Have a nice weekend!
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Once Upon a Time…
Pitch Fest at CJLA Update:
The agents are critiquing them today. So far, the agent is halfway through the second page and all but two have been (tactfully) rejected. Mine is on page four… I’ll let you know how things went on Monday.
Last week on Agent Query Connect http://agentquery.leveragesoftware.com/mypage.aspx there was a casual contest for members to write the best first paragraph of a brand new story. There was no prize other than personal satisfaction. Members were on the honor system to vote only once, and not for themselves.
This week, the contest has been extended to use that first paragraph as a springboard and write a whole first page. My paragraph didn’t even place in last week’s contest, but it’s really just for fun, so I’m going for page one.
What I wrote is not very exciting, because I’m fairly sure there’s going to be a ‘first chapter’ contest next time, and I like to pounce on the reader when they least expect it…
The first one to arrive at the dinner table, Matt sat down and picked up his fork. Mom was over by the stove transferring food from the pans to serving bowls, but he saw that the jello was already set out. Hungry, he snuck a peek to make sure that his mother’s back was still turned and then reached over to scoop up a forkful. Just before he popped it into his mouth, he noticed little squiggly brown things on the top.
“What’s in this jello?” he squawked.
“Oatmeal,” replied his mother. “I’m on a diet.”
Matt groaned. “Cholesterol?”
“See how much you’re learning?” she teased with a smile.
Charlie and Katie walked into the room and pulled out their chairs.
“Where’s Dad?” asked Charlie as their mother brought the food to the table.
“Working,” said Mrs. Smith, no longer smiling.
Matt looked at her with a frown. Dad had been working late a lot lately, and his mother didn’t seem too happy about it.
“What’s wrong with the jello?” Charlie was peering at the brown blobs.
Matt wasn’t feeling too happy, now himself. “It’s oatmeal. Shut up and eat.” He stabbed his fork at a lima bean and it shot off the plate onto the tablecloth.
His mother looked up. “Everything okay, Matt?”
“I don’t know. Is it?” he asked.
His mother frowned. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. Why is Dad working late all the time now?”
“Count your blessings he’s working at all, in this economy.”
Seven-year-old Katie looked over at her big brother. “You sure are grumpy,” she said.
Matt made a face at her and took a bite of his meatloaf.
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Pitch Contest at CJLA – Check It Out!
The Caren Johnson Literary Agency is holding an open Pitch Fest today.
They are looking for romance (urban fantasy, contemporary and historical), YA (contemporary and paranormal) and women’s fiction [Caren] and middle-grade and YA novels and series [Elana].
The pitch needs to be under 100 words, and submitted between 12:00 am and 11:59 pm.
Check out the details at: http://www.johnsonliterary.com/blog/2010/1/25/pitchfest-details-and-instructions.html
Here’s mine:
When Brian finds a box in the attic containing old newspaper clippings and a signet ring just like his grandfather’s, he realizes he’s stumbled across the family secret: Jack. Although Grandpa Jim has good reason to forget his identical twin, the past will continue to haunt him unless Brian can uncover what really happened.
JIM AND JACK is a YA contemporary with a historical twist and a splash of romance, the completed first novel in an outlined series of History Mysteries.
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Clay Pots
Although we’ve been back in the midwest for well over a decade, my husband and I lived for several years in Tucson, Arizona. In that state, there are twenty-one federally recognized tribes of Native Americans. Some are famous, such as the Navajo, Apache and Hopi, and some are less familiar, like the Paiute, Pima, Tohono O’odham and the Cocopah. Many are known for their ceramics, baskets and silver jewelry, but the Pueblo Indians are particularly renowned for their distinctive earthenware pots.
Traditionally made by crushing shards of old pottery and mixing them with freshly dug clay, a long roll is coiled to form a new pot. The ridges are flattened to create a smooth wall, and then a slip of pigment is washed over it. After being polished, paint is applied and the pot is fired in a backyard oven. Some pots crack in the heat, but when well crafted, many end up in the homes of collectors.
This, to me, is a lot like writing a novel. Each author begins with knowledge gleaned from years of school and personal experiences, combined with a new idea. Coiling words into a rough vessel, the writer smoothes the first draft into shape, polishing by going over it again and again to find extraneous words, vague descriptions, inauthentic dialogue and typos. The final touches are added, and then it is on to the fire of rejection by agents and publishers. Many won’t make it, but if well crafted, some have a chance.
Of course, then the author has to develop a web presence, spend their advance on a marketing campaign and create a book trailer, but that’s another post. 😉
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It Was the Worst of Times
One goal of the modern writer is to use as few words as possible to say what one means. Now, while I like a straightforward read, it does make me wonder how much exercise my brain is getting when I read what the modern writer has written!
Back when Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities, it was just a normal book. Dickens was famous for his popularity with the masses, and this was the sort of thing that the masses were reading.
Much to my dismay, my book group decided to read A Tale of Two Cities a few years ago. I had read it in eleventh grade — well, I shouldn’t say that I read it, because I never actually sat down with the book except in class. I had a little habit of never doing any assigned reading. The class read it, though, and I got to participate in the discussion. Although I was able to discern enough of the plot to pass the test, nothing of the experience inspired me to read it.
I had no more interest in reading it for book group than I’d had for English Lit. Being an adult, however, I felt that I should probably do it anyway, so I got it from the library and forced myself to read.
I had to read about fifty pages before I got to the point where I was reading automatically instead of reading each sentence and then re-reading it to get the right flow. Once I did, though, it really started to be a good little book! As I read, things from the class discussions filtered into my consciousness, Madame DeFarge, the symbolism, Sydney Carton’s ultimate sacrifice. I expended more intellectual effort than I typically do when reading, but afterward, I felt as sharp as a certain pair of knitting needles.
When I was in fifth grade, I discovered my first Nancy Drew book in the school library, The Secret of the Wooden Lady. After I’d devoured it, I asked the librarian where I could find more of them, and was told that it was a fluke it was there at all. Nancy Drew books weren’t literature, and if a book didn’t enlighten the reader in some way, it didn’t belong on the shelves.
Over the years, that notion has gone the way of all things in education, and now it’s impossible to go into the children’s section of a library without having to wade through aisles of series (most of which, by the way, can’t even aspire to the caliber of Nancy Drew).
The well-intentioned theory behind the shift was that kids should read more, and they would be more likely to read things that were simplistic and entertaining. When those books started flying off the shelves, librarians (and publishers?) forgot all about edifying the reader. Now Junie B. Jones and The Magic Tree House rule the library while The Pushcart War and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase are sitting in landfills*.
In eleventh grade, I would have gladly subscribed to the current viewpoint; maybe I would even have read an assignment or two, but is it really a far, far better thing that the masses are predominantly reading commercial fiction?
* See my post, “You Can’t Tell a Book by Its Cover.” 😉
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Proceed with Caution
Official Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nor do I have any medical training. Do not take any of the advice on this blog without consulting a physician first! 🙂
I don’t tend to think of writing as being a particularly dangerous activity. Sitting at my desk with a cup of tea, the worst concern at the back of my mind is probably carpal tunnel syndrome. Lately, though, several things have come to my attention that lead me to believe that writing is more dangerous than you’d think!
One of the hazards of writing can be the amount of time that one sits in a chair writing! I just heard on TV the other day that being sedentary at work can DOUBLE the chance of a heart attack, even if the sedentary worker works out regularly. Doctors suggest getting up at least once every hour to stretch and walk around to get the blood moving. That’s not a bad idea, anyway. Even when you ride in a car or on a plane for long periods, I’ve heard that you should flex your toes upward several times and tense your calf muscles every hour or so, so that you don’t develop a blood clot. It makes sense that just sitting in a chair would warrant the same precaution.
Another potential problem with all of this sitting around is what my mother used to term, “a secretary’s bottom.” I myself have wondered if my increasingly tight waistband is a side effect of writing, and so was quite happy to see several helpful hints for losing a few pounds on Friday morning’s Today Show. (Hmmm… maybe I can’t blame all of that sitting around on my writing…) One was to buy a memo notebook. Every morning, write a short list of things that might mess up your good diet intentions that day (such as being persuaded by a coworker to get the patty melt at lunch). Throughout the day, check off all of the things on the list that you overcome. Another was to cut your calorie intake. If you hit a plateau, drop another hundred or so calories and your progress will pick up again. (This was my least favorite suggestion.) You can also eat a whole lot of low calorie food that is highly filling, such as oranges, berries, air popped popcorn and oatmeal. Drinking green tea is helpful, too, although I can’t remember why. The MOST important thing (in my opinion) was that if you do diet, you need to treat yourself every day or you’ll feel deprived. Pick out something yummy that is around 150 calories to snack on in the afternoon, like three cookies, or a scoop of light ice cream or a small piece of cake, or whatever. (This was my favorite advice. I can personally recommend Tootsie Pops.)
The third potential hazard of being a writer is staying up too late writing, because no one is around to bother you. Happily, the same Today Show also talked about the need for sleep, and how much more productive one can be if rested. Hints for that included shutting off the TV and lowering the lights an hour before sleep time, sleeping in a cool room and writing down the things that are bothering you to get them out of your head. Also sniffing lavender and cutting out the evening caffeine intake.
Risky business, this writing! But now there is no excuse to be tired, overweight, or heart attack prone.
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Judge Not…
There is a contest on WEBook.com right now* which you can pay a small fee to enter a short summary and the first page of your manuscript. The submissions are rated by WEBook members (who can also enter the contest, but are only able to rate others’ entries, not their own). The best entries are elevated up four judging levels (more of the book gets read each time), and during the process get the eye of the agents involved with the contest and potential representation.
I have not entered, but several fellow Agent Query members have, so when the first round of judging officially began, I hopped over to the WEBook website to get my feet wet as a critic. Hoping to spot my virtual friends’ entries, I read and evaluated more than thirty submissions.
I LOVED IT!!! You get to choose what genre(s) you want to read, and you can judge as many as you want. You rate each entry from 1 (bad) to 5 (great), and then you get to see how all the other peer judges rated it.
It was easy, after the first line or two, to tell if the entry wasn’t a 5, but I had to read each one all the way through to give it an accurate rating. Most of the time, I found that my opinion was right there with the majority. Some entries were awful, a lot were OK, and a few weren’t bad. None of the ones that I read stood out to me as a 5.
After reading about twenty, I found my mind wandering and I had to force myself to concentrate so that I could judge fairly. As I was doing this, it struck me that these entries were basically the same thing that agents have to deal with every day. It is easy to understand how they get to the point that they only need to read the hook before rejecting a query.
Many agents mention in their blogs that they can’t take the time to tell every author why their query or manuscript has been rejected, but I discovered while judging that if you read enough of other people’s writing, you don’t need them to.
As I was working my way through the literary fiction category, I noticed many entries that seemed to have a decent storyline, but the author had buried it in the writing. Then it occurred to me that the things that I was most critical of were what I had been vaguely bothered by in my own manuscript.
I feel an edit coming on.
* This is not an endorsement of the contest; my only connection to WEBook is that I am a member.
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In Defense of the Adverb
Adverbs are becoming increasingly unfashionable. Current writing lore holds that readers feel insulted by the use of an adverb, as if a writer were saying, “I didn’t think that you were smart enough to figure out how the character felt after he slipped on dog poo, and so I used the word, ‘disgustedly.’ ”
Why, after several hundred years of just enjoying a good read, readers have decided to take umbrage at this particular part of speech is hard to say, but there are three drawbacks to eliminating them, in my opinion.
1. A lack of adverbs can cause disruption of the reader’s immersion in a story.
When the reader is left to assume things for himself, he might misinterpret a situation, which can lead to the need for an abrupt readjustment later on.
For example:
Howard scraped the bottom of his shoe on the edge of the pavement. “That’s it,” he said. “Fido, we’re going for a ride.”
As Fido sat in the back of the convertible, ears flying, he wondered at Howard’s tone. He suspected that his owner was disgusted by the unfortunate incident during their walk, but was he angry, too?
The car pulled into a parking lot and Howard opened the door. “Come on, boy.”
Fido hopped out and followed his master into a small white building. Cages along the walls were filled with dogs and cats. Howard stopped at a counter and a careworn woman in a white uniform came out from the back room. Fido didn’t like her smell.
“May I help you?” she asked.
Fido’s heart suddenly beat faster. Was this the dog pound? He had heard about this place from Fluffy, the dog next door. She’d told him that when owners get mad at their pets, they take them to the pound and have them put to sleep. Fido hadn’t believed her, but now he wasn’t so sure.
“Do you sell those really long leashes that zip back when you push a button?” Howard inquired. “This one is so short that he poops on the sidewalk!”
“Aisle three,” the lady answered.
Fido felt so silly!
2. The lack of adverbs denies the reader the joy of nuance, or degree.
It might be obvious that a character is mad, but HOW mad? Let’s take another look at Howard, using some adverbs:
Howard looked disgustedly at the dog poop on his brand new sneaker. Ironically, he realized that if he’d started the day’s errands at the pet shop instead of the shoe store, this wouldn’t have happened. Howard scraped the bottom of his shoe on the edge of the pavement. “That’s it,” he said wryly. “Fido, we’re going for a ride.”
Fido knew exactly how Howard felt.
3. Removing adverbs dumbs-down a book.
Adverbs are supposedly sacrificed to make things more straightforward for the reader, which in essence makes it easier to read. In Microsoft Word, there is a little tool called the Flesch-Kincaid Scale (part of the spell check), which reflects the approximate grade level of your work.
“That’s it,” he said wryly. “Fido, we’re going for a ride.” scores a 5.8, whereas “That’s it,” he said. “Fido, we’re going for a ride.” comes in at 0.5.
To me, not using adverbs is as if a writer were saying, “I didn’t think that you were smart enough to understand a complex sentence, and so I just left a few words out. Kind of like a text message.”
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Random
As a (procrastinating) writer, I am prone to considering pointless and tangential topics. Hence, my thoughts this morning:
What is it with the word, “won’t?” A contraction of “will not,” shouldn’t it be “willn’t?”
I will, or I won’t. I wo, or I won’t? It just doesn’t make sense. If it were short for “would not,” wouldn’t there be two apostrophes, as in wo’n’t? But we already have “wouldn’t,” so that’s not it.
I looked it up in the dictionary on my laptop (The New Oxford American Dictionary), and got the response, “No entries found. Did you mean wont?”
No, but I looked that up, anyway:
wont
adjective
he was wont to arise at 5:30 accustomed, used, given, inclined.
noun
Paul drove fast, as was his wont custom, habit, way, practice, convention, rule
Not what I was after. Where do you look up a contraction? I surfed the web, using the keywords “will not,” “etymology,” and “won’t.”
The first hit was the Online Etymology Dictionary, which said:
contraction of will not, first recorded mid-15c. as wynnot, later wonnot (1584) before the modern form emerged 1667. See will.
I did:
O.E. *willan, wyllan “to wish, desire, want” (past tense wolde), from P.Gmc. *welljan (cf. O.S. willian, O.N. vilja, O.Fris. willa, Du. willen, O.H.G. wellan, Ger. wollen, Goth. wiljan “to will, wish, desire,” Goth. waljan “to choose”), from PIE *wel-/*wol- “be pleasing” (cf. Skt. vrnoti “chooses, prefers,” varyah “to be chosen, eligible, excellent,” varanam “choosing;” Avestan verenav- “to wish, will, choose;” Gk. elpis “hope;” L. volo, velle “to wish, will, desire;” O.C.S. voljo, voliti “to will,” veljo, veleti “to command;” Lith. velyti “to wish, favor,” pa-vel-mi “I will,” viliuos “I hope;” Welsh gwell “better”). Cf. also O.E. wel “well,” lit. “according to one’s wish;” wela “well-being, riches.” The use as a future auxiliary was already developing in O.E. The implication of intention or volition distinguishes it from shall, which expresses or implies obligation or necessity. Contracted forms, especially after pronouns, began to appear 16c., as in sheele for “she will.” The form with an apostrophe is from 17c.
O.E. will, willa, from P.Gmc. *weljon (cf. O.S. willio, O.N. vili, O.Fris. willa, Du. wil, O.H.G. willio, Ger. wille, Goth. wilja “will”), related to *willan “to wish” (see will (v.)). The meaning “written document expressing a person’s wishes about disposition of property after death” is first recorded c.1380.
That’s that, I guess.
Why didn’t they just stick with wyllen? I like that a lot better…
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Short Story Practice
On AQ Connect lately, there has been much discussion about writing short stories. One person said that they like to take side characters from their longer works and write vignettes about them. I decided that I’d like to try it, so here’s an independent short story about Grandpa Jim from my manuscript, JIM AND JACK:
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’Til Death Us Do Part
Jim sat down in the chair next to the bed and took Ella’s hand in his own, careful not to let the I.V. catch on the sheets. Her skin was cool and smooth, the freckles and veins made more prominent by its pallor. It was odd to see those hands so still, he reflected. Somehow that made it more real that she was dying.
He sat quietly, listening to the evenness of her breath and the steady beeping of the heart monitor. She seemed unaware of his presence, and he didn’t want to disturb her. The pain was under control for the moment, but he knew it would return when she awakened.
His mind drifted back to when Hazel had died, decades ago. So different were the circumstances it seemed implausible that the events were related, but they were, their three lives intertwined.
Hazel’s last words as she clasped their hands had been that they should comfort each other, and she’d pulled them together in her moment of passing. The act had stayed with him, but he hadn’t known why for a long time.
Every day afterward, Ella had motored to the island, keeping house for him and preparing his meals. He had told her that he was fine and she didn’t need to bother, but she came anyway, knowing that he was not fine at all. When he’d needed to talk she had listened, and when his temper had gotten the better of him, she put up with it. Selfish in his misery, he managed to ignore the fact that she had also lost her sister, but she had continued to come. He harbored regret that he had wallowed in his grief and isolated himself to avoid the healing, or rather the dimming memories that would accompany it. As time passed and his feelings of grief abated in spite of his determination to cling to them, he realized that his feelings for Ella had changed dramatically.
She had always seemed like his own kid sister, tagging along when he and Hazel went for walks and sneaking peeks from the landing when they sat together in the parlor. She had been a junior bridesmaid at their wedding, her long red hair somehow managing to snag in her bouquet as she followed them up the aisle. Hazel had spent the first five minutes of their marriage untangling it.
He felt disloyal at having such feelings for his dead wife’s sister and had pushed them away as long as he could, until one day when he found Ella crying in the garden shed. Remorseful that he had been so self absorbed that he hadn’t thought of her loss at all, he had taken her into his arms to comfort her. From then on, he had thought of little else.
Tortured by her nearness but unwilling to suggest again that she stop coming to the island, he let things continue as they had, enjoying her company every day, but, ashamed of himself, he kept up the brotherly front.
One morning, she was late. Jim kept expecting to hear the hum of the motorboat, but by lunchtime she still hadn’t arrived. Worried, Jim finally picked up the phone. When she didn’t answer, he got down to the dock fast and rowed like a maniac.
When he arrived at the landing, her small skiff was bobbing next to the dock, so at least she hadn’t drowned on the way to Half Moon. As he hiked up the slope to Jefferson Hill, he imagined all kinds of other things that could have happened to her. She had never been late like this.
His heart was pounding when he got to the door of her family home. It was the first time he’d been there since Hazel had died and a wave of sadness threatened to wash over him, but he pushed it away, thinking only of Ella living in this big house all by herself.
She didn’t answer the bell, so he went around back and kicked in a basement window. When he dropped to the floor, one foot landed inside an old pickle crock, which caused him to stumble through some cobwebs before he crashed into a rough stone wall. Undaunted, he gave his leg a shake to rid it of its confines, and the crock rolled loudly into a dark corner. Jim purposefully mounted the steps to the first floor. When he opened the door to the kitchen, something hard whacked down on his head and he fell to the linoleum, banging his chin.
“Oh, my!’ gasped Ella, bending down in her nightgown to help him up. The broom that she had hit him with fell to the floor next to her. “I thought you were a robber!”
“I rang the bell!” he rubbed his jaw and looked at her in confusion. “Why didn’t you come this morning?”
She stared at him in surprise. “I told you that I was going to help Lucy Lockhardt with her babies last night! I thought you’d understand if I wasn’t in any shape to come over this morning.”
Ella’s best friend Lucy had given birth to triplets the week before. When her husband had needed to go to out of town unexpectedly, Ella had volunteered to stay overnight. Jim had forgotten all about it.
“Oh.” He stood up awkwardly, feeling foolish. She tried to brush some cobwebs off his shirt, but he quickly pushed her hands away. The look on her face told him that she was offended, but the lightness of her touch was more than he could bear.
“Well,” he said, embarrassed. ”I guess I’d better be getting back.”
She looked at him with a puzzled frown. “You came here because you were worried about me?”
“Well, of course,” he replied. “You are always over by nine, and I forgot about Lucy.”
“You could have called,” she said.
“I did!” he exclaimed. “There was no answer.”
“Oh.” Ella laughed. “I switched off the ringer because I wanted to sleep in for awhile, after being up all night.”
Seeing her there, barefoot in her nightgown with her long red hair tangled around her, Jim realized that something had to change or he was going to go crazy.
“You know I loved your sister,” he said.
Her smile died. “So did I,” she said after a moment.
“I think that she wanted us together,” he said, realizing as he said the words that it was true.
Ella’s mouth pursed. “She did.”
“How do you know that?” he demanded.
“Because she told me so, the day she died. She knew that I’d always held a candle for you, and she was afraid that we’d both end up alone. She gave us her blessing.”
Shocked, Jim took a step back. “Why didn’t she say anything to me?”
“She tried.” Ella reminded him.
“But why didn’t you ever mention it?”
“I knew that you didn’t feel that way about me.” It came out in a whisper.
“I didn’t.”
Ella stilled and looked into his eyes. “You do now?”
“What do you think?” He pulled her into his arms and she gasped.
He kissed her, and the rest was history.
“How’s she doing?” Tom asked in a low voice as he entered the room.
Jim looked up. “About the same,” he said. “Where’s Brian?”
“Will and Trish volunteered to keep him for the afternoon,” said Tom. “I just talked with the hospice people about taking Mom home today.”
Jim, still holding her hand, was silent.
“It’s what she wants,” Tom reminded him.
“I know.”
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