Sunday

 I was surprised to find dew droplets at 4:00 PM on a sunny day.

 I was trying to get sunlight through tulip petals, and it almost worked. In case you have seen enough orange today ...

Ah, magnolias.

Overheard #145

"It was like fighting Gumby."

Blogger Issues

Blogger is doing something to their system, and most of my posts from this week disappeared. Blogger said they'd try to put them back, but it's starting to look like that won't happen. I'll re-post my Overheard today and my book review tomorrow.

Happy Friday the 13th.

Another Spy Book Recommendation

Original Sin: a Sally Sin adventure

by Beth McMullen

Hyperion, to be released July 12, 2011


Shelf Awareness is a daily electronic newsletter about the book trade that features terrific advertisements for new books. A few months back, I saw an ad for Original Sin: a Sally Sin Adventure. I noticed with glee it was a spy book featuring a female operative. Then I saw, “Click here to win a free ARE.” I followed the instructions, thinking I’d never win. A few weeks later, a package came in the mail.

The book is a totally enjoyable read especially for readers who enjoy spy novels and are parents. My two sentence summary:

Raising a toddler is a tough job; so is being a spy. Sally Sin is forced to multi-task.

It’s due out in July.

SPAM

I was cleaning out my spam folder, and I noticed the gmail advertisement was for spicy spam kabobs to serve with rice. That got me thinking about spam.

When I was a kid, my dad would tell dog stories about Spam, a German Shepherd-Collie mix, he owned during WWII. When I asked what the meat spam was, he suggested my mom cook some for dinner. Once was enough. SPAM is an acronym for “Shoulder Pork and Ham,” and it tastes about how you’d expect – and sort of slimy.

Then I wondered why electronic garbage was called spam. According to Wikipedia, the term originated with the Monty Python Spam sketch. Go ahead, click the link, and sing the spam song along with the Vikings.

Mother's Day

Sunday

Oak leaves unfurling.

Overheard #143

"You can live in the Midwest and not know how to polka, but you can’t live well."

Two Great Spy Books

Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre are published by Random House.

Ben Macintyre is a meticulous historian and a fine storyteller. In Agent Zigzag, he relates the story of Eddie Chapman, a double agent and colorful character who schemed against the Nazis in WWII and yet was awarded the Iron Cross.

Operation Mincemeat tells how the Allies deceived German forces before the invasion of Sicily by creating a fictional man who washed up dead on the shores of Spain with a briefcase full of erroneous documents.

When I studied history in school, it was mostly facts and propaganda. The story and its characters were missing entirely. After reading these books, The Code Book and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and watching Foyle’s War, I’m finally learning something about WWII.

Ruffled Petticoat

Sunday

 I had to get pretty muddy to take this one.

I hope someone tells me what kind of wildflower this is.

Overheard #142

"When you have talent, more is expected of you."

Youth Writing Festival

Yesterday, I spoke on How to Write Fight Scenes at the Youth Writing Festival at Calvin College. My presentation includes time for the students to write their own fight scenes. The group of middle school students was large, so instead of reading their scenes out loud, we discussed what they found easiest and hardest about writing fights. Most agreed it was easy to see the scene in their imaginations, and hard to put it into words. No arguments from me there.

As the high school students wrote their scenes, I was delighted to see a girl pull out a thesaurus and consult it frequently. I was less pleased when a boy started thumbing his phone. When my session was over, the young man with the phone asked me to read his scene. I squinted at his tiny, spidery writing and asked if he would read out loud. He told me he couldn’t because English was his second language. The scene was hard to follow because of problems with English usage, but some of the descriptions were unique and lovely, and I complimented him. Later, I realized he must have been using his phone to access a Chinese/English dictionary.

It’s Been a Long Time Since the Last Teen Driving Post

Last week I drove by the high school as school was letting out. The car in front of me had a bumper sticker that read:

How’s my driving?
Call my mom.

It gave a phone number.

Scenes That Excel

Those of you who have read this blog for a while know that when in doubt, I create and Excel file. Currently, I’m developing one to analyze the effectiveness of scenes. My file has the following columns.

Chapter #: Start easy. Not every cell in this column has an entry because many chapters contain more than one scene.

Setting: This is a simple way to denote scenes. If the scene takes place in more than one location, I use an arrow. “living room --> garage” How many scenes happen in the same place?

Characters: I list the characters in the scene and color code them to make it easy to scan for long absences.

Tension: I score tension from x to xxxxx. (Any scene with no tension has already been deleted.) This gives me a vertical histogram of the ebb and flow of energy in the novel.

Words: Are any of the chapters very long or very short?

Purpose: What does this scene achieve in the grand scheme of the novel? I try to be honest, even when it hurts. If a scene has a weak or duplicated purpose, I use the paint can tool to highlight it.

The problems are all laid out. Time to get to work.

Sunday

Seagulls love Catalina Island. I didn't notice the photo realism in the middle picture when I took it.

Overheard #141

"They didn’t mention this when I was student teaching."

Garibaldi Day

Garibaldi swim in the kelp beds by Santa Catalina Island. I don’t have an underwater camera, so the photographs were taken from land, looking into the water. Reflected sunlight, chop and swaying kelp affect the clarity of the pictures, so get your artsy on. For clear pictures of garibaldi, check out Wikipedia.

Spy Stuff

The Rachel Maddow Show helped me out with my series about cool spy stuff in the news. The CIA has recently declassified methods for preparing and detecting invisible ink that were used in WWI. I’m still enough of a chemist to want to try these things.

California, California

Green Pleasure Pier

Last week we went to Southern California to attend our nephew’s wedding and refresh my memory about the settings for two of my works-in-progress. One takes place, in part, on Santa Catalina Island, so we spent a couple days on the island. We saw pelicans dive for fish right by the ferry, and dolphins breach in the Avalon Harbor. Sea lions fished twenty yards from the pier, and bright orange garibaldi swam in the kelp.

pelican

Real estate on Catalina Island is very expensive, and the houses cluster on the foothills above Avalon Harbor. Few of the houses have yards unless the land around them is too steep to build on. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to take one of the inland tours to visit the buffalo.

Avalon

After Catalina, we went to Redlands. I’d forgotten how much concrete there is in Los Angeles, or how thick the smog can be below the San Bernadino Mountains. (I didn’t take photos of the smog or the freeways.)

I’ll be posting more pictures throughout the week.

A Link and a Promise

Tomorrow, I'll start posting about my trip to California. Until then, while I'm finishing up the laundry, check out this brilliant post from The Intern.

Sunday

Thorn reflected.

Overheard #140

"Teaching is scary as hell, if you do it right."

Spring Break

I’ve been going through Martha Alderson’s Plot Whisperer videos on YouTube. They offer excellent, user-friendly advice on how to fix novel structure. I’m learning a lot – which is always a painful experience.

This is spring break for Jeremy’s high school. We had three college visits lined up but decided to cancel the last one because that university doesn’t have a guitar major. Jeremy is discovering that rock guitar is the unloved genre at conventional universities.

Next week, I’m off to Southern California for my nephew’s wedding. I hope to take some pictures of the Pacific, blooming flowers and chaparral-covered hills. Michigan is mostly brown and muddy these days, so photo ops have been limited.

Sunday

It was overcast all day on Friday, but the sun came out just when I snapped this photo.

Overheard #139

"I’ve never had any problems with excessive genius."

The Eye of the Beholder

The final assignment at the Missouri retreat was to design a book jacket for our works-in-progress. It had to include flap copy, an author bio and cover art. Writing flap copy is fine practice for a query letter pitch, so I had no objections there. The author bio is also potentially useful.

But drawing cover art? You’ve got to be kidding. I pointed out that some books simply have the title printed in an interesting font. Nope. We all had to draw a picture. Everyone else accepted the assignment cheerfully, so I stopped complaining. The participant who is a published illustrator drew with her left hand so the rest of us wouldn’t feel bad.

In desperation, I remembered K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and decided to draw a pawn from a chess set. My three-word title easily fit inside the pawn’s outline. When it was my turn to show my book cover, I told the group what it was supposed to be. Someone even said it was good. Obviously, she meant the idea of a pawn, not my artistic rendering.

When I got home, I showed my book cover to Jeremy. “Is that a light bulb?” he asked.

Revising the Day Away

I returned from Missouri with many suggestions for improving my two works-in-progress. The amount of work involved is daunting, but I know where to start. One person expressed a logical concern about driving around Chicago, the time of day and the places my characters would stop. That’s an easy technical fix – with Google Maps’ assistance. The suggestions that are harder to implement involve deepening the emotional impact of the novels. I need to bare my soul and bear my characters’ souls.

One of Jennifer Mattson’s talks included a section on broadening characters’ reactions to emotion. She listed five possibilities.

1. Sensual reaction inside the body (for example, heart rate)
2. Sensual reaction outside the body (jittery leg)
3. Emotional flashes from past (remembering a past experience)
4. Emotional flashes from future (concern about something that may happen)
5. Sensual selectivity (focusing on a specific sight, sound, etc. to heighten emotion)

I have the manuscripts; I have the tools; I have no more excuses.

The SCBWI-MO Revision Retreat

I left home early on Friday morning and drove to Kristin Nitz’s house on the west side of Michigan. We continued on to the YMCA of the Ozarks in Potosi, Missouri. It was a long drive, but well worth the trip.

Each participant met twice individually with Jennifer Mattson of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. We were treated to superlative story telling and creativity exercises by Lynn Rubright. We had two in-depth writing workshops presented by Jennifer Mattson. In addition, there were two sessions of peer critiques, and we even had time to revise our manuscripts before our second meeting with Jennifer. We ended with a fun exercise presented by Stephanie Bearce on designing a book jacket for our works-in-progress.

WOW!

I’m full of new ideas, thanks to the helpful suggestions of Jennifer, Kristin and the other retreat participants. Having two sessions to meet with an agent or editor was so helpful. During my revision time, I brainstormed ways to address the issues Jennifer raised. In the second meeting, we discussed my ideas, and she suggested additional way to strengthen the manuscript.

I'll post more details later in the week. 

The retreat was awesome, the weather imperfect. I went out in the sleet to photograph the lake.

Spring in the Midwest

 

Sunday

I was lucky to find that red leaf.

Overheard #138

"Love has no expiration date."

Revision Workshop

Tomorrow I leave for Missouri to attend a SCBWI writing workshop. I hope to return with inspiration both for my manuscripts and this blog. Maybe I'll even take some pictures. Please tune in on Friday and Sunday for regularly scheduled posts.

Snowdrops

This year I beat the deer to the snowdrops.

More on MG and YA

In last week’s post about MG v. YA, I mentioned writing two tween manuscripts. Today, I use them to test my definitions.

In G&G*, the protagonist risks everything to help a friend. This is a YA theme since the main character choose a path that leads away from everything he’s been taught. A secondary theme in the novel is the relationship between the protagonist and his estranged father. Since they resolve their issues and begin to rebuild their family, this could be classified a MG novel.

G&CBS** is about two brothers with nothing in common who manage to resolve their differences. My definition of MG regarding the search for home and family would encompass this story. A secondary plotline is the main character’s attempts to attract his father’s attention. In the end, he decides to go his own way, without his father’s input. That means YA.

My definitions seem to work perfectly since I couldn’t classify these novels before and I still can’t. ;-)

*an old manuscript that I’ve put aside.
**formerly known as TAoCBS

Sunday

photo by me

In honor of the first day of spring, here is my Melting Ice Photo. I took this a week ago, and thanks to a spell of lovely weather, the river is now running. With any luck, the Ice Photo Challenge is over for this winter.

Overheard #137

"I’m unconvinced that you can apply algebraic topology to finance and not commit white-collar crime."

Welcome Back the Guest Photographer

Ice season seems to be ending, but TimInMich and I each have at least one more ice photo to share. This is his Sunshine on Water. It looks like a babbling brook, but it's actually a parking lot.

photo by TimInMich



 

The Difference Between MG and YA

As someone who tends to have 14-year-old protagonists talking in her head and has written at least two “upper-MG/tween/lower-YA” manuscripts, I keep coming back to this question, and I’m not alone. Check out agents Erin Murphy and Michael Stearns for wisdom and insight. I’m not going to discuss character age, word choice, writing style, or first versus third person. This post is about story.

Midgrade tends to revolve around a search for home and family. The protagonist moves from being alone to having love and support. Consider Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Bud Not Buddy, The Higher Power of Lucky, Ellie McDoodle: have pen will travel, Moon over Manifest, Star in the Forest, and Waiting for Normal.

Young Adult novels tend to be more genre-focused, however the plot often revolves around the protagonist’s need to strike off into the unknown. To search for the Deathly Hallows, Harry must leave Hogworts. In Dairy Queen, DJ challenges her family’s traditions to go out for football. In Suspect, Jen solves the mystery and resolves her issues about her mother’s disappearance. The Everafter is a paranormal novel, and even though Maddie is dead, she has to rediscover her past then leave it behind.

Feel free to argue with these opinions in the comment section. I’ll continue this discussion later in the week or next week.

Sunday

photo by me

Don Quixote

(my literary ice photo)

The World’s Best Writing Advice

Our niece has to write a 2000-word paper for a college class. Her young son said, "Mummy, you should really get started. That's a lot of words.”

Overheard #136

"Never argue with a crazy person."

Listen and Learn

Recently I started listening to the audiobook version of Playback by Raymond Chandler. My first impression was that the short sentences and choppy writing style would drive me nuts. Then I realized I was getting an excellent lesson in voice. The story is told by Philip Marlow, a hard-boiled private eye, and the short, almost brutal writing style makes his character come alive. I love hearing about Los Angeles in the early 1950s and seeing the other characters through Marlow’s eyes. I find myself listening for turns of phrase that are unique to this particular character. That’s what voice is, the expression of a unique personality.

Guest Photographer Day

Here's TimInMich's Prettiest Ice. I have to agree.



photo by TimInMich

This year I didn't get a startlingly pretty ice photo, so my Sunday entry will be Literary Ice. 

Sunday

This is my Close Up Ice photo.

photo by me

Overheard #135

"Fear is a great motivator."

The Guest Photographer Strikes Again

Welcome back to the Ice Photo Challenge. This week is Close Up Ice. TimInMich's photograph reminds me of lace. The definition on those crystals is amazing. (Stop back on Sunday to see mine.)

photo by TimInMich

When In Doubt, Write the Sequel

(or at least plan it)

I was having trouble fleshing out a character in my WIP. He was irritating and mean but two-dimensional. I added and subtracted dialog for a while, but it didn’t help. Then I started outlining the sequel. (I doubt I’ll ever write it, but I typed up some ideas.) Suddenly my flat character had a past and a future. His actions had motivations. I snuck a few bits into my WIP and so far, it’s working well.

Sunday

Here are my Cropped Ice Photographs. This shrub was planted where the runoff from an awning would hit it. The sun was melting the roof snow, but the air was cold enough that the melt had refrozen on the branches. (I love getting a freezing rain effect without hazardous driving conditions or power outages!) The bush’s interesting shape, didn’t come through in the Before Picture. I prefer the detail seen in the After Picture.

The After Picture


photo by me



The Before Picture


photo by me



Overheard #134

"Be perfect little church mice, temple mice, mosque mice."

This is Brilliant

I intended to post today about developing secondary characters, but instead I'll send you to Darcy Pattison's blog. Her post on Three Types of Character Arcs is wonderful. I found myself analyzing not only my own WIP but also books I've read.

Guest Photographer Wednesday

This week’s category is Cropped Ice Photographs featuring before and after pictures.

Here’s TimInMich's After shot. It reminds me of a topographical map, and I love the color palette.

photo by TimInMich

Here’s the Before picture. You can see more of the "mountains."


photo by TimInMich



My photos will be posted on Sunday.

Begonias

“It’s the shadows that make you notice the light.” - Laura Resau from The Ruby Notebook (Delacorte Press, 2010)

Every year these begonias bloom (inside) during the grayest part of the winter.

Sunday

photo by me

Here is my Weirdest Ice photo. I call it Masquerade. Yes, those little black things are some kind of insect.

Overheard #133

"Reality is a four-dimensional manifold."

Disclaimer: The concepts expressed in the Overheard series do not necessarily reflect the knowledge base of the management. Here’s a link – not that it helps.

The Guest Photographer is Back

Here's TimInMich's Weirdest Ice entry in the Ice Photo Challenge.


photo by TimInMich

He calls it Sunny Side Up. The bubbles are so cool.

Happy Valentine's Day

The big Valentine news around here is I’ve stopped hating my Work In Progress. Oh, I know the whole romance/manuscript metaphor is over-used, but in many ways, it rings true. Usually there is some point in the revision-endless-revision process that I despise my manuscript.

People offer advice. “Take a break,” they say, or “You need some time apart.”

Bah. When it comes to manuscript revision absence makes the fond heart wander. What’s actually needed in that case is a New Idea. Or ten. Anyway, revisions are rolling again. I like my WIP. Perhaps love is too strong a word, but I’m moving in that direction.

Can someone tell me why converting a Power Point image into JPEG results in such poor image quality?

Sunday

Turkeys are difficult to photograph because posing isn't on their agendas. This isn't a perfect picture, but the one on the left is so ruffled. Next week, back to ice.

Overheard #132

"What could go wrong?"

Realistic Settings

Somehow many of my manuscripts are set in California. I grew up there, and when my mom was alive, I visited frequently. Little details that come from actually being in a place are gifts for a writer. How else would I know sound of the morning sprinklers or the colors of the hills as the sun set?

For the past few years, I’ve done little traveling and had to rely on webcams and internet photos, but 2011 seems to be the year of the suitcase. So far, we’ve been invited to four weddings on one coast or the other. (It won’t be possible to attend all of them.) I’ll be going to an SCBWI-MO writing retreat in March, and in September, I may go to Italy.

I plan to bring a camera and a notepad to record as much of these places as possible.

Sunday

photo by me

I chose this as my Best-Lit Ice photo because of the diffraction patterns on the rain gutter. Then again, it might be a contender for Weird Ice ...

Overheard #131

"Where’s the fun in having completely ordinary parents?"

Guest Photographer

Please welcome TimInMich and the first of his beautiful photographs. Here is his entry for Best-Lit Ice in our Ice Photo Challenge.

photo by TimInMich

I love the textures.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Dial Press (2008)

 
 
 
 
Reading this novel is like getting a writing lesson from a kind and generous mentor.
Voice: The novel is written in the form of letters and each character’s voice remains distinct.
Characterization: The authors allow us to read between the lines to discover the personalities of the characters.
Plot: Because the story is told in letters, the back-story leaks out bit by bit.
Warmth: This book demonstrates how to create memorable characters. I became involved in the story because the characters cared for each other in imperfect and totally human ways.

The Ice Photo Challenge

My friend and talented photographer, TimInMich, suggested this antidote to the winter blahs. The rules are simple. Photograph ice and email the pictures to each other. The categories are:

• Prettiest Ice
• Best-Lit Ice
• Cropped Ice (before and after)
• Close-Up Ice
• Manipulated Ice (involves human intervention)
• Weirdest Ice
• Melting Ice*

Tim sent me seven photos within a week of the challenge. So far, I have one photo that might qualify. Ahem.

To add to the fun, I’m posting Tim’s pictures here if and when I take a photo in the same category. Tim’s photos will go up on Wednesdays and mine will be part of my Sunday nature series**. So brew hot cocoa and stay tuned for some chilling photography.

*This was my suggestion (ever the optimist)
** Disclaimer: If I don’t manage to find photos in all the categories before spring, Words and Pixels will host a TimInMich photo expo with all of his remaining pictures.

Overheard #130

"If I’m the computer expert around here, we’re in deep digital doo-doo."

Revision Technique

This idea came from one of my Write Night exercises. It worked well for the other participants, although I’m having a hard time with it. The technique is simple.

1. Print the manuscript or a section of it.
2. Consider how the voice could change to express a personality trait: tougher/gentler, more/less educated, warmer/colder, outgoing/reserved, aggressive/passive, confident/insecure, younger/older etc.
3. Highlight words or phrases that could be strengthened or changed to express the personality trait.
4. Consider what words or phrases that would improve the highlighted sections.
5. Revise.

Step 3 is a problem for me because I continually put down the highlighter, pick up a pen and rewrite, cross out, rewrite again. I shall persevere.

Contest Announcement

Check out this contest. The prize is a free MG or YA fiction manuscript edit from Deborah Halverson. It's a wonderful opportunity, easy to enter, and the winner will be announced soon (Feb. 1).

Sunday

crabapple fusion

spotlight

January

the upside of freezing rain

Overheard #129

"I’m hurryin’, almost scurryin’."

Wise Words

This morning I received some brilliant advice from Lori Van Hoesen.

"Imagine telling your story to the one you'd share any secret with, that intimacy will transmit to the reader and make them care."

This will definitely be a focus for the next draft.

Raising the Stakes

I haven’t posted much lately because I’m revising madly and critiquing a manuscript for a friend I met at a workshop. It’s got me thinking about raising the stakes. Sure it’s important to make the situation worse, to add layers of complication so that a happy ending seems impossible.

But raising the stakes is secondary to creating a character the reader cares about. The protagonist doesn’t need to save the world. He only needs to save his world, and make the reader believe this world is worth saving.

Overheard #128

"You just haven’t found the silver lining yet."

Sunday

I find water interesting. Note the little animal footprints near the top.

Yesterday afternoon I saw some ice sculptures forming above the river, but I was too late to catch the light.

Overheard #127

"Zombies are the unleavened dead."

Civil War Code

The Washington Post ran a fascinating article on a newly deciphered Civil War message. Believe it or not, the Museum of the Confederacy had this message in a bottle since 1896, and it remained unopened, un-deciphered and unread until collections manager Catherine M. Wright decided to investigate. The other thing that amazed me was retired CIA code breaker, David Gaddy and Navy cryptologist Cmdr. John B. Hunter, solved the code by brain, not by computer. It goes to show that spies like to play as much as anybody.

The description of the Vigenere Cipher isn’t completely clear in the article. A Vigenere Cipher is not a simple substitution or Caesar cipher (a frame shift). A Vigenere Cipher is a series of shifts based on a code word or key. This makes decoding the message by frequency analysis much more complicated because the most common letter is not necessarily E. Frequency analysis is how Sherlock Holmes decoded messages in “The Adventure of the Dancing Men.”

I loved finding out about this newly deciphered code. I wish the picture of the message was more legible and that they’d told us what the key was.

Thanks to Debbie Diesen for the link.

Color My World

Jeremy needed some paint for a project, and I told him I could buy it while running some other errands.

Me: What colors do you need?
Jeremy: Rainbow and silver.
Me: Rainbow paint?
Jeremy: Yeah, all the colors in the rainbow plus silver.

Resolutions

1. Add fun.
2. Sooner is better than later.
3. Dance.
4. Make a positive comment about my writing every day.

Sunday

This picture was taken in the early afternoon, although it looks like evening. I’d used the automatic landscape setting, and the camera compensated for the reflected light off ice and snow. To me it speaks of winter in the north woods.

I resized the image using photo editing software that came with the camera. Let me know how it looks on your screen.

Happy New Year!

photo by Z.F. Burton 7-4-08

I wish you health, happiness and many brilliant ideas.