Debbie Ridpath Ohi's Blog, page 53
November 30, 2015
Will Write For Chocolate Updated
For more WWFC strips, visit WillWriteForChocolate.com.
And in case anyone's curious, Esme is reading Teresa Toten's SHATTERED GLASS, just like I am. Such a good book!
November 24, 2015
Advice for young writers, office cats and UP IN THE AIR: Three Questions With Ann Marie Meyers
Ann Marie Meyers grew up in Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies. She has a degree in languages and translates legal and technical documents from French and Spanish into English. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, with her husband and daughter. Meyers is an active member of SCBWI and facilitates a children's writing group twice a month.
You can find Ann Marie Meyers at AnnMarie-Meyers.com, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Synopsis of UP IN THE AIR by Ann Marie Meyers, illustrated by Ethan Aldridge (Jolly Fish Press):
When Melody lands on Chimeroan and gets wings, she thinks life is finally going her way. She can fly! Yet she soon realizes she cannot outfly her past and is forced to come to terms with her part in her father's accident and the guilt that plagues her. Ultimately, she must choose between the two things that have become the world to her: keeping her wings or healing her father.
Q. Could you please take a photo of something in your office and tell us the story behind it?
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This is my ‘cat shelf’. Most of the cats are gifts I’ve received over the years, though I have no idea how this trend started. I don’t mind though because I love cats. Many people think they’re cold and standoffish (and yes, some definitely are). However, my experience with them is different. Cats have attitude! Yet when you bond with a cat, they’re loving, while holding on to their independence. They’re patient though demanding, and they are very determined. What I also admire about them is their apparent inner peace with the universe. They are content to sit back and let cat lovers dote on them to their (the cats’) content. I also love how they presume that whatever they see belongs to them.
Witness my cat drinking water from MY glass.
The little girl in the photo below is Melody, the main character of my MG novel, Up In The Air. My daughter created her with the rainbow loom rubber bands, wings and all. Picture tears with a huge smile on my face that she was inspired to do this.
Q. What advice do you have for young writers?
Dare to dream, especially when life throws ‘curveballs’ at you, because no matter what happens, you’ll always veer back on the path if you keep your dream alive. I find that whenever I recapture the exhilaration of the moment I realized that creating stories gave me a sense of joy and fulfillment, this keeps me focused and buffers any obstacles or negative comments that crop up along the way.
I firmly believe that if anyone has a dream and holds on to it in a state of excitement and anticipation, nothing can keep this dream from becoming reality. It will happen… not necessarily in the time you want, or in the manner in which you think it should occur, and it may not turn out exactly as you planned. Nonetheless, life has a way of steering you toward the object of your attention, and it’s simply a question of being open to possibility and throwing limitations out the window.
Q. What are you excited about right now?
I’m working on the sequel to Up In The Air. The story is taking off in a direction I could never have imagined, and this is one of the most exciting things imaginable.
I’m also thrilled about watching my daughter grow into a young woman (okay, she has to pass through teenage-hood, and yes, she’s only 14, but still, she has her whole life ahead of her to shape and direct according to her dream(s)).
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For more interviews, see my Inkygirl Interview Archive.
November 16, 2015
November 15, 2015
Advice For Young Writers, Emergency Chocolate and A MOOSE GOES A-MUMMERING: Three Questions with Lisa Dalrymple
Lisa Dalrymple is the author of Skink on the Brink and many other books for children. She loves to travel. In Thailand, she shared her bath towel with a gecko that thought it was his bed. Lisa now lives in Ontario with her husband and three kids–but no lizards.
Also see my interview with Lisa Dalrymple and Suzanne Del Rizzo about how they created SKINK ON THE BRINK, a wonderful plasticine art book from Fitzhenry & Whiteside.
You can find out more about Lisa and her work at LisaDalrymple.com, Facebook, Twitter.
Synopsis of A Moose Goes A-Mummering, written by Lisa Dalrymple, illustrated by David Sturge (Tuckamore Books):
A Moose Goes a-Mummering is a Newfoundland “Twelve Days of Christmas.” In it, Chris Moose loves to go mummering–donning his disguise, visiting each of his neighbors, and sharing the Christmas festivities. But, as his getup grows more elaborate, will Chris ever keep everyone from seeing through his crazy costume?
Q. Could you please take a photo of something in your office and tell us the story behind it?
Chocolate! Not just any old chocolate. Swiss Army emergency rations for those extra-desperate writing days!
Q. What advice you have for young writers?
There’s a lot of talk about whether, as an author, it’s important to write what you know. I’d like to think, if there’s something I need to understand in order to write a convincing story, there are many ways I can hope to learn it (well except maybe, in my case, something like spoken Mandarin or quantum physics!) The more important concern for me is to write who I know–the protagonist and secondary characters in my story.
This doesn’t mean my main character always needs to be someone similar to me, but I do try to write a character I can understand. For example, I seem to identify well with 10-year-old boy characters and not so well with 40-year-old women. (I’m not sure what this means: Am I a 10-year-old living in a 40-year-old body?) I try to spend time getting inside the head of my protagonist and understanding where he is coming from. It’s through his awareness that my readers are going to experience the story–including those factual details I may have had to learn in order to write it.
Q. What are you excited about right now?
For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be an author. In Grade 6 I began writing chapter books and sending them to publishers. Nobody wanted to publish them–although I did receive many very lovely rejection letters. Over the past few years, I have written 9 books for younger readers–both fiction and non-fiction picture books. But I can now announce that Orca Book Publishers is going to publish my first middle grade novel. The dream I’ve had since Grade 6 is coming true! The book will be out in the spring of 2017. It has no title yet, but it's a ghost story set in the Amazonian jungles of Peru. It features the spirit of El Tunchi, more than a few funny moments, and a kid named Potato.
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For more interviews, see my Inkygirl Interview Archive.
November 14, 2015
November 13, 2015
November 9, 2015
Advice For Young Writers, Dyslexia and Reading, Storytelling, THE JOCK AND THE FAT CHICK: Three Questions With Nicole Winters
Nicole Winters graduated from the University of Toronto with an English B.A.. She loves books, bikes, horror films and globe hopping. She’s currently at work on her third YA novel called THE CONJURER. You can find Nicole on Twitter, her blog, Facebook or NicoleWintersAuthor.com.
I met Nicole through our local Torkidlit group; I love her enthusiasm and genuine caring about young readers as well as her support of other authors in the community.
Synopsis of THE JOCK AND THE FAT CHICK (14+) from HarperCollins (E-book):
"No one ever said high school was easy. In this hilarious and heartwarming debut, one high school senior has to ask himself how much he's willing to give up in order to fit in. Kevin seems to have it all: he's popular, good looking, and on his way to scoring a college hockey scholarship. However, he's keeping two big secrets. The first is that he failed an assignment and is now forced to take the most embarrassing course ever--domestic tech. The second is that he is falling for his domestic tech classmate, Claire." Read more...
Q. Could you please take a photo of something in your office and tell us the story behind it?
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This is the glorious and amazing Diahann Carroll from the program, Sunset Boulevard (1995), which I had framed after I saw her on stage and dreamed of becoming a writer. I love the way she stares at me when I work and asks, "Did you say you were a writer?" "Why yes, Norma Desmond, I am..."
Q. What advice do you have for young writers?
[image error]I was a reluctant reader as a kid. I had dyslexia and in those days they didn’t have a diagnosis for it, so kids like me who had trouble reading were labelled as either slow or lazy; I knew I was neither. The day I read THE OUTSIDERS, something about that story resonated with me — kids without parents who struggled to survive in a harsh world with unbending rules. I continued devouring each page on the bus ride home and that night I had finished it. The reluctant reader had read an entire book in one day, what a feat! That experience sent me on a mission to seek out more stories that could provide the same intense thrill. Living in a small town with an even smaller library that didn't have a teen section, I wandered deep into the stacks and gravitated towards tales of horror and suspense. So no, I wasn’t one of those writers born into a literary family, or with a pen in my hand, nor did I sit in a meadow devouring highbrow literary works that were beyond my years. I read about ghosts, vampires, monsters and other gross stuff, then I began to imagine my own stories.
If I could say one thing to say to a budding writer who thinks they can't be a storyteller because they’re not school smart, it would be this: if thinking about stories and writing them down makes your inner self go ‘squee!’ then that’s all you need. So ignore those who say you can't. Charge forth and just have fun; it’s where you’re meant to be.
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Q. What are you excited about right now?
I'm looking forward to visiting my new baby nephew, during American Thanksgiving. It'll be cuteness overload!
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For more interviews, see my Inkygirl Interview Archive.
November 5, 2015
Short on writing time or falling behind in NaNoWriMo? Try this more flexible challenge.
Too often, I find that writers start motivational challenges like NaNoWrimo with enthusiasm and good intentions, but give up when they start missing their daily targets for more than a few days in a row...undermining their confidence and defeating the purpose of the original challenge.
If you need a motivational writing challenge with some flexibility, try checking out my 250, 500 or 1000 words/day challenge. I'm doing NaNoWriMo right now as a way of helping kickstart my middle grade novel....but I'm already falling a wee bit behind the "1666 wds/day" goal.
If I do end up having to bail out of NaNo, I'm vowing NOT going to get discouraged but am going to keep going, but try a lower wordcount instead.
To those of you with lots of writing time and don't need these challenges: I envy you! :-) These days for me, paying work has taken priority and my non-contracted projects keep being pushed to the back burner. I find that wordcount challenges can help motivate me to get into the habit of putting in at least a little bit of time EVERY DAY on my novel-writing.
Some of you may snicker at my measley wordcount goals but for me, even 250 words a day is better than nothing at all.
