Mary R. Davidsaver's Blog, page 12
October 20, 2017
Becoming the Beta Reader
I've volunteered to act as a Beta reader and wanted to dig up the critique rules I was given in an old writing workshop. I found an blog post from May, 2014 instead. The thoughts on feedback and editing are still good. Here it is:
Constructive Criticism and MagicI don’t think of constructive criticism as an oxymoron. Constructive comments as a term might sound less harsh. Better yet, feedback. Whatever you call it, it is invaluable for a writer seeking to improve skills and a story.
Writers need not fear revisions and rewrites. That’s where the magic happens.
I’ve recently gathered the confidence to let my novel out to a few trusted readers with the instruction, request actually, to give me comments and feedback.
Now, I have to wait and fret. I’ve spent the better part of four years building up to this point. If the consensus is totally negative, what can I do? Start completely over after investing so much? That will hurt. I’ve heard of writers doing just that. They put a bad manuscript in a drawer and go on to the next something else. Sadder, but wiser.
I suppose I could move on the next project. Check out writing websites for ideas. But I’d rather not. I still have high hopes for my Bishop Hill novel. I’d rather have constructive comments and ideas on how to make it better, to continue working within the framework of what I have already built.
When I took part in a novel writing workshop through the Midwest Writing Center in 2012, I had to come up with 30 pages of manuscript to share with the dozen other writers. I felt lucky to have those pages ready to go. Some of the other writers didn’t.
Amy Parker, a writer from Iowa City, led the group through the workshop process and set up these guidelines for us:
· Read twice: first for pleasure, as with a “magazine read” and look for first impressions; second as a writer who marks up the manuscript to indicate the passages that delight, that confuse, that pose questions. In short, fill in the margins with comments.
· Write a one page letter to the author. She wanted us to describe the story, what happens, and where we thought it was going. Readers can pick up on things the author may not have intended. We need to know what worked for the reader, what moved them, what they admired.
The goal was to get at what confused the reader. Where the story needed development, gaps filled, inconsistencies fixed, language clarified. What scenes that could be compressed or summaries that could be amped up.
I don’t expect my readers to go through a whole novel twice, but I am hoping for good suggestions for the next rewrite. After all, magic is a good thing.
Constructive Criticism and MagicI don’t think of constructive criticism as an oxymoron. Constructive comments as a term might sound less harsh. Better yet, feedback. Whatever you call it, it is invaluable for a writer seeking to improve skills and a story.
Writers need not fear revisions and rewrites. That’s where the magic happens.
I’ve recently gathered the confidence to let my novel out to a few trusted readers with the instruction, request actually, to give me comments and feedback.
Now, I have to wait and fret. I’ve spent the better part of four years building up to this point. If the consensus is totally negative, what can I do? Start completely over after investing so much? That will hurt. I’ve heard of writers doing just that. They put a bad manuscript in a drawer and go on to the next something else. Sadder, but wiser.
I suppose I could move on the next project. Check out writing websites for ideas. But I’d rather not. I still have high hopes for my Bishop Hill novel. I’d rather have constructive comments and ideas on how to make it better, to continue working within the framework of what I have already built.
When I took part in a novel writing workshop through the Midwest Writing Center in 2012, I had to come up with 30 pages of manuscript to share with the dozen other writers. I felt lucky to have those pages ready to go. Some of the other writers didn’t.
Amy Parker, a writer from Iowa City, led the group through the workshop process and set up these guidelines for us:
· Read twice: first for pleasure, as with a “magazine read” and look for first impressions; second as a writer who marks up the manuscript to indicate the passages that delight, that confuse, that pose questions. In short, fill in the margins with comments.
· Write a one page letter to the author. She wanted us to describe the story, what happens, and where we thought it was going. Readers can pick up on things the author may not have intended. We need to know what worked for the reader, what moved them, what they admired.
The goal was to get at what confused the reader. Where the story needed development, gaps filled, inconsistencies fixed, language clarified. What scenes that could be compressed or summaries that could be amped up.
I don’t expect my readers to go through a whole novel twice, but I am hoping for good suggestions for the next rewrite. After all, magic is a good thing.
October 13, 2017
Reviewing That Tough Book
Writing a book review can be challenging for a book that on first reading isn’t quite “your thing.” It’s so easy to find fault with a book, to pick it apart for grammar, spelling mistakes, and overall continuity. Taking some time, and a step back, to purposefully look for the POSITIVE elements can bring out a much better, and still honest, review.
That’s what I did for Reggie! Ringling’s First Black Clown.
I let myself get all up in arms when someone didn’t get Jerry Lewis’s name correct in a photo caption. I very nearly forgot to look at the book as a whole, complete work that had a lot more to offer than the editorial mistakes of the self-published volume.
Add to that the fact that my review would be the first one on Amazon and Goodreads put me into a much different position. I would be able to set a positive tone for a deserving book that needed a boost.
I went back and reread the preface. I found the information and therefore the balance I needed to write a much better and more accurate review. I’m glad I took the time. Here is my review:
Reggie! Ringling’s First Black Clown
This slim book covers a brief period in the life of Reginald Montgomery when, through chance and choice, he was in the crosshairs of history as a pioneer performer.
As the title says: He was the first African-American clown in a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus that was under new ownership at the time and willing to expand its frontiers. Those efforts were needed to adapt the circus, and probably save it, for the second half of the twentieth century.
Authors Hepner and Roseman piece together a narrative out of an autobiographical play, coauthored by Reggie and Hepner; biographical interviews of people who knew Reggie; and family history, complete with photos.
The action is kept mainly in the time frame of 1968-1969 when Reggie toured as a graduate of the first clown college. Background information about circus history, circus life, and current events are added as needed.
What emerges is a poignant look at the struggles and triumphs of a talented young man who saw himself as a serious theatre actor first and foremost.
That’s what I did for Reggie! Ringling’s First Black Clown.
I let myself get all up in arms when someone didn’t get Jerry Lewis’s name correct in a photo caption. I very nearly forgot to look at the book as a whole, complete work that had a lot more to offer than the editorial mistakes of the self-published volume.
Add to that the fact that my review would be the first one on Amazon and Goodreads put me into a much different position. I would be able to set a positive tone for a deserving book that needed a boost.
I went back and reread the preface. I found the information and therefore the balance I needed to write a much better and more accurate review. I’m glad I took the time. Here is my review:
Reggie! Ringling’s First Black Clown
This slim book covers a brief period in the life of Reginald Montgomery when, through chance and choice, he was in the crosshairs of history as a pioneer performer.
As the title says: He was the first African-American clown in a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus that was under new ownership at the time and willing to expand its frontiers. Those efforts were needed to adapt the circus, and probably save it, for the second half of the twentieth century.
Authors Hepner and Roseman piece together a narrative out of an autobiographical play, coauthored by Reggie and Hepner; biographical interviews of people who knew Reggie; and family history, complete with photos.
The action is kept mainly in the time frame of 1968-1969 when Reggie toured as a graduate of the first clown college. Background information about circus history, circus life, and current events are added as needed.
What emerges is a poignant look at the struggles and triumphs of a talented young man who saw himself as a serious theatre actor first and foremost.
October 7, 2017
OMG: or the Adventure of Self-publishing
My foray into self-publishing really began with some little booklets I’d collected years ago and saved. My inspirations were small, cute, and inexpensive. (One used newsprint. Another contained only one short story. A free handout held a novel’s first chapter.) I thought I wanted to emulate them. Easier said than done, as I found out.
I had three wintery-themed stories saved up and self-edited to my satisfaction. (Christmas is always a safe season to start with.) I then found an editor to go over them for a final proofreading; I didn’t want to be embarrassed. (Yes, I paid her for her time. You don’t realize how much work this is until you do it yourself.)
I gave myself two weeks to learn how to format a book for CreateSpace … it took three weeks, maybe more. I got myself into such of a haze of confusion and discouragement that I lost track of the days I sat at my computer going down seemingly dead ends. The hazy mind came from trying to learn too many new things all at once with a deadline staring me in the face. (The deadline was of my own construction. I wanted a book by early November—a gift for Olof Krans’s birthday. Anyway, deadlines can become useful tools to shake out the procrastination cobwebs.)
The “too many new things” to learn pretty much all at once included the likes of: formatting rules, jargon, shortcuts, how to use my 2016 version of Word without bothering with tutorials, and not thinking about the end-product needing a decent, albeit simple, cover.
Will I get my finished book by the deadline? Probably not. Do I have a Plan B? Yes, it used to be Plan A before I decided to utilize CreateSpace.
Why CreateSpace? Because I wanted the full experience of self-publishing a book. (Even if it was a chapbook-sized book.) INDIE AUTHOR DAY is coming up at Davenport’s main library and I’ll be there. Becoming a realindie author seemed like a good idea. I also wanted an ISBN without paying $99. And, as it turns out, I happened into a way to design a cover that suited my purpose without a massive amount of hair-tugging exasperation. (Many thanks to my better half, the guy who can research the net faster than me.)
Here’s what have I learned so far: don’t take shortcuts, follow instructions (computers aren’t all that forgiving), video tutorials are only a beginning (at least for me), Word 2016 provides some good online help (if you look for it), and it isn’t necessary to learn it all for the first book (CreateSpace is pretty friendly for beginners).
I will get my little book in time for this year's Christmas season. Then I might start thinking about what to do with the other seasonal stories I've got saved up ... maybe.
I had three wintery-themed stories saved up and self-edited to my satisfaction. (Christmas is always a safe season to start with.) I then found an editor to go over them for a final proofreading; I didn’t want to be embarrassed. (Yes, I paid her for her time. You don’t realize how much work this is until you do it yourself.)
I gave myself two weeks to learn how to format a book for CreateSpace … it took three weeks, maybe more. I got myself into such of a haze of confusion and discouragement that I lost track of the days I sat at my computer going down seemingly dead ends. The hazy mind came from trying to learn too many new things all at once with a deadline staring me in the face. (The deadline was of my own construction. I wanted a book by early November—a gift for Olof Krans’s birthday. Anyway, deadlines can become useful tools to shake out the procrastination cobwebs.)
The “too many new things” to learn pretty much all at once included the likes of: formatting rules, jargon, shortcuts, how to use my 2016 version of Word without bothering with tutorials, and not thinking about the end-product needing a decent, albeit simple, cover.
Will I get my finished book by the deadline? Probably not. Do I have a Plan B? Yes, it used to be Plan A before I decided to utilize CreateSpace.
Why CreateSpace? Because I wanted the full experience of self-publishing a book. (Even if it was a chapbook-sized book.) INDIE AUTHOR DAY is coming up at Davenport’s main library and I’ll be there. Becoming a realindie author seemed like a good idea. I also wanted an ISBN without paying $99. And, as it turns out, I happened into a way to design a cover that suited my purpose without a massive amount of hair-tugging exasperation. (Many thanks to my better half, the guy who can research the net faster than me.)
Here’s what have I learned so far: don’t take shortcuts, follow instructions (computers aren’t all that forgiving), video tutorials are only a beginning (at least for me), Word 2016 provides some good online help (if you look for it), and it isn’t necessary to learn it all for the first book (CreateSpace is pretty friendly for beginners).
I will get my little book in time for this year's Christmas season. Then I might start thinking about what to do with the other seasonal stories I've got saved up ... maybe.
September 29, 2017
Banned Books & Censorship
For Banned Books week, I went to a reading held at the Rock Island Library. I got there in time to hear excerpts from Harry Potter, Judy Blume, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), and for the end with an essay by Harlan Ellison. It was another great evening honoring the right to read without limitations.
It wasn’t until the next morning that it occurred to me how important the role of censorship played in getting my sons to start reading in earnest on their own.
It started with Gary Paulsen’s Winterdance. I’d heard about it from my mother-in-law. I read it, loved it, and wanted my kids, my teenaged boys, to experience what I thought were the funniest parts. It was an adult book, so I figured I’d just read to them those parts and get out before they got too bored. I called them into the youngest’s bedroom, sat on the floor, and read out loud the part where Paulsen describes the first time he had his sled dogs out for a training run. He ends up being drug behind the makeshift rig so fast that the matches in his back pocket ignite. (I had a hard time not laughing.) On a night-time training run, the sled team ran into a skunk. Let’s say you don’t try to pull a skunk out of a dog’s mouth by the tail. (Still funny.) I read those pages out loud to them and left it at that. I was surprised when they each had to read the whole book.
Since that went well, I tried reading an entire book out loud—Jurassic Park. I was worried about some scenes being too graphicly scary, and wanted to avoid the cannibals all together, so I left them out of my reading. They read those edited parts for themselves. Censoring seemed like waving a red cape at a bull.
My husband did a similar thing with Catch-22. After he was done, the boys took turns reading the whole book.
In my opinion, for my family at least, censorship became a great tool to get reluctant readers interested enough to find out what they were missing by, you know, reading.
My grown sons still read, each to his own tastes, and they've done well by it. They're interesting people to talk to.
It wasn’t until the next morning that it occurred to me how important the role of censorship played in getting my sons to start reading in earnest on their own.
It started with Gary Paulsen’s Winterdance. I’d heard about it from my mother-in-law. I read it, loved it, and wanted my kids, my teenaged boys, to experience what I thought were the funniest parts. It was an adult book, so I figured I’d just read to them those parts and get out before they got too bored. I called them into the youngest’s bedroom, sat on the floor, and read out loud the part where Paulsen describes the first time he had his sled dogs out for a training run. He ends up being drug behind the makeshift rig so fast that the matches in his back pocket ignite. (I had a hard time not laughing.) On a night-time training run, the sled team ran into a skunk. Let’s say you don’t try to pull a skunk out of a dog’s mouth by the tail. (Still funny.) I read those pages out loud to them and left it at that. I was surprised when they each had to read the whole book.
Since that went well, I tried reading an entire book out loud—Jurassic Park. I was worried about some scenes being too graphicly scary, and wanted to avoid the cannibals all together, so I left them out of my reading. They read those edited parts for themselves. Censoring seemed like waving a red cape at a bull.
My husband did a similar thing with Catch-22. After he was done, the boys took turns reading the whole book.
In my opinion, for my family at least, censorship became a great tool to get reluctant readers interested enough to find out what they were missing by, you know, reading.
My grown sons still read, each to his own tastes, and they've done well by it. They're interesting people to talk to.
September 22, 2017
Editing, Editing
I’ve been in full contest mode for the past few weeks. First was the Ghost Tales Contest sponsored as a fundraiser for the Colonel Davenport House. For that, I wrote up a story, from a young adult point of view, about a family ghost. I spent 3 days going over and over it: refining; switching words, and sentences, around; basically, trying to make the most of my 1,000-word allotment. I got it done with 913 words, and submitted early. I had other things to do.
One those “other” things turned out to be the River City Reader Short Fiction Contest. This one was more difficult. Made so because a prompt had to be incorporated into the story. This year’s selections were all quotes from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. There was a nice variety of sage and witty words from the master. None of which spoke to me. Until, that is, my fourth reading of the list. Something clicked and one of the quotes seemed perfect for a piece I’d already written for a book club meeting. The story was both real and a satire for an author whose work I really enjoyed. The trouble was my story clocked in at 978 words and I would only be allowed 300 words for my entry.
The challenge: CUT IT DOWN TO ONE QUARTER OF THE ORIGINAL.
It seemed like an impossible task. There was only to do: try and see what I could come up with.
Reading the story again, I copied and pasted key paragraphs and dialog into a new document. 700 words.
I began cutting into the paragraphs and eliminating whole sentences wherever I could. The ones not directly involving the true essence of the story arc. Cute stuff. 600 words.
More cutting of cute stuff. Miscellaneous funny business. Nonsense dialog. (You’d have to know something of Jenny Lawson’s books & blog.) 500 words.
Now, came the serious rearranging of the remaining elements into a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. 400 words.
So close to the goal of 300 words. It was time to get RUTHLESS.
A last-ditch, late-night push. 290 words. That was WITH the quote. (The quote wouldn’t be counted, but we were encouraged to be conservative.)
However, my story left a bit to be desired when I read it again the next morning. Time for the extra dose of fine tuning: choosing the exact words to use, pruning the wrong words here and there, and shifting things around so they made the most sense for the plot. Even coming up with a better ending. Everything was done as a balancing act. If I added something here, something there had to be shortened. 290 words.
After another day of effort, and I still had 290 words with a coherent story that was true to the original theme and mood.
With the approval from my favorite Beta reader, I submitted the story early. (Contest deadline: 5 pm CDT Oct 10)
Subtracting the 17 words of the quote, that wouldn’t be counted, that gave me a final total count of 273 words out of the starting 978. I had achieved a 72-percent word reduction with my editing binge. I considered having cocktails for lunch.
For more information about the River City Short Fiction Contest:
https://www.rcreader.com/short-fiction
One those “other” things turned out to be the River City Reader Short Fiction Contest. This one was more difficult. Made so because a prompt had to be incorporated into the story. This year’s selections were all quotes from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. There was a nice variety of sage and witty words from the master. None of which spoke to me. Until, that is, my fourth reading of the list. Something clicked and one of the quotes seemed perfect for a piece I’d already written for a book club meeting. The story was both real and a satire for an author whose work I really enjoyed. The trouble was my story clocked in at 978 words and I would only be allowed 300 words for my entry.
The challenge: CUT IT DOWN TO ONE QUARTER OF THE ORIGINAL.
It seemed like an impossible task. There was only to do: try and see what I could come up with.
Reading the story again, I copied and pasted key paragraphs and dialog into a new document. 700 words.
I began cutting into the paragraphs and eliminating whole sentences wherever I could. The ones not directly involving the true essence of the story arc. Cute stuff. 600 words.
More cutting of cute stuff. Miscellaneous funny business. Nonsense dialog. (You’d have to know something of Jenny Lawson’s books & blog.) 500 words.
Now, came the serious rearranging of the remaining elements into a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. 400 words.
So close to the goal of 300 words. It was time to get RUTHLESS.
A last-ditch, late-night push. 290 words. That was WITH the quote. (The quote wouldn’t be counted, but we were encouraged to be conservative.)
However, my story left a bit to be desired when I read it again the next morning. Time for the extra dose of fine tuning: choosing the exact words to use, pruning the wrong words here and there, and shifting things around so they made the most sense for the plot. Even coming up with a better ending. Everything was done as a balancing act. If I added something here, something there had to be shortened. 290 words.
After another day of effort, and I still had 290 words with a coherent story that was true to the original theme and mood.
With the approval from my favorite Beta reader, I submitted the story early. (Contest deadline: 5 pm CDT Oct 10)
Subtracting the 17 words of the quote, that wouldn’t be counted, that gave me a final total count of 273 words out of the starting 978. I had achieved a 72-percent word reduction with my editing binge. I considered having cocktails for lunch.
For more information about the River City Short Fiction Contest:
https://www.rcreader.com/short-fiction
September 15, 2017
The Million-Dollar Photo
A recent article in the Dispatch and Rock Island Argus by Lisa Hammer reported that the Village of Bishop Hill will receive close to 2 million dollars with a grant and a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the water system.
This help has been sorely needed for a long time. I know because I, along with many others, have been taking photographs of the tower over those years. I’ve taken pictures of the tenacious black squirrel that tried living up there. I’ve witnessed the leaks it caused and the many others. Photographing the resulting icicles in each consecutive winter became a thing to do. It all led up to the winter of 2006. By December the ice build-up around the base of the old wooden tower was massive. A couple of metal struts were bending. There was real concern about one of the legs giving out. The only company the village could get to work on the tower couldn’t come until January. The Bishop Hill volunteer firemen were asked to help get the ice off the tower.
It all came together on Dec. 12th. The firemen were out in force with the new ladder truck and ready to do battle with the giant icicle that weighed an estimated 11 tons. I stood in the crowd that had gathered across the street. I kept my small camera safe and warm in my pocket waiting for the perfect moment for the best shot of the action. Thirty minutes, and some cold toes, later, I got my photo.
My little camera was what one photographer called a “happy snappy.” It wasn’t big or complex, quite the opposite, but it did the job. I sent the result to Doug Boock, the editor of Galva News. It made the front page of that week’s edition. It was also used for a year-end montage. What I didn’t know at the time was that Boock submitted it for two awards with the Illinois Press Association.
That following Sep. I went to the awards ceremony in Springfield and got to bring home a very nice first-place plaque for feature photograph. The office got the plaque. I got photos of me and my big moment.
Lorali Heintzelman, area specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was quoted as saying, “Not that we needed that [the photo of ice dangling from the tower], we had documentation, but a picture tells 1,000 words.”
I’m hoping that she was referring to my photograph and not one of the many others that were taken that day. Because I’d love to say that I had taken a million-dollar photo.
I will probably never find out. In the meantime, it was still nice to go back, find those pictures, and relive a bit of my past in Bishop Hill.
Link to Lisa Hammer's article:
http://www.qconline.com/news/local/usda-bishop-hill-project-in/article_96b041a4-f36c-5ade-a986-aaaf6a104402.html
This help has been sorely needed for a long time. I know because I, along with many others, have been taking photographs of the tower over those years. I’ve taken pictures of the tenacious black squirrel that tried living up there. I’ve witnessed the leaks it caused and the many others. Photographing the resulting icicles in each consecutive winter became a thing to do. It all led up to the winter of 2006. By December the ice build-up around the base of the old wooden tower was massive. A couple of metal struts were bending. There was real concern about one of the legs giving out. The only company the village could get to work on the tower couldn’t come until January. The Bishop Hill volunteer firemen were asked to help get the ice off the tower.
It all came together on Dec. 12th. The firemen were out in force with the new ladder truck and ready to do battle with the giant icicle that weighed an estimated 11 tons. I stood in the crowd that had gathered across the street. I kept my small camera safe and warm in my pocket waiting for the perfect moment for the best shot of the action. Thirty minutes, and some cold toes, later, I got my photo.
My little camera was what one photographer called a “happy snappy.” It wasn’t big or complex, quite the opposite, but it did the job. I sent the result to Doug Boock, the editor of Galva News. It made the front page of that week’s edition. It was also used for a year-end montage. What I didn’t know at the time was that Boock submitted it for two awards with the Illinois Press Association.
That following Sep. I went to the awards ceremony in Springfield and got to bring home a very nice first-place plaque for feature photograph. The office got the plaque. I got photos of me and my big moment.
Lorali Heintzelman, area specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was quoted as saying, “Not that we needed that [the photo of ice dangling from the tower], we had documentation, but a picture tells 1,000 words.”
I’m hoping that she was referring to my photograph and not one of the many others that were taken that day. Because I’d love to say that I had taken a million-dollar photo.
I will probably never find out. In the meantime, it was still nice to go back, find those pictures, and relive a bit of my past in Bishop Hill.
Link to Lisa Hammer's article:
http://www.qconline.com/news/local/usda-bishop-hill-project-in/article_96b041a4-f36c-5ade-a986-aaaf6a104402.html
September 6, 2017
Guest Posting
For this week's blog I wrote about a recent experience that was still nagging at me. It was accepted as a guest blog post for YourMoneyPage, a website filled with financial calculators and useful information.
Follow this link to read about my $4.90 pen:
https://www.yourmoneypage.com/mail/bl...
Follow this link to read about my $4.90 pen:
https://www.yourmoneypage.com/mail/bl...
August 25, 2017
My Three Minute Speed Pitch for Killer Nashville
I’m Mary Davidsaver. I built my first cozy mystery, Clouds Over Bishop Hill, around a fictionalized version of Bishop Hill, a former communal society and an Illinois state historic site. I gave Shelley Anderson, my protagonist and New Adult, a mission: Find a long, lost painting. I did my best to make her journey a difficult but maturing experience.
My sequel, Buried Treasure, begins with a body in a cemetery—the one body that’s NOT supposed to be there. Shelley gets involved when the prime suspect is a former boyfriend and the future fiancé of Marsha Ellen: her cousin, best friend, and college roommate. It’s complicated. And becomes more complicated when Shelley receives some SHOCKING news.
To which she says, “Whoa, back up to the part where I can’t be a bridesmaid at your wedding.”
That turns out to be a pivotal point. The rest of the book explores just why Shelley would make the most unsuitable bridesmaid.
Add a cat food commercial and Bishop Hill is ready for the Hallmark Channel.
My sequel, Buried Treasure, begins with a body in a cemetery—the one body that’s NOT supposed to be there. Shelley gets involved when the prime suspect is a former boyfriend and the future fiancé of Marsha Ellen: her cousin, best friend, and college roommate. It’s complicated. And becomes more complicated when Shelley receives some SHOCKING news.
To which she says, “Whoa, back up to the part where I can’t be a bridesmaid at your wedding.”
That turns out to be a pivotal point. The rest of the book explores just why Shelley would make the most unsuitable bridesmaid.
Add a cat food commercial and Bishop Hill is ready for the Hallmark Channel.
August 18, 2017
An Anniversary Gift
For the August meeting of the West End book club we read Jenny Lawson’s second book, Furiously Happy. We had Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir on our 2015-2016 schedule, so some of us knew what to expect in terms of wit, humor, and honesty.
It appears that reading a Jenny Lawson book has an effect on me. It makes me feel free-er to look at myself, my life, and it can influence my writing, if I let it.
As an anniversary gift to my readers, and for my husband, I’m sharing a new story, “Alarms in the Nighttime.”
My husband has put up with me for 39-plus years of an interesting life. Not as interesting as Lawson’s, but we’ve had our moments. One of those moments came into play for this story, and I let myself run with it. As Jenny would say, “It’s mostly true.” Enjoy.
Alarms in the NighttimeBy Mary Davidsaver
My brain is trying to tell me something important like, “Wake up, the world has problems that need attending to. You need to move!” I should probably open my eyes. I roll over and mumble to my husband, “Is that another storm warning?” The past evening had been filled with our smart phones going crazy every few minutes with thunderstorm warnings and watches. Most were not too close, but when the Iowa City area had a funnel cloud spotted on the ground I’d gotten into gear and packed up my computer along with my most important notes to stow away in our storm room. My standard procedure for the midwestern tornado season. By now I’m aware enough to make out that the loud noise is not coming from a cell phone, and my husband is saying, “That’s the SMOKE alarm.” It provides a good jolt of adrenaline. I’m fully awake now and fumbling for my glasses. By the time we’re both out of the bedroom and standing by our kitchen table the awful sound stops. We’re both like, “Where’s the fire?” I don’t smell anything. He doesn’t smell anything, and his nose is much more sensitive than mine. We do a quick search of our rather smallish home and come up empty. No smoldering menace to be found. My brave husband volunteers to stay up to keep a watchful eye out, or in this case a watchful nose, for anything we might have missed. “I’m awake anyway,” he says. He proceeds to start up his computer and finds the instruction manual for our alarms. By now I’m not going anywhere either, so we start our search to see if we can tell which alarm did the deed. Which one woke us up at MIDNIGHT. He says, “You have to look for a blinking red light.” “Why me?” I ask. “Because I’m color blind,” he says. When we first started dating he downplayed his eye condition to merely “color challenged.” I remember this clearly. This color identification business shifted as he’s aged. What was once a “challenge” has become a badge of martyrdom and a ready excuse to get out of all kinds of color-based tasks. So, I take the lead on this hunt through our darkened house. I stand under each of our six visible alarms (there are three more tucked away out of reach) and patiently count to one hundred hoping my bleary eyes will catch a tiny green dot change to a tiny red dot. And wink at me. I make the circuit twice before I discover the offender. It’s in MY room. My personal writing-space room of disorder. I’m, like, thinking about how this room should be any different tonight, or rather this morning, than any other time. I can only come up with one answer—the caterpillar. I’m trying to help Monarch butterflies. To that end I welcomed four kinds of milkweed into my garden over the past five years—with little tangible success. This year I became determined to assist somecaterpillars through to full butterflyhood. Over the past month I was harvesting the tiny white eggs, complete with milkweed leaf, and raising them in recycled Blue Bunny ice cream containers. My goal: to get them of a size that when reintroduced into the main milkweed patch they’d make it the rest of the way on their own. You see, I was SO sure that the precious eggs and hatchlings were being preyed upon by hungry ants, stealthy spiders, and nasty beetles that I put up with the fuss and muss of having wild things indoors. Well, in my garage. Things were going fine and I’d already released a couple of caterpillars. Then it got hot. Then it got hotter. The poor dears would lie in the bottom of their respective containers and NOT EAT. Not good. (Caterpillars are designed to eat—and do the other thing that’s opposite of eating.) When they tried to escape the over-heated confines of their plastic cells, I had to make the ultimate sacrifice, I brought them into the air-conditioned comfort of my home—specifically, MY room. On the night, or the morning, of the alarm going off I still had one caterpillar to go. I was waiting for the right time, for another break in the hot spell. How could I make this last creature go from 79 degrees of cool comfort to 95 degrees muggy torture? I couldn’t be that inhumane. My sleep-deprived brain was telling me that this bug had somehow emitted enough methane, or whatever gaseous byproduct that comes from digesting milkweed, to set off the alarm. Perhaps there’d been a build up over the past few weeks and the tipping point had been surpassed. How do I admit to my husband that it’s all my fault? But before I could come clean and confess—I was SAVED. My always clever husband presents his own theory. He declares with a straight face, it was still dark so I’m guessing it was a straight face, he says “It was those radioactive spiders.” I restrain myself and listen to him explain about how old-time smoke detectors used radioactive stuff to do their detecting work. Combine that with the spiders that travel into the country by hitching rides on bananas, which everyone knows are sources of radioactivity, and you get spiders that can set off smoke alarms all willy-nilly. What could I do but agree with him? I was so thrilled to be totally off the hook. That last caterpillar went free a couple of days later—and I placed a moratorium on raising any more Monarch eggs—for THIS year.
P.S. My husband read this and he totally disagrees about the martyr thing.
P.P.S. He likes to have sliced bananas on his cereal.
© Mary R. Davidsaver 2017
It appears that reading a Jenny Lawson book has an effect on me. It makes me feel free-er to look at myself, my life, and it can influence my writing, if I let it.
As an anniversary gift to my readers, and for my husband, I’m sharing a new story, “Alarms in the Nighttime.”
My husband has put up with me for 39-plus years of an interesting life. Not as interesting as Lawson’s, but we’ve had our moments. One of those moments came into play for this story, and I let myself run with it. As Jenny would say, “It’s mostly true.” Enjoy.
Alarms in the NighttimeBy Mary Davidsaver
My brain is trying to tell me something important like, “Wake up, the world has problems that need attending to. You need to move!” I should probably open my eyes. I roll over and mumble to my husband, “Is that another storm warning?” The past evening had been filled with our smart phones going crazy every few minutes with thunderstorm warnings and watches. Most were not too close, but when the Iowa City area had a funnel cloud spotted on the ground I’d gotten into gear and packed up my computer along with my most important notes to stow away in our storm room. My standard procedure for the midwestern tornado season. By now I’m aware enough to make out that the loud noise is not coming from a cell phone, and my husband is saying, “That’s the SMOKE alarm.” It provides a good jolt of adrenaline. I’m fully awake now and fumbling for my glasses. By the time we’re both out of the bedroom and standing by our kitchen table the awful sound stops. We’re both like, “Where’s the fire?” I don’t smell anything. He doesn’t smell anything, and his nose is much more sensitive than mine. We do a quick search of our rather smallish home and come up empty. No smoldering menace to be found. My brave husband volunteers to stay up to keep a watchful eye out, or in this case a watchful nose, for anything we might have missed. “I’m awake anyway,” he says. He proceeds to start up his computer and finds the instruction manual for our alarms. By now I’m not going anywhere either, so we start our search to see if we can tell which alarm did the deed. Which one woke us up at MIDNIGHT. He says, “You have to look for a blinking red light.” “Why me?” I ask. “Because I’m color blind,” he says. When we first started dating he downplayed his eye condition to merely “color challenged.” I remember this clearly. This color identification business shifted as he’s aged. What was once a “challenge” has become a badge of martyrdom and a ready excuse to get out of all kinds of color-based tasks. So, I take the lead on this hunt through our darkened house. I stand under each of our six visible alarms (there are three more tucked away out of reach) and patiently count to one hundred hoping my bleary eyes will catch a tiny green dot change to a tiny red dot. And wink at me. I make the circuit twice before I discover the offender. It’s in MY room. My personal writing-space room of disorder. I’m, like, thinking about how this room should be any different tonight, or rather this morning, than any other time. I can only come up with one answer—the caterpillar. I’m trying to help Monarch butterflies. To that end I welcomed four kinds of milkweed into my garden over the past five years—with little tangible success. This year I became determined to assist somecaterpillars through to full butterflyhood. Over the past month I was harvesting the tiny white eggs, complete with milkweed leaf, and raising them in recycled Blue Bunny ice cream containers. My goal: to get them of a size that when reintroduced into the main milkweed patch they’d make it the rest of the way on their own. You see, I was SO sure that the precious eggs and hatchlings were being preyed upon by hungry ants, stealthy spiders, and nasty beetles that I put up with the fuss and muss of having wild things indoors. Well, in my garage. Things were going fine and I’d already released a couple of caterpillars. Then it got hot. Then it got hotter. The poor dears would lie in the bottom of their respective containers and NOT EAT. Not good. (Caterpillars are designed to eat—and do the other thing that’s opposite of eating.) When they tried to escape the over-heated confines of their plastic cells, I had to make the ultimate sacrifice, I brought them into the air-conditioned comfort of my home—specifically, MY room. On the night, or the morning, of the alarm going off I still had one caterpillar to go. I was waiting for the right time, for another break in the hot spell. How could I make this last creature go from 79 degrees of cool comfort to 95 degrees muggy torture? I couldn’t be that inhumane. My sleep-deprived brain was telling me that this bug had somehow emitted enough methane, or whatever gaseous byproduct that comes from digesting milkweed, to set off the alarm. Perhaps there’d been a build up over the past few weeks and the tipping point had been surpassed. How do I admit to my husband that it’s all my fault? But before I could come clean and confess—I was SAVED. My always clever husband presents his own theory. He declares with a straight face, it was still dark so I’m guessing it was a straight face, he says “It was those radioactive spiders.” I restrain myself and listen to him explain about how old-time smoke detectors used radioactive stuff to do their detecting work. Combine that with the spiders that travel into the country by hitching rides on bananas, which everyone knows are sources of radioactivity, and you get spiders that can set off smoke alarms all willy-nilly. What could I do but agree with him? I was so thrilled to be totally off the hook. That last caterpillar went free a couple of days later—and I placed a moratorium on raising any more Monarch eggs—for THIS year.
P.S. My husband read this and he totally disagrees about the martyr thing.
P.P.S. He likes to have sliced bananas on his cereal.
© Mary R. Davidsaver 2017
August 11, 2017
Wordinators and Panels
Two interesting items from this past week: A guest visit to a writer’s critique group in Madison, and a request to apply for another panel for Killer Nashville.
The critique group I visited does things differently than the Writer’s Studio that meets at the MWC office in the lower level of the Rock Island library twice a month. At the Writer’s Studio gatherings, we read a few pages and discus them. The other group in Madison has writers submit pages before the meeting for written comments, questions, and grammatical input. This is an approach I’ve been wanting to experience again. I liked it for a workshop on novel writing I had several years ago. The workshop leader came from Iowa City and it was as close as I could get to the Writer’s Workshop without enrolling in the U of I. (That old workshop was where I first came face to face with “comma splicing.” Didn’t know it existed until then. Can I handle it now? No comment.)
I think the Madison critique group's approach to grammar, hence the introduction to the term “Wordinator,” was quite helpful. Like a higher-level Beta reader. As one guy put it, “You combine all of us together and you get one good editor.” (Or words to that effect.)
My thoughts after 2 hours of 5 people going over 13 pages of manuscript: be constructive, be supportive, and be brief.
About the same time as I was working on my critique pages, I received an email the founder of Killer Nashville saying, “I want to make sure I portray you in your best light.” So, I could apply for a position on another panel.
I went through the KN schedule and made a list of panels I might be able to offer something constructive to and wrote down my thoughts:
Creating & Weaving Subplots
I read Kathy Reichs first novel, Deja Dead, and felt that she threw in everything but the kitchen sink. I was impressed with the complexities. So, I was not averse to add a lot of subplots to my novel. I have a missing painting, a fake painting, a destroyed painting, a Swede with a fake name, four villains with ulterior motives, detailed description of a village in Illinois, and lots of family secrets. The thing that (hopefully) saved me became clearer with a comment I heard from Ethan Canin: “There are lots of ways to build plot, characters, etc. There’s only one way for a story to go wrong : fail to pose one and only one emotional question for the reader.” (11-11-16)
Bad Boys (and Girls): The Villains You Can’t Forget
I love my villains. Once created I couldn’t get rid of them by pinning them with the crime. At a panel for Murder & Mayhem in Chicago the moderator asked for any examples of a mystery that didn’t have a killer. I was too shy to raise my hand, but I did slip her my card afterward with a note about the metaphor I thought was most important to me. (And yes, that was going against the advice of one of my editors, but I had to make a point for my theme of preservation. Just another stubborn writer I guess.)
Lighten Up, You are Where You’re Supposed to Be: Keeping Perspective
There is a YouTube video of J. K. Rowlings giving a commencement address where she talks about the lowest point in her life and how she had to focus completely on getting one thing right, her first novel. I can identify with that. I’m a late bloomer as a writer and I had a lot of ground to make up. I did one thing, my first novel, and not much else for years. Because of that singlemindedness I don’t have an impressive resume for publications, but I feel I did my best at getting my message across in the novel. (If I didn’t, well, there’s the 2ndbook.)
I’m Not the Same Anymore: Character Arcs
Early on a friend made me promise to have my protagonist grow and change. I kept that in mind. Workshops taught me that there are positive and negative arcs. Upward and downward. I have used both. And none. It was pointed out that some characters don’t change, i.e. Jack Reacher.
(There’s a YouTube video of Curt Vonnegut diagraming story plots. Love the visual aspect of it. Might be useful for this panel.)
Buy My Book and Pay Me to Speak
I had to have a fifth entry on the form and I picked this for no other reason than I’m thinking about it now.
The critique group I visited does things differently than the Writer’s Studio that meets at the MWC office in the lower level of the Rock Island library twice a month. At the Writer’s Studio gatherings, we read a few pages and discus them. The other group in Madison has writers submit pages before the meeting for written comments, questions, and grammatical input. This is an approach I’ve been wanting to experience again. I liked it for a workshop on novel writing I had several years ago. The workshop leader came from Iowa City and it was as close as I could get to the Writer’s Workshop without enrolling in the U of I. (That old workshop was where I first came face to face with “comma splicing.” Didn’t know it existed until then. Can I handle it now? No comment.)
I think the Madison critique group's approach to grammar, hence the introduction to the term “Wordinator,” was quite helpful. Like a higher-level Beta reader. As one guy put it, “You combine all of us together and you get one good editor.” (Or words to that effect.)
My thoughts after 2 hours of 5 people going over 13 pages of manuscript: be constructive, be supportive, and be brief.
About the same time as I was working on my critique pages, I received an email the founder of Killer Nashville saying, “I want to make sure I portray you in your best light.” So, I could apply for a position on another panel.
I went through the KN schedule and made a list of panels I might be able to offer something constructive to and wrote down my thoughts:
Creating & Weaving Subplots
I read Kathy Reichs first novel, Deja Dead, and felt that she threw in everything but the kitchen sink. I was impressed with the complexities. So, I was not averse to add a lot of subplots to my novel. I have a missing painting, a fake painting, a destroyed painting, a Swede with a fake name, four villains with ulterior motives, detailed description of a village in Illinois, and lots of family secrets. The thing that (hopefully) saved me became clearer with a comment I heard from Ethan Canin: “There are lots of ways to build plot, characters, etc. There’s only one way for a story to go wrong : fail to pose one and only one emotional question for the reader.” (11-11-16)
Bad Boys (and Girls): The Villains You Can’t Forget
I love my villains. Once created I couldn’t get rid of them by pinning them with the crime. At a panel for Murder & Mayhem in Chicago the moderator asked for any examples of a mystery that didn’t have a killer. I was too shy to raise my hand, but I did slip her my card afterward with a note about the metaphor I thought was most important to me. (And yes, that was going against the advice of one of my editors, but I had to make a point for my theme of preservation. Just another stubborn writer I guess.)
Lighten Up, You are Where You’re Supposed to Be: Keeping Perspective
There is a YouTube video of J. K. Rowlings giving a commencement address where she talks about the lowest point in her life and how she had to focus completely on getting one thing right, her first novel. I can identify with that. I’m a late bloomer as a writer and I had a lot of ground to make up. I did one thing, my first novel, and not much else for years. Because of that singlemindedness I don’t have an impressive resume for publications, but I feel I did my best at getting my message across in the novel. (If I didn’t, well, there’s the 2ndbook.)
I’m Not the Same Anymore: Character Arcs
Early on a friend made me promise to have my protagonist grow and change. I kept that in mind. Workshops taught me that there are positive and negative arcs. Upward and downward. I have used both. And none. It was pointed out that some characters don’t change, i.e. Jack Reacher.
(There’s a YouTube video of Curt Vonnegut diagraming story plots. Love the visual aspect of it. Might be useful for this panel.)
Buy My Book and Pay Me to Speak
I had to have a fifth entry on the form and I picked this for no other reason than I’m thinking about it now.
