursday, I finished the first draft of my new novel, SSA. Man, is it rough! Fortunately, Sam will soon be in a homework-free zone and available to advise me on the scenes involving Tae Kwon Do. He’ll probably even demonstrate moves. It’ll be like having my very own Ask a Ninja.

Overheard #90

(back by popular demand)

"All they can say is no."

Accents, Dialects and Languages

Yesterday evening at Write Night, we worked on the following exercise. I found it very difficult, even though I thought it up.

1. Write an innocuous statement.
2. Rewrite it using a different accent, dialect or language.
3. How would your protagonist react to the statement in #2?

• a. Is it familiar, foreign, interesting, scary, impressive, despicable, etc.?
• b. Is the character aware of his/her reaction?
• c.  Does the character show or hide his/her reaction?

4. Write a scene depicting your protagonist’s reactions to the accent/dialect/ language.

5. Write a second scene in which you change the character’s reaction to the accent/dialect/language, with the emphasis on 3b. (If your protagonist was conscious of the reaction in the last scene, make him/her unaware this time or vice versa.) The scene may be a continuation of the last one or something completely different.

Excel

It feels like I’ve been working on my current rough draft f o r e v e r, but in reality, I started in on February 8th of this year. I know this because back in November, I started keeping an Excel file to track my writing progress. Aside from columns for the date, project name, word count and notes, I have column for distractions and excuses. It’s wonderful to have a private place to whine, and because it’s an Excel grid, I have to be brief. Last Sunday, next to a measly word count, I typed the word flood. I won’t expound on that here, except to say future entries in this column will include dry wall repair and painting.

Sunday

Wednesday

Words

Sometimes a good writing day is when my fingers fly over the keyboard. A thousand words sparkle on the screen, my plan unfolds, and the direction for tomorrow is clear.

Sometimes a good writing day is when I stare at the screen and it remains blank. Finally dredge up a page, each word worse than the one before.
I delete it, grind out a page and a half, and keep one sentence – not for its words but for its idea.
After a while, if it’s a good writing day, I type a paragraph that shows me the direction for tomorrow.

Writing and Photography

A good photograph is like a good scene. Both tell a story. Both the writer and the photographer must decide where to focus, on the appropriate depth of field, when to zoom in, when to include the big picture. Both consider motion and stillness, light and dark. The other day I noticed photos on the school website that happen to feature my sons. The concepts that make these photos compelling also apply to revising.

Shun the mundane. Sousaphones are weird instruments with their curving shapes and unwieldy size. The photographer focused on the unusual, so Jeremy and his Sousaphone are in the picture. When revising, I look for the point of interest in the scene and decide if it is interesting to the intended audience.

Focus on Tension. The photographer aimed down the line of scrimmage a moment before the football was hiked, two moments before impact. The D-line is tensed, muscles bulging, waiting to slam into their opponents. Tension crackles from this photograph, and Sam, the (former) nose-tackle, is in the picture. When revising, I delete or rewrite scenes that have no tension.

Sunday

Double Standard

“Just because my characters drink milk straight out of the jug, doesn’t mean you can.”

Yeah, I did say that today.

Body Image

In Hope Vestergaard’s article, FLIPPING PANCAKES WITH A SHOVEL: Crafting and Promoting Compelling Books for Babies and Toddlers, she encourages picture book writers to get down on the floor and view the world as toddlers do. The same idea can apply to writing for teens.

Novelists are frequently told to “get into the heads” of their characters, but what about getting into their bodies? Being in a teen body is more than worrying about sexual development and acne. My sons were unusually clumsy right after a growth spurt because they didn’t know where their hands and feet were. Oily hair, erratic hormones and killer cramps can all be part of the picture. Don’t forget the weird stuff. That cute little pug nose is suddenly Roman. Straight hair may become curly. Eagle-eyed kids need glasses. Personally, I’d like to forget the unpleasant parts of being a teen, but my characters keep reminding me.

In A Rut

Here's another picture of that plant. It sure is weird.

Salutations

When my sons were beginning Tae Kwon Do students, they had to learn Korean vocabulary, including how to say hello in a respectful manner. I started thinking about the different ways we say hello. Greetings can show characters’ relationships, how they feel about one another, their social status, and sometimes the time and place. Here’s a list of salutations with different connotations.

Hello
Hi
Hey
Hey you
Yo
Hello there
Hi there
Hey there
How do you do?
Howdy
How are you?
HRU
How are you doing?
How’s it going?
Good day
G’day
What’s up?
ZUP
Ahoy
Good evening
Good morning
Greetings
Salutations
Welcome
Do you read me?
Come in
Dear (name)
Dear Sir or Madam
To Whom It May Concern

Sunday

The radiant heat from the brick wall caused this magnolia to bloom early.

Spring Peepers, Door Handles and Inertia

I posted on facebook that I’d heard the first spring peepers, and a friend replied, “Well, get out there and photograph them, and post the pictures.” I shall try. Frogs are less skittish than turtles and often wait for me to focus.

At Saturday’s critique group, I plan to unveil Chapter 1 of my new novel. As I tweaked words and sentences, that old song from HMS Pinafore popped into my head. “And I polished up the handle on the big front door.” A door handle just might work as a metaphor for a first chapter.

Although it feels like I’ve been working on this first draft forever, it’s only been two months. I’ve worried that if I slow my pace, I’ll never get going again. I can still hear my father’s voice defining inertia. “A body in motion tends to remain in motion. A body at rest tends to remain at rest, unless they are acted upon by an external force.” I’m trying to remain in motion.

This Bud's For You

I wish I'd remembered to write a funny spoof in honor of today.

I guess I'll finish the taxes instead.

Thinking About Graphs

Today is the birthday of Rene Descartes. People usually remember him for saying, "Je pense donc je suis." (I think therefore I am.) For me, his most important accomplishment was identifying the relationship between geometry and algebra, thus laying the foundation for analytical geometry. Cartesian coordinates are named after him, although he did not carry his mathematical research far enough to plot a line.

References:
http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Descartes-Rene.html http://mathforum.org/cgraph/history/descartes.html
http://www.freeessays.cc/db/30/mdg2.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_geometry

Contest Announcement

Moonrat is celebrating the 500,000th hit on her blog with a contest for a 20 page critique. Click here for details.

Revision Quote from Laurie Halse Anderson

"Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural."

Sunday

Nostalgia

The other night we watched The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie. As Hercule Poirot gathered clues and investigated suspects, my husband said, “This would be a lot simpler with DNA evidence.” It got me thinking about how contemporary novels have changed.

Remember when:

• Mystery novels were built around clocks and train schedules instead of cheek swabs and blood tests
• Spy stories involved confrontations with the Soviet Block
• It was impossible to reach a character by telephone
• Pirates marked the spot with an X not global coordinates
• The guilty worried about destroying incriminating negatives rather than deleting files
• Questions of paternity could support an entire plot

Little Shop of Horrors

This is what Sunday’s bud looks like a few days later. I particularly like the purple tentacles writhing up the green bumpy part. Won’t somebody please put it in a fantasy or sci-fi novel?

Write Night Exercise: Letter Writing

This Write Night exercise was inspired by Elegy for the Personal Letter by Allison Joseph. Here’s the exercise for those who could not attend.

Write two letters from one character in your novel to another character in your novel. The second letter should be written by a different character than the first. Remember voice!

The second letter may be a response to the first, but it doesn’t have to be.

The two letters should convey opposite emotions. Choose a pair of emotions from list and write one letter to depict each. (The order doesn’t matter.) If I omitted your favorite pair of emotions, feel free to write about those.

Happy/Sad
Angry/Pacifying
Accusatory/Congratulatory
Triumphant/Defeated
Industrious/Lazy
Hope/Despair
Fear/Bravery
Love/Hate
Grief/Joy
Anticipation/Surprise
Aggression/Submission
Guilt/Innocence
Pride/Shame
Envy/Selflessness
Disgust/Pleasure
Exhausted/Energetic
Regret/Satisfaction
Worry/Relief
Embarrassment/Self-esteem

One letter should tell the truth. The other should be a lie.

Sunday

signs of spring

And I spotted two red-winged blackbirds and a field full of robins.

Catch a Sunbeam in a Cobweb

It’s been a while since I posted a weird picture. Remember this one?

Is anybody writing spooky stuff? Perhaps your hero will journey through the underworld today.

The Dreaded Synopsis

For the past week or so, I’ve been struggling with the synopsis for TAoCBS. My attempts fell into the common pitfall of Way Too Much Detail. This morning a new approach succeeded.

1. Figure out the shape of your novel.
Is it a linear progression in which A causes B causes C? Does it have a branching tree shape, where one event sets several things in motion? Does it resemble a capillary bed with diverging and converging plot elements? Does it look like a funnel in which several seemingly disparate events coalesce at the climax?

2. Draw your novel.
Make brief notations about plot events and connect them with arrows. I like to use jagged-lined arrows for high-conflict. Remember the shape of your novel as your draw.

3. Decide which plotlines are essential for the synopsis.
It may not be possible to include every subplot in a one-page description.

4. Write the synopsis based on your diagram.
Think brief. Think essential.

5. Edit and cut.

On Doing Homework

Sam: I’m going to look over my math homework and see if I can cull the herd – take out the weak ones.

***

Jeremy: I have to go fishing for answers. I think I have it, then I realize it got away.

Sunday

Friday Fun

Click over to Jumping the Candlestick, an awesome blog by Debbie Diesen, and enter to win your own autographed copy of The Barefooted, Bad-Tempered Baby Brigade.

 

 

 

100 Scope Notes by Travis Jonker features Book Spine Poem Gallery today. Books are stacked so their titles create poetry. It’s hilarious. I’m going to peruse my bookshelves to see if I can create a poem of my own.

Trust Your Process

I’m always interested in how other people write. A highly successful mystery writer said he wrote five pages a day, five days a week. Another prolific writer explained his second draft was to fix little things while he mentally prepared himself to make major revisions.

Usually, when I’m writing a first draft, I review and revise the previous day’s work before I add to it. This nets about two pages of new writing each day. For my current WIP, I changed my process. I’m charging ahead with the story and not looking back – yet.

What’s your process?

SCBWI-Michigan Spring Conference

Yesterday I received the brochure for the SCBWI-Michigan spring conference. You can see the speaker lineup here. I’m sure the brochure will be on the website soon.

It looks like an action-packed conference. Here are some links about the speakers.

Author and Illustrator Websites:

Jay Asher
Donna Gephart
Dave Coverly
James Tobin

Agent Information:

Beth Fleisher
Agent Spotlight on Literary Rambles by Casey McCormick

Editor Information:

Ruta Rimas
Market My Words by Shelli (srjohannes)
Terry Pierce: Children’s Author
Day By Day Writer by Samantha Clark

Lisa Yoskowitz
Day By Day Writer by Samantha Clark
Jacket Flap

Social Studies Credits

Me: Stop arguing.
Jeremy: If you can't petition the government, it's a dictatorship.

****

Me: Your world history class went through WWI?
Sam: Probably the Napoleonic wars. That class is for seniors, so no one really knows what happens at the end of the year.

Sunday

the waning moon

To tell if the moon is waning or waxing, look for the flat side. If the shape resembles a b, with the flat side on the left, it is a “baby” or waxing moon. If the flat side is on the right, so the shape resembles a d it is a “dying” or waning moon.

I learned this scientific fact from Highlights for Children Magazine.

Plotholes

Yesterday I found myself sitting in front of the computer, not typing, but massaging my temples. I was stalled at a dead stop. Not even the turn signal was blinking. On the screen, my protagonist was wishing he could go home. I realized I’d hit a plothole.

Plotholes occur when there is a breach of logic. The story has become inconsistent with the character’s personality or journey. The events don't make sense within the world of the novel.

I went for a walk, and after about a mile, I found a solution. I spent the walk home figuring out how to implement the idea. I was lucky, this time.

Sometimes it’s possible to steer around a plothole. Other times they can be patched. Occasionally it’s necessary to build a detour or even take another road. The trick is not to get stuck in them.

Swirly Brown and Gray

Lori is right in one for this mystery photo. It’s a close-up of a wasps’ nest, although I don’t know what kind of wasp. This enlargement was marginally beyond the capacity of my camera, and I apologize for the grainy pixels.

The other guesses were great. Perhaps I’ll use some of your suggestions for future mystery photos.

Revisions and Platitudes

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
I’ve heard writers say, “Revise it again, and it will be that much better.” But not every revision improves a manuscript. (I recently took a tight but slight novel and turned it into a seething morass.) Why do some revisions fail?

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
The concept behind the revision may not be big enough or completely thought out.

Look before you leap.
The new changes may adversely affect other aspects of the manuscript.

Rules are rules.
What works for one manuscript may not work for another.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Rejection letters tend to offer vague advice. Any comment beyond a form rejection is an act of supreme generosity from an extremely busy person, but the advice may not be specific enough to implement.

Time heals all wounds.
Eventually, the right solution will present itself – I hope.

Who Needs a Megalomaniac?

Epic works require a supremely evil character who can persist through multiple novels, but megalomaniacs work best when viewed through a filter.

In The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Sauron is so evil that he is beyond the ken of the hobbits. Pippin interacts with him once through the Palantir and is almost destroyed by the experience. The Hobbits’ daily struggles involve Sauron’s minions.

Similarly, in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, Harry faces Lord Voldemort only a few times in the seven book series. Instead, Harry battles a man possessed by Lord Voldemort, a memory of Tom Riddle and multiple Death Eaters. The Big Bad Guy is mostly off stage.

The Sharpe’s Rifles series by Bernard Cornwell, tells of the struggles of a common English soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon Bonaparte was certainly a megalomaniac, but the protagonist never comes in contact with him. Sharpe spends much of each book in mortal combat with French soldiers, but they aren’t really the antagonists. His true foes are incompetent officers, backbiting English soldiers, and the hardships of war.

Protagonists with their necessary limitations and weaknesses cannot be pitted directly against an omnipotent antagonist. The most interesting conflicts occur between the little people.

Mystery Photo

I bet TimInMich will get this one right away.

I'll post the answer on Friday (3-5-10).

Sunday

As winter drags on (and on), I’ve investigated a few other options for taking nature pictures, but so far, I haven’t had any luck. The butterfly house at MSU doesn’t have butterflies yet, and the bug house is open for tours only on Monday evenings (a hectic time in my household). I’ll keep looking.

When Bad Guys Go Really Bad

Lately, I’ve been disappointed by literary bad guys (or girls) who excel at evil without realizing their potential as characters. Perhaps you recognize some of these:

The Megalomaniac
The antagonist is a Machiavellian lunatic who stops at nothing to become the most powerful person on earth. This type of villain enjoys celebrated precedents in figures like Goldfinger, and Dr. No, but reproductions of these characters tend be flat and stereotyped. If world domination is your life’s ambition, you’re exactly like to every other megalomaniac on the planet.*

The Victim of a Childhood Trauma
Some authors resort to simple psycho-pop explanations for misbehavior, but these characters lack authenticity unless the psychosis is developed in the novel.

Bad to the Bone
These characters have mean personalities and engage in inappropriate behavior while planning evil in their spare time. Isn’t it more interesting to make the evil-doer a tiny bit likable, slightly vulnerable or even occasionally sympathetic?

Antagonists deserve as much attention as protagonists and have equal rights to be multifaceted characters. Consider Artemis Fowl, Severus Snape or Gollum. At times they’re easy to hate, and then they do something to generate empathy.

*There is a time and a place for megalomaniacs, but that’s a separate post.

Why Did You Do That?

Lately, I’m reading adventure novels, and they’ve got me thinking about character motivation. Of course, characters have to make poor choices, take chances and do things that set the ball rolling. Too often though, I find myself looking up from the page and wondering why a character acted the way s/he did. After a moment, I realize the action was intended to disguise a sagging middle. There are a million excuses for characters to do dumb stuff, or at least things their mothers wouldn’t approve of, but the story’s credibility depends on the setup and on previous character development.

I’m currently in the throes of rough draft ecstasy/despair for my own adventure novel, but when it’s time to revise, I’ll analyze each scene for believability starting with this list of questions.

• Why did the character do that?
• Is this reason plausible?
• What does the character have to gain? To lose?
• Is the behavior consistent with the personality I’ve established?
• Has something happened to change the character’s behavior or personality?
• Is that change believable?

Sunday

I can’t claim this is an inspired photograph, but look how much color I found in Michigan in February. If you zoom in, the berries look funky.

(I’m getting tired of photographing ice.)

Bright Colors

Three cheers for Angela, Casey and TimInMich for guessing Monday's mystery photo.

Yep, it's light refraction off a compact disc.
(The Fellowship of the Ring, disc 3)

Writing Exercise

Some people love them, others hate them. I like them when they cause me to think harder about my project and realize something I haven’t thought of before. Here’s a simple exercise we used last night at Write Night.

1. Write 50 facts about your protagonist.
2. Choose one statement. (Close your eyes and point, or pick a fave.) Write a scene to demonstrate/explore/expand on the statement.
3. Choose a statement that surprised you or two statements that seem to contradict each other and write a scene about it or them.

My list started with the obvious and progressed to things I hadn’t fully realized. I’d intended #2 to be a warm up, but I ended up with useful material. I thought #3 would be the clincher, but for my WIP, I’ve already made a good start on exploring this idea, so I simply enhanced it.

Mystery Photo

I can’t decide if this is too easy or too difficult. If nothing else, it provides color.

Please check back on Friday (2-19-10) for the big picture.

Sunday

It's been a long winter. Hang in there.

Links

Blogging has been light around here lately, so today I’ll suggest some blogs with a bit more to say.

Check out Boni Ashburn’s new book, Over At the Castle, or better yet, order your own copy.

Jacqui Robbins provided this cool link for an anagram generator. I tried the working title of my new WIP and got Sappy Saying. Oh well.

Kirby Larson has another challenge for 10-word stories. This month’s topic is spring, which is a tall order in Michigan in February. Here’s mine:

As winter drags its gray, icy feet,
I miss color.

Wednesday

icy lily pads

WYAOD

I participated in Write Your @ss Off Day today. Everyone was supposed to put in 8 hours on some writing-related activity. I launched a new project, and I wanted to jump in with both feet so WYAOD seemed like a plan.

• I managed 6 hours.
• I wrote 3,544 words.
• I experienced a power outage that caused me to have to re-write one page. (I save frequently.)
• I received a very disappointing rejection letter for TAoCBS.
• I plan to goof off this evening.

Sunday

The begonias are blooming – inside.

Too Easy

On Monday, I posted this mystery photo.

All of the guesses had something to do with food, especially bready and eggy foods.

The mystery photo is the bottom of a popover, so....

EVERYONE WINS!

(except there are no prizes)

Thanks for playing.

Odd Ends

In my ongoing quest to read spy books, I discovered Femme Fatale: Love, Lies and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari by Pat Shipman. It seems Mata Hari was less of a spy and more of a woman who needed money. The problem with biographies is you can’t necessarily look forward to a happy ending.

Moon Rat is hosting a Write Your @ss Off Day this weekend (Feb. 5-8). I hope to join the fun on Monday as it would be a fantastic way to launch my new project.

Traveling the Blogosphere

Today you can find me at Literary Rambles. Casey McCormick posted my research tip.

Yesterday, I found myself over at Fiction Notes. Darcy Pattison mentioned my first post on shrunken manuscripts.

Thank you, Casey and Darcy!

Also, I learned that some people are having trouble posting comments on this blog. I’m sorry about that. I’ll see what I can do.

Mystery Photo

What is it?

Is it easier or harder than the glass plates?

I'll post the answer on Friday 2-5-10.

Sunday

rushing river

Yesterday, a flock of wild turkeys crossed the road in front of the car, but by the time I got my camera out, they’d mostly moved on. So, here’s more ice – because it doesn’t run away.

Palindromes

Earlier this week, I had a Facebook conversation with Ruth McNally-Barshaw that reminded me of my favorite palindrome, REVILE LIVER. It comes from a book by Jon Agee. His books on wordplay are terrific for reluctant readers. Not only do they have few words and wonderful cartoons, they demonstrate the fun of fooling around with language.

Biochemists and molecular biologists are fond of palindromes because short palindromic DNA sequences are the targets for restriction enzymes (the proteins that cut DNA), and long palindromic sequences determine RNA structure. If you’re really interested, click here.

I googled palindromes and learned that the longest palindromic word in common usage is saippuakivikauppias which means "soapstone vendor" in Finnish. (How else could I possibly use that word in this blog?)

The first recorded palindrome is the Latin word square "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas" from 79 AD, but my husband says everyone in the Garden of Eden spoke in palindromes:

“Madam, I’m Adam.”
“Eve.”
“Ssssssss.”

Micro Manuscript Take Two

A while back, I used Darcy Pattison’s Shrunken Manuscript technique to analyze CBL [blog entry]. Last weekend, I tried it with TAoCBS.

Start by taking the spaces out between chapters, single space and reduce the font to 8-point. My 40,000 word manuscript shrunk to 32 pages. Then I assigned each character a color and marked sections according to their emotional impact.

The quantity of description versus dialog becomes immediately obvious.
The amount of play time each character gets is also clear in my color-coded scheme.
The tension (or its lack) can also be tracked by the amount of vertical and diagonal cross-hatching.

Hint: Treat yourself to a new package of markers before you start.

Snow Whale Reprise

TimInMich modified my snow whale with Photoshop to create this beautiful image. It reminds me of Katsushika Hokusai.

Sunday

We haven't had much sunshine in Michigan lately. It's almost like I'm taking black and white photos.

Blue and Green Stripes

On Monday I changed my blog header and asked if anyone could tell what it is. I enjoyed reading everybody’s guesses. Beth came the closest. Perhaps mystery photos will be an occasional feature in this blog.

So what are the blue and green stripes?

In my parents’ house, the wall over the kitchen table was covered with framed 5x7 photos of kids and grandkids. When my mom moved to assisted living, we shipped the photos to Michigan and recreated the photo wall in her apartment. My mother passed away over a year ago, and the photos have been sitting in a box in my basement. Last weekend I finally took these photos out of their frames and put them in an album. The frames have seen better days, but the glass covering the photos can be recycled, so I stacked them on the dining room table. When I saw the morning light coming through the edges of the glass plates, I photographed it.

Wednesday

Snow whale breaching. He's spouting ice.

To E or Not To E

No one ever said writing a novel was easy. Even choosing the right words can be tough. But it could be worse.

In 1969, a French writer named Georges Perec wrote La Disparition, a 200-page novel that does not contain words spelled with the letter E. Then Gilbert Adair translated La Disparition into English, also refraining from words containing the letter E.

This post has 340 characters. 39 are E. That is 11%.

A New Look, A New Name

I renamed my blog (again). Finkelstein can be difficult to spell. (Is it E-L or L-E?) And I changed the header photo. Can anyone guess what it is?

Here’s a different picture.

Hint: I used the flash on this one.

Tune in tomorrow for the answer - no make that Friday. (1-22-10)

Sunday

Photo by me.

mystic crystal revelations

[music video]

The Code Book

The Code Book

By Simon Singh

Doubleday, 1999 (The cover design is from the updated 2001 edition which was not available from my library.)

I discovered this book on the recommended reading list in Mysterious Messages. Simon Singh knows how to tell a good story and provides fascinating accounts of the people who made encryption history. Code making and breaking are fundamental to diplomacy and warfare, so the story of secrecy explains history, provides insight to the present, and hints at the future.
 
Who would enjoy this book?
Anyone who is interested in WWI and WWII
Anyone who is curious about ancient Egyptian and Minoan cultures
Anyone who has wondered how Internet transactions can be secure
Anyone who likes puzzles
 
Do you have to be a math geek to like this book?
Serious math geeks would hardly count me among their numbers, yet I managed to keep neck and neck with the calculations. The amount of math required to understand this book depends on whether the reader is willing to accept concepts as written, or feels compelled to check the work. (I belong to the second group.)
 
Simon Singh also wrote an edition for teen readers, The Code Book: how to make it, break it, hack it, crack it. (Delacorte Press, 2001).

Another Contest

Mary Kole, an associate agent at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, is holding another contest. This one is for the first 500 words of a MG or YA novel. The winner gets a 15 page critique. Click here for details.

Wednesday

The First Rule of Revision

Remember:

I can write better than that.

Repeat as often as necessary.

Ten Words

In honor of the New Year, Kirby Larson challenged her blog readers to write a story consisting of only ten words.
Here’s mine:

Snow!
Shovel driveway. Scrape windshield.
Slip. Slide. Skid. Stop?
Ski!

Today, Kirby asked for ten more words with an emphasis on emotion. If I make progress on my revisions, I’ll give it a try.

Sunday

Photo by me.

Crystal Blue Persuasion

(In case that dopey song isn’t already lodged in your brain, here’s the link.)

Fun Fact to Know and Tell

Egyptian hieroglyphics existed as a form of writing for 3500 years, then died out in a generation. The last known sample of hieroglyphics (dated AD 450) was graffiti.

I guess that's leaving a mark on history.

Wednesday

Photo by me.

I think this log looks like a dog’s head. My husband says it resembles a sheep with earrings. Other opinions?

The Book from No Man's Land

• When I started writing TAoCBS, I thought it was a middle grade novel.
• When I brought the first chapter to my critique group, they said, “Oh no. This is too sexy for a midgrade. It has to be young adult.”
• When I had a first page analyzed at the SCBWI-MI fall conference, the panel members were aghast that I called it a YA. “This voice is obviously midgrade.” They spoke at length about this designation, implying that the author didn’t know what she was doing. (Thanks.)
• When I entered this novel in a query contest, I referred to it as “upper midgrade.” (hedging my bets)
• When I got the rejection letter, it said, “30k is really not long enough for today's YA market.” (Yes, of course, but I thought it was a MG.)

Currently, I am revising TAoCBS in hopes that someday it will be bigger and better. But when I resubmit, I don’t know how I’m going to classify it.

Chuck Sambuchino did an interesting interview with literary agent, Erin Murphy, in which she refers to the MG/YA distinction as more of a “scale than a line.”

Sunday

icy stalactites over the Red Cedar River

the same ice formation one day later

Photos by me.

A New Decade!

Ten years ago:

• We were relieved the Y2K hullabaloo didn’t happen.
• My brawny lads were wee lads.
• I was waiting for Science is Golden to be published.
• I was a new SCBWI member.
• The World’s Greatest Critique Group had a few of its current members.

Some things remain the same:

• I was married to the same wonderful man.
• We were living in the same comfortable house with our two amazing sons.

Politically, globally and economically the last decade was brutal. We have vast opportunities to improve the next one.