Ardyth DeBruyn's Blog, page 7

This Month in Sylvania: Delayed Holidays Irk Residents

New Housing Eases Homeless Crisis

After months of delays, substantial shelving arrived last month in Sylvania as housing.  Temporary homes, two families per a shelf, were set up, including newly acquired vintage plastic furniture.  The lime green bathroom set and seventies style chairs fit with the shelf’s bright orange color.  ”It’s exciting to finally have a place to sit down and eat, a place to put the children to bed.  We’re grateful to have an apartment here,” said Mrs Yolanda Bear.

Not all residents were so upbeat about the development though. “It’s a hideous dated monstracity,” complained Mrs Celeste Elephant. “Its shelves are too tall for one story, not tall enough for two.  Families live cramped together with no walls.  Housing like this only encourages poverty.”  ”This is a start,” Wintergreen Badger added, “but there’s still people homeless or living in cardboard boxes like my own family.  The city needs to step up efforts. It’s unacceptable.”

“We’re making an effort to get every family a home this winter,” Mayor Oak Raccoon announced Saturday to reporters. “The Orange Apartments are a big step forward, providing six new families with homes. So is the new fire station, offering temporary shelter to the homeless.  We’ve also acquired a small brown shelf which is soon to be fitted out as several more apartments. ”

Some residents were not reassured.  ”Why is the city spending money that could be used on actual homes on a fire station?” demanded Ms Priscilla Guinea Pig. “I want a home, not a homeless shelter. It’s far too crowded and noisy an environment for my babies.”  ”They have this new shelf, and what do they use it for?” complained Ms Claudia Cat. “And what do they use it for? Storing extra food and furniture? Three or four families could live there! More if they’d get their act together and put in a third shelf on it.”

Late Christmas Celebration Popular Only with Children

A delayed Christmas did not improve tempers.  ”So our owner just goes off for a week’s vacation, leaving us without even a Christmas tree?  How’s that for justice?” complained Mr Chocolate Rabbit.  ”The children were horribly crushed and disappointed ” Mr Tragic Bear, father of six orphans, lamented, “Everyone is disgusted.  Who is she? The Grinch?”

Despite complaints, a large crowd turned out for a delayed Christmas tree and the arrival of Santa Bear.  ”Ho ho ho, a Merry New Year,” Santa Bear quipped, passing out toys to the children.

New Dentist Sets up Office

Expanded housing opened up a small business space for Dr Beaver to open up his dental practice, and none too soon for young Susan Squirrel who needed an emergency filling.  ”We’re just relieved this happened now,” said Susan’s mother.  ”Dr Beaver is always great with the children, of course he would have done his best at home, but a clean and sanitary office means our children can get the best care available.

Congratulations to Ms Cat

Ms Cat brought home two brand new kittens this Christmas. Samson and Delilah Cat were happily settled with their accompanied bedroom set, including bed, dresser, toy chest, toys, and diapers   ”I’ve always wanted kittens!” an excited Ms Cat gushed. “I’m so proud.”

 

An Attack of “The Next Big Thing”

One interesting part of being part of an active critique group is when there’s a blog hop, sometimes everyone around me ends up doing it.  My friend  Michele Shriver first tagged me with “The Next Big Thing” last month (11/7), only Nanowrimo combined with the actor question in this blog hop meant that I never finished it.  She was really low key about it, so afterwards I just said to myself, oh well, and kept typing.

Well…

On 12/12, another friend, Katie Stewart also tagged me with the same blog hop. I was going to get it together… but didn’t. And then, right before Christmas, what do I find but that Kelly Walker has also tagged me with this.  So, taking a deep breath, I decided to actually look up child actors and finally do this.  Here goes:

What is the working title of Your Book?

Much Ado About Villains

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Shakespeare.  Which ought to be obvious from the title.  But to be fair, there’s also a healthy dose of JK Rowling and JRR Tolkien involved as well.  This is a Harry Potter spoof that draws on high fantasy cliches and popular culture as well, and I can’t think of a better thing to meld that with than Shakespeare, honestly.

What genre does your book fall under?

Comic fantasy or satire.  It’s upper middle grade or younger YA too, I suppose, but I always take that for granted in a book. The book has it’s own full story, so it’s not a strict satire, but can come close at times.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie?

[image error]This is the question that tripped me up most, because I have no idea what child actors are around anymore.  All my former choices are far too old now. But after some net searching, I have decided on Dakota Goyo for my lead MC, Danny.  For his supporting friend, Daisy, I discovered a huge shortage of 13 year old black female actors.  This saddens me, although Willow Smith, daughter of the famous Will Smith is happily the perfect age.  Even harder was finding an Asian actor at 13 for Aun, Danny’s best friend and sometimes rival. After searching google images to find someone current and not a former child actor, I found Korean Seo Yeong-joo-I who looks the part.

At least the older students were easier to pick, I decided Sarah Hyland for Queleria, the beautiful girl Danny and Aun fall in love with, and Kenton Duty for Demigorth the popular boy who steals her attention.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’ve just written 50K this past Nanowrimo, but I’m still not done with my first draft.  I think I need to rework the outline and then fit the scenes together in a different order and rework them also.  The novel is being difficult, sigh.  I’m hoping to hash it out though over the next couple of months.  My goal is to have a full first draft by the beginning of March.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Book one started as a mix between the play “A School for Scandal,” “Harry Potter,” and “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”  I wanted to bring in some new elements, although Harry Potter satire will be a major part of the series as a whole, and the style of the sequel will be the same as book one (A School for Villains).

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

“Dark Lord Academy” started as a series because of talking about Harry Potter with my brother Jonathan. I’ve always enjoyed doing satires, and writing about an evil magic school, where everyone becomes villains sounded like hilarious fun. I wrote the first novel for my brother as a Christmas present, and somehow along the way during revisions, it turned into a six book series. I suppose it was villainous that way.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Well, let’s see… it’s got demon horses that breathe fire and like eating coal as a treat and run gymkhana courses, a teenage demon boy who secretly listens to chant and drinks holy water, and true love Shakespeare style (yes, death is definitely included).

As so many people have tagged me with this, I don’t have anyone to tag back, and figure it’s run its course by now anyway… but if you read this and want to adopt it, drop me a note and I will next Wednesday promote your blog as if I tagged you.

A Busy Christmas, Goals for the New Year, and Nayu’s review

I’ve naturally fallen behind on the blogging again with all the holiday fanfare, but I had a lovely Christmas yesterday.  It’s been great to see both families.  This year Ben’s family had their Christmas celebration on Sunday, which meant we got to spend longer with both families.  While that means it took more days out of my schedule and regular things like writing and blogging, I found I preferred it for getting to spend more time with each family.  We didn’t have to rush anywhere on Christmas itself and could pace ourselves better.

It’s not even quite over, since I still have one sister who couldn’t make it until today, so I get one more day of festivities.  There’s talk of going to the Hobbit, which I haven’t seen and hope to soon, and I wouldn’t mind some shopping while we’re in Portland either.  So I may just take off the whole week, really.

Then I’ll be able to gear up for this next year. At least I have clear goals.  My first and main one is marketing.  I’m going to get serious about learning how. I have several pages of advice and a list of review sites from my editor, and one of my friends has promised to give me lessons for the rest of it.  What I hope to achieve is a whole attitude make-over.  By the end of next year, I want to from being one of those “I hate marketing” people to a “I just love telling people about my book and marketing is easy and fun” people.

Is that possible? I don’t really know… but it’s worth a try, right?  There’s much debate on how much our likes and dislikes are chosen vs just happening.  I have a pretty steep challenge here, since I tend to get anxious in social situations, but in the end, if I can change it, I’ll enjoy myself a whole lot more.  It’s the one part of being an author I don’t enjoy right now.  Even line edits or formatting I can get into once I get going, so it’d definitely be a step in the right direction of my larger goal of being the happiest person I know. (Honestly, life is too short to waste it being miserable, right? And since I can’t make anyone else happy, I might as well work on myself.)

I have several writing focused goals.  The first is to rewrite “Dragon Boy.”  This book is close to my heart and I feel I’m finally ready to do it justice and write the definitive version.  I’ve received for Christmas “The Breakout Novel Workbook” which I plan to use to go over the novel and look for ways to improve it.  I’ve made that a two year goal though, because I want to take my time and because I still want to finish and release “Much Ado About Villains” as well.  That’s my second writing goal.  I’ll also need to earn the money for the art for that… I’d like to get it fully illustrated like book one.  But I think that’ll be doable in the coming year.

Then, I’d like to submit “Revenge of the Voiceless” first to Amazon’s contest, and then to a few other publishers until I find a publisher.  As it’s a full-length adult novel, I feel I need the support of a publisher for that one, and I’m willing to take the time it needs to find the right one.

And, best of all, Nayu’s Reading Corner has my first review of “A Recipe for Disaster” up!  Check it out.

A Recipe for Disaster is released!

Well, it’s all up and finalized!  A Recipe for Disaster is officially out and I have it on a free promotion on amazon for the ebook version through the weekend, so if you have a kindle account, grab it while you can.  Print is also all formatted and out if you like it that way.  I’m really excited to finally be releasing something new. I’m a bit slow on that.  Eventually I’ll get the nook and smashwords versions up, but since I haven’t finished formatting that, I have decided to go 3 months on amazon select before doing that.

A page on this site for it with sample, etc, will be forthcoming, but for now, I’ll just slap up the blurb!  I want to thank my wonderful crew of critiquers on Critique Circle for helping me get this ready, and my awesome editor at Word Vagabond editing, and my very talented cover artist, Leo DeBruyn.

“A Recipe for Disaster” is set in the same world as the Dark Lord Academy series, and is the first of a number of spin-off shorter novels/stories that I hope to write.  And hopefully you’ll find it as amusing as I did writing it, because I sure had a blast this summer, contrary to my fighting with my sequel.  This thing practically wrote itself.

Blurb: Villain apprentice Cal desperately needs cash to take his girlfriend to the Dreaded Ball. Prince Bueford needs out of an arranged marriage. Mullog, Bueford’s manservant, would love to marry the princess and has the perfect solution: Bueford can buy a potion for disaster from Cal to disrupt the betrothal. Then Mullog can rescue the princess, and everyone can live happily ever after.

How could a little disaster go wrong?

Mini-book Reviews 2

In a post-nano flurry of holiday decorating and catching up on dishes, I’ve somehow found myself reading through stacks of books.  I tend to avoid reading too much because when I get going I tend to do little else.  The thing is, formatting an e-book is rather tedious, and nanowrimo was grueling, so I’ve allowed myself a few library books.  So here’s what I’ve read in the last couple of weeks with a mini-review:

Rodzina by Karen Cushman — an orphan train era book. I  actually liked it better than the classic “Orphan Train Quartet.” Rodzina is appealing and her journey of self-discovery solid.  This felt like a great classic middle grade book.

Bread and Roses, Too by Katherine Paterson — a rather typical historical fiction middle grade novel.  It wasn’t my favorite work by this author, but it did paint quite well what living in the middle of union riots would be like.  The characters were interesting enough to carry me through it, but it definitely felt educational.  I could see it as a typical sort of book teachers might have a class read.

Shield of Stars by Hilari Bell — recommended to me by a friend as an author, I thought I’d see what the library had of Bell’s.  It wasn’t the book recommended to me originally, but “Shield of Stars” was great fun. It felt like a cross between “The Queen of Attolia” and a Lloyd Alexander book, a great combination.

The Sword of Waters by Hilari Bell — I dived right into book 2 of the series.  I didn’t like the girl warrior as much as the thief boy as a MC, but it was still a strong book and a solid follow up to book 1.  My only annoyance is it ended on a cliffhanger this time, and the library doesn’t own book 3!  Ugh.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan — My sister got into these recently and hooked on them, so at her prodding I finally cracked open the first one.  I read it in line on Black Friday actually, and enjoyed myself.  It was amusing but also felt a bit plastic, like it was designed to be a best seller rather than to have any real substance.  Despite that, the main character was likable  so I resolved to read more of them.

The Son of Neptune by Rick Roirdan — When I went looking for book 2 at the library, I accidentally grabbed book 2 of the second series.  It was the only book 2 currently checked in at the library, and in a hurry I didn’t notice.  I thought of waiting, but after burning through the rest of my library books I ended up reading it.  Since Percy has lost his memory of the first series, it actually worked out just fine.  Neither did I feel I missed much by missing book one.  It wasn’t anywhere near as good as the first book and even more plastic, but enjoyable, putting it in the fun trash category I have for things like Jedi Apprentice or Dragonriders of Pern.  I’ll read the rest eventually, they’re fun, but I’m not in a hurry to get to it like the Bell series.

The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce — I recently received several boxes of books from one of my aunts as she is moving and paring down.  Alanna’s four books were among them and as I’ve written my own girl dressed as a boy story I was eager to reread them.  I found book 1 faster paced than I remembered, but book 2 slower.  Must we really spend so much time agonizing over which boy Alanna likes or doesn’t?  But overall enjoyed the books more now than the first time I read them.  I do feel they aren’t actually appropriate to be called middle grade novels due to the sexual content though, despite the narrative tone not feeling quite as mature as YA tends to be now days.  Perhaps that’s for them being older books.

A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix — I saw this one in the library when I was helping a friend find a Nix book she hadn’t gotten around to finishing.  The cover looked a bit like a Jedi rip-off so I thought I might like it.  I wasn’t disappointed   Nix’s galactic empire full of war-like “princes” who run it is different enough from Star Wars to not feel like it’s blatantly stolen, but enough similar you get the same feel.  The princes are a fun combination of being jedi-like and sith-like.  It combines loads of typical ideas from popular SF, but originality is not what makes it enjoyable, but rather a great lead character and narrative voice.

Princess Nevermore by Dian Curtis Regan– This book I grabbed because the title and blurb sounded interesting.  Sadly, the writing is not that great.  The story is alright, a rather classic story of a princess from a magic kingdom traveling to our world, and it does pull itself out of its slump halfway through, but the main problem (besides bad writing) is that the magical kingdom she comes from isn’t real believable or compelling.

Westmark by Lloyd Alexander — A huge fan of the Prydain books as a kid, I was severely disappointed with his Vesper Holly stories, and so didn’t read the Westmark trilogy.  Having come back to Alexander’s later work with enthusiasm, I decided to take a deep breath, get over the ugly cover, and try it.  While darker than Prydain, it’s far more like it than Vesper Holly, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s probably actually one of his better books.  I’m glad I’m no longer missing out.

The Kestrel by Lloyd Alexander — I grabbed book 2 at the same time as book 1 and was glad I did.  This is probably Alexander’s darkest book I’ve read yet, painting a grim and realistic picture of war, but very well done.  It’s a shame book 3 was not in the library, I have no idea if its checked out or if they don’t have it, sigh.  What is it with this library and 2 out of 3 books in a series?

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: the Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood — This was a quick amusing read.  Cute and funny, it was highly enjoyable.  My only annoyance was that a climax is supposed to conclude a book. Instead, it introduced a bunch of mysteries near the end to leave them all unresolved.  I wasn’t shocked, but disappointed  to notice the reviews on book 2 and 3 of the series complain none of these mysteries are solved two books later either.  Sigh.  This book could have been solid children’s literature with depth, but looks to be shaping up to only slightly a class above Goosebumps, using cheap hooks to keep young kids reading.  But I guess there’s a place for that.  If I were 7 or 8 I’d be in love with these for their fun tone.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey — I found this in the free book bin at the library and since I never actually read it, I thought I’d give it a try.  While Covey is long-winded and often vague, I can see why this book was a pivotal force in the early nineties.  Some of the social comments are now out-dated, but things like doing first things first and seeing  all situations with others as win/win is timeless.

I’ve got three library books left.  I’m rereading “Writing the Breakout Novel” and then have “The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents” and “Doomwyte” both on recommendation, and Marva sent me a copy of her book, “Bad Spelling,” that I’ll reread.  After all that, I’ll get back to writing “Much Ado About Villains”… eventually.

Also, I’ve added an actual email subscription that works (thanks to my site master, Wulfie).  RSS has been moved to the bottom on the right hand side.

Nanowrimo Fallout, Umbrellas, and Disaster

Well, it was a rather harrowing Nanowrimo.  I struggled every day of the month to keep up on the word count.  Usually I don’t have much trouble with Nanowrimo, but MAAV apparently decided it was going to challenge me for every word.  I’ve hit 50K, and I’m pleased to be a Nanowrimo winner, but the novel is a mess.  It’s going to take a couple of months to sort out, but I’m still hopeful of making a June release date for the book.  At least I can be proud of myself for sticking it out this year instead of switching novels when it get hard.

One thing that might change that is ironically if I find my muse for the books.  I’ve decided if I ever find my groove while writing MAAV, I’ve decided I plan to ride it as long as I can and draft OHAV (book 3) until it floats away again.  So I hope for that, and I believe Nanowrimo even has a camp in March, which I might try redrafting whatever I need for that.

In a moment of un-Oregonian-ness I bought myself a new umbrella.  In general, the “real” Oregonians don’t use them.  Usually the rain is more mist or drizzle on and off, plus they’re awkward and annoying.  Umbrellas are for foreigners, and by foreigners, I mean people who are not from Oregon or Washington (the state).  You wear a waterproof coat and just dash from the car to the store and back again.  If hiking, you button up your coat and put up the hood and get only reasonably damp.

But, I want to keep up with my walk all winter long, and I hate having my head all bundled up in my waterproof coat, it makes me itchy.  Plus, despite being out in the middle of nowhere, my walk is wide and paved, keeping my feet dry (if it were an actual mountain trail, I wouldn’t bother and plan to just get wet feet as well as the rest of me). So, not getting soaked on my walk won out over my Oregon pride.

I’m the one crazy lady for miles, just me and my umbrella in the middle of nowhere… I haven’t yet run into a park ranger for a while, but they’re the only people I ever see out there, with their hoods of their waterproof jackets up like true Oregonians, as they ride their small cart/car thingy through the drizzle to pick up the trash at Starvation Creek.   I can hardly wait to bump into them, while I walk along twirling my splendid, and very large umbrella.

Now that Nano is over, I’m taking a short break from MAAV and focusing on getting Disaster out!  I’m hoping to release on December 12th, in both hard copy and kindle. I’m going to try out select for a couple months so I can try out the free promotion feature, but when I do giveaways I’ll have epub versions available too, as soon as I figure out my formatting.  I’ve gotten a bit rusty in the year since I did ASFV, and so I have to relearn my html all over again.  Ah well.

I’m really excited to be getting Disaster out before Christmas!  Both my illustrator (Leo DeBruyn) and my editor (Word Vagabond Editing) have been fantastic.

Happy Birthday to “A School for Villains”

I have again, a lot to celebrate this Halloween.  Today marks “A School for Villains” first birthday.  I’ve had quite the year with Danny and Dark Lord Academy as I’ve fumbled around trying to figure out marketing, gave up on it, and then tried again, as well as tried to write a sequel and failed, and then wrote a completely unexpected spin-off book.

Despite all the starts and stops, I feel like I’ve had a very successful year. I’ve sold 33 print and 162 e-copies, and for someone who’s rather hit and miss on the marketing front I feel like that’s pretty dang good (gosh, look at that, that month I joined a blog tour I sold twice as many copies, wow).

As I go into my second year with Dark Lord Academy, I’m hoping to really come into my own with both writing the series and the promotion thing.  It’s nice to add up the numbers and have something concrete to celebrate.

Yamataro Comes Back, Bambi, and Other Mysteries of Children’s Lit

Okay, so I had quite the experience this weekend.  I was feeling too tired to write one evening, so I ended up watching my husband browse through lists of anime shows, since he enjoys watching anime.  I saw a brief shot of what looked like the cutest little cartoon characters ever, and asked him to bring that one up.  It was an anime for “younger children” called “Yamataro Comes Back.”  The short description said it was about a young bear who makes friends with a steam engine who helps him escape captivity.  

Sounds like typical four year old fare, right? So, we tried it.  Yamataro is by far the cutest creature ever.  He oozes cuteness.  The story starts out though with a tragic Bambi-like beginning where Yamataro and his mother are floating on an iceberg  It gets hit by a ship and kills his mother.  Yamataro is then sold to a shop owner in town who chains him in front of the store to draw in customers and feeds him leftover fish, mistakenly thinking he is a “sea bear” and only likes fish.

A bit depressing, but still in typical kid territory.  We go merrily along with a bully of a cat who teases Yamataro and then C64, a kindly steam engine (yes, steam engine) who stops along the tracks every night to chat with Yamataro.  Well, there is Thomas the Tank engine, right? So this isn’t too far out.  The train teaches him to roar like a train-whistle and cuddles with him, as much as a train can cuddle anyway. It’s cute and weird that Yamataro in the subtitles calls the train Mr. C64, but still, we were sailing along until Yamataro escapes.

Then the whole thing takes a terrible turn for the depressing.  After a tearful goodbye, Yamataro and C64 don’t see each other again.  We fast forward to when Yamataro is all grown up. The townspeople have been relentlessly trying to shoot and kill him ever since he escaped, but keep getting confused by his train-whistle roar.  Meanwhile, C64 has been replaced by high speed rail, and sits languishing in the train barn, watching people dismantle all his fellow engines for scrap metal.  Then, the towns folk get the brilliant idea of driving C64 on one last ride up to the mountains to use his whistle to lure out Yamataro and shoot him.  Cheery.

Even more so when C64 realizes what’s happening, and crashes himself in a heroic suicide just in time for Yamataro to realize its a trap and run away farther into the mountains for good.

I don’t think I’ve seen or read something for little kids that depressing since I tried Bambi the book. Now, this is not Bambi the movie, the Disney movie has nothing on Yamataro with its happy ending.  Bambi’s father survives, his friends survive, and he gets twitterpated with a happily ever after.

Not so the book.  Friend after friend gets shot, and when a weepy (and probably pregnant) Feline asks Bambi, “Do you love me?” he answers, “I don’t know,” and ditches her for the other end of the forest.  People thought this was a kid’s book? Really?

Although, now I’m wondering if some of my more depressing ideas as a writer might actually end up working after all! I think the lesson here for everyone is, so long as your main character is rip-your-heart-out cute, you can kill as many people in your children’s show/book as you like.

The Writing Life: Over-scheduling Myself = Finals Week Crunch

I supposedly left my school habits, well, back in school.  Unfortunately the last two weeks took me right back to what it was like to be in school.  Triple scheduling myself was, alright, fine, not a very brilliant idea.  I didn’t mean to, it was one of those “just sort of happened” things.  One of the dangers of writing is sometimes I have the impression I’m not really doing much, which perhaps comes from social perception, perhaps from years of boring day jobs, I’m not sure, but I tend to think of anything writing related as “not counting” which is deadly when it comes to crits, line edits, marketing, and blogging.  A mental “I didn’t do much this week” might mean I wrote only two chapters on my WIP.  What my brain is filtering out is perhaps 6  crits, a blog entry, social media posts, and a chapter or two of line edits on another novel.

Normally, I suppose some part of my brain tracks this, keeping it in mind around things like dinner, dishes, laundry, vacuuming (haha), and errands.  So, I scheduled out for September finishing running through “A Recipe for Disaster” in my crit group, which meant critting people back and editing up the chapters quickly before hand (neither of which counts, really, right?).  So, what I at least did decide counted, was going back over those crits and revising to get the book in to my editor.

That might have all worked fine, except I heard about this fantastic opportunity to submit a novel elsewhere. Since all I was doing were some edits, naturally I just had to get a book ready, in a month.  Sure, I was aware there might be “a little pressure” as the due date was the same as my draft into my editor.  Looking through my books I picked the one that looked like it had the best fit.  One problem, while the first two thirds were quite polished, it was unfinished.  I don’t think I’ve written a book quite that fast since I wrote “Dragon Wraith” during my one week break from volunteer work in El Paso (right, that was supposed to be a vacation).

Well, a lot of things (including the blog and dishes) went to the wayside as the reality turned out about three times busier than my brain thought it would be.  I did get the novel done and revised, plus the book to my editor, also revised, plus only fell behind about maybe 3 crits for the whole experience  but I pulled some rather late nights and my brain resembles a limp noodle.  I think I’m getting too old for finals weeks anymore.

That said, I’m hoping to do several non-counting things (catch up on crits, prewrite for Nano) and be all set to go November First on “Much Ado About Villains.”  I have last year’s outline, since I switched books due to marketing stress, so I probably should brush it up some.  I’m thinking though that after writing 35,000 words in a week, maybe Nanowrimo will be relaxing for once.  Here’s my tentative blurb:

After a year at Dark Lord Academy, Zixy (formally Danny) feels he’s got things pretty well worked out. Avoid his necromancy teacher, show off as much as possible in front of his friends, convince Queleria, the dark lady of his dreams, to ditch her current boyfriend, Demigorth the Destroyer. Only a pesky previously home-schooled know-it-all new girl won’t stop following him around, the necromancy teacher seems to stalk his every move, and the strategy teacher is definitely up to something downright villainous this year.

Then Zixy’s new demon pen-pal sends him a mysterious skull that has a strange way of whispering answers to tests, clearing up his social problems, and promises to show him how to use dark magic like never before. Suddenly evil looks a lot more tempting and school domination is starting to sound pretty good. Taking extra lessons from the not-quite-dead sounds like a good er… evil idea, right?

Also, during the last two weeks, two of my fabulous critique partners released novels.  Kelly Walker released “Cornerstone,” a YA Fantasy available at Amazon.  Michele Shiver released “Sixth South,” women’s fiction, on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  These are two very well-written, professionally edited indie novels that I critiqued in draft on CC.

The Writing Life: Some Workshop Thoughts

I went exploring the Hood River Library this month.  One of the things I asked them was about writing’s group.  After being told to ask so-and-so instead and whatnot, I found the person who did know.  ”Welllll,” she said, “I do know of tons of writing groups, they’re just all…”  She made an expression of extreme disgust.  ”Exclusive.  Or something.  They’re like book clubs, and don’t want to meet anyone new.”

So much for a warm welcome in Hood River (at least the library staff are awesome).  Hopefully I’ll find some less exclusive writer types during Nanowrimo.  Although I do understand the desire to be exclusive.  When you get a small positive group of beta reader together, you tend to want to hold onto each other.  You don’t want the idiots tromping all over your work.

On the other hand, it makes finding/meeting this wonderful group when you don’t already have it near impossible.  Not to mention, sometimes those so-called newbie idiots might be awesome and wonderful people you could become lifelong friends with.  Sigh.

So, for the moment that means sticking with my very positive (and wow, welcoming to new people while letting people form smaller groups) online writing workshops: Critique Circle and Holy Worlds.

Now, I love these groups, I’ve met a ton of great people there, but I have noticed one thing about larger writer’s workshops.  The group tends to develop a style.  At Critique Circle, the style is third person limited (first person is acceptable) but we must have an immediate and close POV, lots of action, active language as well, and a minimum of narration/description.

Holy Worlds tends to have the opposite style.  Use mythic language, lots of narrative explaining, traditional fantasy conventions and omniscient POV is preferred.  Take time to have lots of details about how your world is created, made up languages, magical rules, and go ahead and explain them in detail.

These groups are made up of a great number of people, so how is it they have a style?  No one is in charge, telling people how to write, and yet what people like, what they get excited about, and what they recommend really does differ between groups.  I’ve decided that groups as a whole drift in a certain direction.  Something important I should keep in mind when submitting a novel to them… if it’s the sort of novel I’ll get a good group response from, vs if this novel isn’t really right for this critique group.

Now, back the Hood River library and its hidden exclusive writing groups. I gave up on finding something prior to Nanowrimo, and just checked out some books on writing.  Among them was “Narrative Design” by Madison Smartt Bell.  Well, I was fascinated by what Bell had to say about his experience with the rather famous Iowa Writer’s Workshop.  Bell had always assumed the dreaded “Literary workshop style” people complain about was taught, but found with the variety of teachers, always rotating, no one was teaching a style.  Instead, he found several pressures unintentionally created a group style.

First, in a critique group, everyone is setting out to find flaws on purpose.  When you don’t find something wrong several paragraphs in, you start worrying about what you’re going to say/recommend to the author.  A crit that doesn’t find flaws is a “failed” crit.  That and the following discussion tends towards group pressures.  Even on a workshop like Critique Circle, where you can’t read the crits until the story is done, I find that certain ideas make the rounds between members even so.  Bell had some great advice on how to listen though to such group fault-finding, which even as an experianced workshop member, I found a great insight.

When the talk begins to shift from flaws in realizing the story’s apparent intention to the idea that the intention itself ought to have been different — ie that the writer should have written som different kind of story — that’s a signal to the teacher that the story may have been successfully completed.  It’s a good thing for students whose work is under discussion to learn to listen for that signal too.

What a great point!  And, what a moment to make an author pause too, when looking over your crits, because you mostly shouldn’t change the kind of story you’re writing just because your writing group thinks you should write something different. This is your story… which ties into Bell’s second issue with workshops, the idea of trying to please everyone on a technical level.  Bell writes:

At Iowa, the students were very diligent about annotating each manuscript and writing an overarching commentary at the end… when the classroom discussion was finished, these fourteen annotated copies would be handed over to the unfortunate authoer, alnog with mine… I found out through private conversations that many of these students, if not all, would indeed spread out fifteen different annotated copies and try somehow to incorperate all  the commentary into a revision of the work.

The results of this kind of revision were often very disheartening. I’d get second drafts that very likely had less obvious flaws than the first, but also a whole lot less interest.  These revisions tended to live up to commonly heard, contemptuous descriptions of workshop work, being well-tooled, inoffensive, unexceptional, and rather dull.

I’ve found out myself when looking at crits that sometimes people complain about opposite things, that I’ve got conflicting advice.  Even when I don’t, I know what he means about it ruining the voice and style of a piece to have so many editors taking a hand in it.  I know exactly what he’s talking about.  All the advice I get is soooo valuable, I don’t want to waste it, but the truth is, I shouldn’t take all of it.  Just the bits of advice that fit with my vision and voice for my story.

I’m grateful for each and every crit I get.  They buoy up my confident, support me in my process, and challenge me to always strive to do better.  However, I also agree with Bell’s decision to change what he said at the beginning of each workshop to something like this:

Assume that when your work is being discussed, about 90 percent of what you hear will be useless to you and irrelevant to what you have done.  Learn to listen carefully and to discriminate what’s useful to you from what’s not.  Remember the revelevant part adn ignore the rest.  If even one person understands what you intended to be understood, then you can say you have succeeded.  Past that, the only issue is just how widely accessible you want your work to be.  Don’t try to please the group… The person you have to please is yourself.

So, get out there, get crits, thank all those helpful fellow writers, and then be  discerning on your vision for your work.  I can tell I’m going to enjoy the rest of this book too.