Analyzing Hunger Games

Since my Word Cloud spontaneously posted (#blogfail), I don't have a Wednesday post. But you can find me over at the Scribbler's Cove talking about Hunger Games and how dissecting a bestseller can help you structure your own story. (SPOILER ALERT - don't click through if you haven't read the books)

See you Friday. Unless I #blogfail again.

p.s. You are welcome to join the Cult of Bransford (via Hairnet and Hopes- see the corndog on the sidebar). We can't all be as nice as Nate B., but we should all try.

Time Stealers

Thanks to Angela over at The Bookshelf Muse, I'm no longer requiring captcha on my comments! Why? Because she convinced me that I no longer need that to keep the pesky spammers at bay.

So, lovely readers, I've saved you a tiny five seconds on filling out the captcha field, but if you multiply that times the hundred million blogs out there, we're talking 15 blogger-years saved just in comment captcha time!

Spread the word!

On the other hand if you found captcha entertaining, I apologize.

Ink Spells Takes On The Cloud

This post using word clouds inspired me to make this word cloud of all my Ink Spells posts. Apparently eating pizza for four days has influenced the cloud, but the proximity of house and keep is only coincidence. I'm tempted to write a post using only wordle-words, but instead I will use wordle-words to write a post about writing.

The Furious Beginning

The Heady First Draft

Revisions, Revisions, Revisions

Querying

Managing Rejection

Publication

Start Over

p.s. These wordles were all created from my actual posts on these topics.

The Toughest Critique You'll Ever Do

Imagine your darling baby grows large enough to suddenly resemble a near-teen, old enough to write a book. A real book. A whole 35k of words with a beginning, middle, and end. He's worked on it for six months, getting up at the crack of dawn to transcribe his scribbled notes to Word before he goes to school. Now imagine that child that you love more than life itself asks you to critique their very first novel.

Gulp.


"Do you mean you'd like to have me fix the grammar and stuff?" I ask.

"Well, what do you do for other authors?" says Dark Omen.

"Usually I would give feedback on the craft and character arcs and make suggestions about how they could tell the story better. Kind of like an editor."

"That's what I want! I want you to be my editor!" The grin is wide on his face.

Gulp, again.

I am very glad that I have had lots of practice on other authors, strangers and friends who I want to be kind and honest with, before I have to practice this on my own flesh and blood. So I read his book, and I discover that my son is a talented writer, young in craft, with a wicked sense of humor and love of detailed action scenes. I find myself giving suggestions about craft and clarity,  just as I would with any other writer-friend. I comment on plot holes and type "Ha!" and "LOL" a lot in the margins. I write a long note at the beginning, praising his hard work, discussing things he can change, and telling him how proud I am.

I realize that my son is growing up, which would make me terribly sad, if I wasn't so pleased that he trusts me enough to share this journey with him. He eagerly awaits my feedback, asking me repeatedly when I think I will be done.

"Do you like it?" he asks.

"I do," I say, and I mean it. "Your characters crack me up." We talk about dialogue and fencing scenes and character names, just like I would with any fellow author.

I had no idea the blessings that would come from being a writer.

Writing Fugue

Four days.

No kids.

No husband.

House to myself, with no obligations but to write.

Time to start a new book.



Day 1: Dive into the heady rush of conjuring a new story. I have been thinking about this story since last summer, waiting and waiting until I could finally sink my teeth into it. I've promised myself I will hyper-plot this book, following McKee's advice in Story, and so there will be NO DRAFTING. Just characters, world-building, theme, plotting, outlining ... the day whips by and I order a pizza for delivery so I don't have to stop. Once the pizza guy arrives, I realize that I will be eating pizza all four days, as there are no hungry boys to gobble it up.

Day 2: I wake up to the knowledge that my writing is usually a sprint, a mad dash to use the hours allotted. But this time it is a marathon, and I need to pace myself. I think about that for a few minutes, toss that thought aside, and dive back in. I sketch characters with words. I make up rules for my world. I eat pizza for lunch. Later, I realize the entire house has gone dark. The sun went down while I was researching Irish mythology. I have pizza for dinner. There's some tremendous crash upstairs, but I don't investigate, because I know it's only the cats.

Day 3: I stayed up way too late chatting on gmail with my friend, so I drag myself out of bed. I spend a full ten minutes debating whether to stay in my PJ's all day again. All morning I want to check FB and Twitter. I peek, post, and then run away again. I'm close to the limit where I can't squeeze any more creativity out of my brain. I take a break to talk to the cats and eat pizza for lunch. I force myself back to the computer and stare, glassy eyed, for an unknown period of time. I think this is the fugue part. I start to pick at the backstory of two secondary characters and quickly get pulled back in. Somewhere near dinner, I discover my Act II climax scene! I do a small dance that's seen by no one. I can't face the pizza, so I have cornflakes instead. I spend hours trying to name my two co-protagonists, and finally go to bed with their shiny new names echoing through my mind.

My story invades my dreams.

Day 4: I wake up early, trying to catch the last few hours before they slip away. The boys are coming home in the afternoon, and I haven't finished reading and working through Emotional Structure, a book recommended by a friend that helps me build the emotional heart of my story. I jot down notes in Scrivener, create faery words, research four thousand years of history in London, and discover a passage by Yeats that must be used in my story, somewhere.

My time is up, so I save everything, close it down and head to the airport.

I can't believe how much I've missed my boys' faces (the husband too). We spend the entire drive home laughing. I am in no hurry.

Those four days were a precious gift, but I'm so glad to have the questions and clamor and energetic life back in the house. The day will come, all too soon, when it will be quiet everyday. I wish I could freeze my boys in time, like the characters in my story, holding them young and precious for all my days.

I suddenly realize the theme of my book and scramble to write it down before I forget.

***
It will take me some time to catch up on my blog reading! Happy Weekend to everyone in the meantime!

Missing Stuff

Picture Credit

When I get really busy - with RL or the MS or the other MS or the tiny MS that's really short - I don't spend much time on blogs or Twitter or FB. It bums me, because I'm missing cool stuff like THIS POST, where Kate Hart breaks down YA sales by genre and six-figure deals. I'm bummed, not just because I like graphs too, but because there's tons-o-information on the interwebs just waiting to edify my brain.

Information that can make an important difference in my understanding of the industry, or my writing, or my general knowledge of life, the universe, and everything.

There just isn't time for it all.

So, I want to thank my blogger friends who keep blogging, my twitter friends who keep tweeting, and my facebook friends that keep sharing cool stuff like this. Even if my attention is momentarily occupied, and I miss some of the cool stuff, I'll be back and ready to dive in again.

I especially want to thank all my commenters who sympathized and offered fashion help on my Wednesday post. That is precisely what I love about blogging - I thought I was just venting my fears, but it turns out not only are there people who feel the same way, but there were some who could help!

Awesome.

Next week will be a busy time again. I have an (amazing!) rare opportunity to have the house to myself for about four days. I'm going to use it to enter a writing fugue and start a new book. During that concentrating time, I'm going to be disciplined and stay off the interwebs as much as possible (we'll see how successful I am!!). I'll be back next Friday, internet and attention starved.

Unless I cave and come back sooner.

Happy Weekend! And thanks for being awesome!

Research: Writing What You Don't Know

How far are you willing to go for research?

Normally, my answer is: very

But I find myself in a unique situation where I need to research something I am so completely unfamiliar with that it somewhat terrifies me. What is this frightful new area to explore? Fashion.

I know next to nothing about fashion. If you looked at my closet you would agree and possibly recommend remedial fashion classes immediately. What possessed me to write a secondary character that is fascinated by fashion? Heaven knows, but now that she's the main character in a short story I'm writing for an anthology, suddenly that character needs to have depth. To make matters worse, the fashion scene plays into a story turn, so I need to know something about that too.

Heaven help me.

Or perhaps Google? YouTube? The latest copy of Elle? I think I would be more comfortable exploring an uncharted section of the Amazon rainforest. In fact, I know I would.

What research area sends you scurrying?

Picture Credit

Catching Up: Blogger Awards

I am woeful in my behind-ness with the blog awards!

Shannon O'Donnell gave me the Beautiful Blogger Award, and Crystal Collier and Celery Tree gifted me with the Stylish Blogger Award:

That you found something remotely beautiful or stylish amidst my postings warms my heart.

Thank you!

Now there are rules for passing on these awards, but being tardy (also lazy), I'm going to make up my own. First, I'll share seven things about myself (most guaranteed not to be beautiful or remotely stylish), and then I'll pass the awards along to some bloggers that you really should add to your "Must Read" list.

Seven Things About Me (that you probably don't know):

1) I cried like a pregnant lady while I watched Marley and Me with my mom. I am not pregnant, but I am ridiculously mushy.

2) My favorite authors (lately) are Scott Westerfeld, Holly Black, Suzanne Collins, and my twelve year old son, Dark Omen.

3) I have a Thai fish trap, a wooden Jamaican cat, and a model rocket next to my kid's baby books on the book shelf.

4) I can't wait for Star Trek 2, if only to see more of Zachary Quinto in pointy ears.

5) I love Guitar Hero, and if we got one for our new Wii system, I would probably never leave the house. 

6) My husband proposed to me at 2000 foot altitude in a hot air balloon. I was so terrified of dropping the ring, I refused to touch it.

7) I'm half Irish and half Polish, which explains the 100% stubborn (among other things).

Bloggers that should be on your "Must Read" list:

Adam Heine at Author's Echo, whose delightful writing blog has a high quotient of graphs and charts and an apparently bottomless well of helpfulness.

Bryan Russell at Alchemy of Writing, whose beautiful writing never fails to move me, and who graciously shares flash fiction (his own and other writers') through his The World in Miniature posts.

Laura Pauling at Exercising the Write to Ramble, whose insights into story building and writing skills leave me in awe.

Stina Lindenblatt at Seeing Creative, whose Cool Link Fridays are a treasure trove of writerly information, and who never fails to capture beauty with her camera.

I've been horribly behind in my blog reading as well, so please have patience while I try to catch up this week!

p.s. also see my post on Falling in Love Again over at the Scribbler's Cove.

On Being Present

Picture credit

Sometimes, my mind wanders.

Of course, I'm a writer, so I'm a professional daydreamer. Stand aside, amateur 5th graders gazing out the window! Professional Daydreamer at work, here!


Yeah, that's the kind of stuff that goes through my head.

Several things of late have caused me to try to be more present: listening more closely to the stories my boys tell me; observing more minutely the details of the world around me; focusing on the present moment before it slips into the next and the next and the next; trying not to live in the future, thinking about writing or laundry or blogs I want to write.

I recently read an article about negative self-talk, which I can no longer find (this is the kind of reading I do - and apparently lose - when I am not reading fiction). It talked about being gentle with ourselves, and how the messages we say to ourselves in our own heads are usually much more negative than we would ever say to a dear friend we loved.

I didn't think I was a negative self-talker, but as I listened to many of those future-thoughts, the ones that weren't focused on the present, I found a lot of should-isms. I should rework the ending of that story. I should pick up the dry-cleaning. I shouldn't be thinking about the future! I should try to be more in the present!


While being gentle with myself about it, I would like to strive to be relax into being more present. A wandering mind is part of this writing vocation, but I don't want it to get lost in future-land.

There is so much to treasure in the now.

Repost: Twelve Tips for Reluctant Readers

My mom will be flying back to sunny California soon. Here's one last selection from the way-back machine. Ink Spells will return to real-time mode on Friday!

Twelve Tips for Reluctant Readers (original post 6/2010)

I have three boys with three different learning styles and paths to reading. If you believe there is only one way to teach a child to love books, I urge you to have more than one child. And then try to teach them to read.

This great post and discussion at Imagination Soup (what a great name!) got me thinking about all the things I've done over the years to encourage my kids to read, from alternating reading pages with them (tip#1), to allowing them to check out ridiculous numbers of books (tip#2), to paying library fines larger than my tax bill (almost) (this is not a tip I would recommend).

Today we made our annual trek to the library to enroll in the library's summer reading program (tip#3), the one where the library hands out t-shirts and coupons for ice-cream to kids (and adults!) that read a certain number of books over the summer. We proudly sport our library t-shirts from years past (tip#4), nodding to our friends with similar shirts in a knowing way, like members of a secret club.

In another recent sojourn to the library ("Mom, I'm out of books!" "Again?" Sigh), I came across a friend whose daughter had resolutely declared her intent to NOT read chapter books just moments before. EVER. Good daddy that he was, he had allowed her to pick out a host of picture books well below her reading level (tip#5), and they were stationed at the window, alternately looking out at geese and reading about the adventures of D.W.

Knowing that other adults can somehow influence my children in ways I never can, I swept in and announced that I knew of some books that she would like. Books with animals. TALKING animals. MAGICAL TALKING animals. Did she like magical talking animals? Yes, she did.

I scooped up a couple Magic Tree House books that Mighty Mite and I had recently consumed, and gave her a pitch (tip#6): "This is a book about magical seals. They don't really talk, but Annie can understand them anyway." She nodded, very slightly, because of course that sounds like an intriguing book, doesn't it? I held up the second one, open to one of the wonderful pencil illustrations inside. "This one has a baby penguin that does something very special to help Annie. But I can't tell you what it is. You have toread it."

She wasn't going to admit that the books were awesome (though she wasn't fooling me), but I do believe they went home from the library with her (tip#7).

Putting the right books in little hands at the right time (tip#8), by whatever means necessary, is a key part of encouraging kids to read. Reluctant readers will be excited by a story, the pictures inside graphic novels (tip#9), or simply that their friends have read it. I've read to my boys, even when they could read it themselves (tip#10), scoured the library shelves with them (tip#11), and made more trips than I can possibly count to the library and bookstore. I have one avid reader, who literally demanded that I teach him to read at age four. Then I have two reluctant readers, who nonetheless read. A lot. One reluctant reader just recently converted to Avid status, once he was able to read Harry Potter on his own. And I'm sure that my final one will come along in time.

Resistance is futile, when Mom is determined.

Another good lesson to learn in life.

p.s. In an attempt to model good reading (tip#12), I joined the library reading program this summer, for the first time. I want a t-shirt, too! Plus, maybe this summer I'll whittle down that TBR pile after all.

{Editorial note: Using e-books and e-readers to entice your reluctant reader cannot hurt (tip#13)}

Repost: Science as Magic

My mom and are steadily working through my tea collection. In the meantime, another selection by the way-back machine of posts-from-blogs-past! Enjoy!

Science as Magic (original post 2/2010)

(Editorial note: my thoughts on this are surprisingly unchanged. In fact, I believe this even more now than I did then)

Is it just me, or has the world become ridiculously complicated?

Now, I'm a huge fan of the complex: I studied fluid mechanics, whose differential equations are almost as complicated as those fascinating constructions used in physics (my other love). Math was always my favorite subject, especially when it zoomed off into infinite series and tortured integrals and mated with physics to produce understandings of the world that could only exist in numerical form.

Our friend, the Navier-Stokes equation.

... is beaten by ...

Schrodinger's equation, of the cat fame.

I know. Me = geek.

But something has changed from those simple, ancient days in the 80's and 90's when I was in graduate school. The world has become more complicated than any one single human can hold in their minds at the same time.

The world has always been complicated, but it used to be that one could understand how the phone worked - I mean actually worked, not just how to make a call - without needing advanced degrees in microelectronics. Now the manual to use the phone resembles a miniature phone book, and the phone books themselves exist mostly on the interwebs.

My husband spent the weekend recreationally writing code to print out rocket designs, because the boy is serious about his rocket building hobby. (I know. Hubby = geek, too.) He commented how it was fun because it was challenging, yet simple compared to his work at the office designing software to run the latest high tech water softener. He was lamenting that the code had gotten so complex he could no longer hold all the options for it in his head at the same time. We're not talking Windows 7 here, people. We're talking code for a household appliance.

The idea that sufficiently advanced technology is the same as magic, is not new (thank you, Arthur C. Clarke). However, I never expected to be one of the peasants, in awe of the latest gift from the gods. And when the technorati themselves are baffled by their own creations ... well, it starts to sound like one of those sci-fi dystopias that sent shivers down my back as a youngster.

How does this relate to books? I wonder if the profusion of magic and the fantastic in the last 20 years or so is less a result of the Harry Potter/Twilight fandoms and more an acknowledgement of the reality of our world: the place is freaking amazing! And kind of terrifying. And books have swallowed whole the idea that science is magic, to most of us anyway. So, why bother with the details?

Makes me want to turn luddite and hide in my cave. But there's no internet there, and I wouldn't be able to blog, so I guess that's out.

Repost: Creating Something from Nothing

My mom is coming to visit, something she does a few times a year. It's precious time for me, so I will be stepping away from the blogosphere for a short time, sipping tea with her, and engaging in that endless talking thing we do.

So, I'm cranking up the way-back machine and bringing you a couple reposts from 2010! Enjoy!

Creating Something from Nothing (original post 2/2010)

Writing is perseverence.

Writing is Ideas + Skill + Luck.

Writing is striving, and learning, and craft.

Today, for me, writing was an act of creation. I love first drafts!

That first moment where all the pieces - the sketchy outline, the dramatic moment, the bit of dialogue rumbling around in your brain - come alive under your fingers. Little black squiggles become tension, action, and thoughts that create a scene, weave a story, and breathe life into a blank page.

It's an act of creation that frankly is better than M&Ms and full strength Coke. Combined.

At times, I found myself ducking my head or sighing or propping my elbows up on the table, mimicking my characters to get just the right feel to the scene. I spoke out loud like a mad woman, just to hear the cadence of my protagonist's dialogue. I closed my eyes to more perfectly picture the peak of the action sequence, feeling my heartbeat actually speed up as I slow-motioned through the scene in my mind.

There's a reason writers say they are addicted to the craft.

Tomorrow (or next week) I'll find all the flaws - the typo's, the hideous grammar, the horrific run on sentences. But today, I revel in the act of bringing story to life.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Green Eggs and Ham and Cat in the Hat live large in our house. Dr. Seuss (107 and still going strong) was read in-utero to my boys via Oh, the Places You'll Go.

This is the kind of thing that makes me wish I had girls.

For a Seussian birthday
you can download a Seuss App
or make some Seuss cupcakes
or don a Seuss Top Hat.

If you want to be snazzy,

you could get a Nook Book.

If you're not quite so jazzy,

you should stick to the Foot Book.

If your  iPhone is crumbly
and your cupcakes are too,
then cuddle up with a kid
and read Horton Hears a Who.

If you're a pre-teen girl,
you may favor The Bieber,
cuz birthday's are catchy,
even if you're a tweener.

As for me, I'll be reading Seuss-isms for Success,
a tiny tome that's sadly out of print.
Perhaps it will come back as Nook Hook E-book?
For now, I will end this Seussian rant.

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.

        --Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! We love you.