Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 121

events and grief

I will be presenting and signing tonight at the Heber Library at 6:30 p.m. Come if you're around and interested. I'd love to meet you!

Also, March 15-16, I will be at UVU doing a presentation with my editor Ruth Katcher of Egmont. This will be a small conference, and should be a great chance for those really interested in learning about writing to get some advice from professionals. Eric Rohman and Candice Fleming will also be presenting.

I had a long talk with 14 yesterday about grieving. ...

good advice for artistically minded kids

My younger sister and I spent several hours together this weekend, something we haven't done for years. She is an extremely talented artist and as a kid would draw all the time, in the way that I read or wrote all the time. (I did used to draw a little, until I saw how good she was and did it even less.) She got in trouble for it because everyone could see she wasn't writing notes, and people thought I was.

When I was a senior, she was a freshman and I asked her to do the artwork for my St...

when to send off a manuscript

I do not send out manuscripts unless I have gone over and over them. I have readers go over them. I let them sit for several months and then reread them. I have a phobia about editors discovering some random paragraph or typos all over or that a character's name changes in the middle of the text or that the ending makes no sense at all. Probably I have this phobia because I have had all of these things happen to me when I get comments back.

So when people ask me how to know when a manuscri...

Books Read February 2010

Read and Recommended:
IGMS #16
The Swan Maiden by Heather Tomlinson
Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman (i)
Voices by Ursula K. LeGuin
Behind You by Jacqueline Woodson
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness
Just Ella (again) by Margaret Peterson Haddix
The Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix

This feels so small to me, but I have been spending more time writing this month and am trying to put aside books that don't grab me immediately.

Also, I will be p...

the pain of writing

I remember this meeting in grad school when all the professors sat down to tell us how painful writing was. One professor said that he woke up every morning, afraid of writing, dreading it. He put it off until he couldn't, and then he made himself write. The other professors all concurred.

I think, looking back on this, they were trying to show us that they "understood" our pain. I'm guessing this was because many of the grad students who were supposed to be working on dissertations were n...

acceptance and denial

14 got a part in the school play, but not the part she wanted, which was, of course, the lead. But this year, as opposed to the two previous years, she decided to accept the lesser part with some grace and be in the play and learn what there is to learn in a minor part place. I was very pleased with this growth.

But last night, she came home and said that she felt like she was still going through the stages of grief, and not in the "right" order. I laughed. Not because she isn't going thro...

eggs in a basket

At a signing recently, a fan talked to me about the novel she was working on. She wanted to know if she should write the sequel to it while it made the rounds or if she should work on a different novel entirely. Perhaps I am not the person to ask, but she did ask me, so I did give my answer. This is it:

Write another book, not the same book in the series.

If you keep working on only one series, you are putting all your eggs in one basket. It might be the right basket. You might be one of t...

joy

Watching Evan Lysacek skate his short program in particular, and his free skate as well, made me feel some part of the joy that was expressed on his face and in his movements. There have been other athletes who have done the same at the Olympics for me. I watched them and I felt filled with the joy of beauty in creation. Most athletes did not have it, though. They were thrilled to have a medal, but I felt no sense of joy in them as they actually competed. Maybe they felt it, but it didn'...

romance "walls"

On one of my panels we talked about romance. It was interesting, because there were three of us who came to romance from a more sf/f bias and two who were more interested in the romance angle. One of the romance panelists said that it was important for a romance to have a "wall" that made it "impossible" for the romance to succeed. I know this is a common technique. She cited Twilight as an example, and there are many, many others. Remember, I read 10,000 romance novels as a teen.

My prob...

kid critiques

I have gotten a few more critiques from my kids the last two weeks. They are actually very keen eyes. They don't always put their fingers on all the problems, but they have a good sense of what works generally and what does not, and they all like different kinds of books. On the one hand, I feel very happy when they tell me they love something and want me to finish it. On the other hand, there are days when I wish I had not taught them to be quite so honest.

15: Mom, this is terrible. Did...