Danika Dinsmore's Blog, page 10

Middle Grade Mondays: All Creatures Great and Small

I’m always trying to find books for solid middle grade readers who aren’t mature enough or interested in YA matters yet. Who don’t care about love triangles, but want something challenging.

I wasn’t a big reader of horse or dog stories when I was a kid, but I adored the ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL series by James Harriot when I was in 6th grade. And I mean every time I read them (the first three, at least), they warmed my heart all over again. I kept forgetting how good they were.

I haven’t read them in years and wondered if my taste was suspect as a child. So I looked them up on GoodReads and, sure enough, all the books score consistently high marks.

They are heart-pulling, authentic (semi-autobiograhic) stories by an English veterinary surgeon. He worked in a rural area for the bulk of his life, delivering calves and the like. He had always wanted to write his stories, but didn’t do so until encouraged by his wife at the age of 50.

From his GoodReads bio:

The Herriot books are often described as “animal stories” … and given that they are about the life of a country veterinarian, animals certainly play a significant role in most of the stories. Yet animals play a lesser, sometimes even a negligible role in many of Wight’s tales: the overall theme of his stories is Yorkshire country life, with its people and their animals primary elements that provide its distinct character. Further, it is Wight’s shrewd observations of persons, animals, and their close inter-relationship, which give his writing much of its savour.

There are a few squeamish bits (back in the day, farm animal medicine could be pretty messy), but I can’t recall anything shocking me, and I was a fairly sheltered 6th grader. I think even back then I detected Harriot’s ability to observe and comment on the human condition. I remember him being a kind, hardworking  man who treated all his patients (and their owners) equally.

I think this would be a great series to read as a family or parent-child book club. As well, the chapters are each separate stories, so no cliff hangers. You can pick the book up and put it down as you need to.

Just writing this post makes me want to read them all over again.

Weekend Workout: Love Uber Alles

Yesterday, while I was procrastinating working on my own blog post, I came across this lovely post by children’s author Kelly Barnhill. It’s basically about how everyone, at some point in their lives, but particularly when we are mean-spirited children, participates in “bad behaviour.” It was also about the child taking responsibility for that behaviour and the parent loving the child in spite the behaviour. What I took away from it was the joy of loving the mess that we are, the whole package. We are tragically flawed beings, and I have always found a certain beauty in that.

We are all mended cracks and creaky gears. We are broken smiles, broken hearts, broken minds and broken lives. We are hack-jobs and cast-offs and wobbly legs and gouged surfaces. We are soft edges, scuffed corners, ungleaming and unvarnished, but pleasant to hold and comforting to touch. (from Barnhill‘s post)

My own mother said that her philosophy as a parent was that the child was never bad, the behaviour was. We are perfect beings who make mistakes – - if you can wrap your head around that oxymoron.

by Rashin Kheirieh

All of this thought-tracked into something I once heard Alexandra Cunningham (one of the lead writers on Desperate Housewives) say on a panel: Write every character with compassion, no matter how different from yourself.

Let’s expand that to say, “Write every character with compassion, no matter how bad their behaviour.”

You can take this to mean write your villains with compassion, but it may be your protagonist who needs more love from you. This is the case for me right now with my aforementioned W.I.P.

IdoLL engages in a lot of bad behaviour. She needs to; that’s the whole point. She is mean-spirited and selfish. Feedback from my focus group has been that it is difficult to empathize with her because of this bad behaviour. However, the majority of this group also told me that they really like her transformation. She redeems herself at the end and they were happy about this. “It’s satisfying” one young reader said.

So, if the reader makes it more than ½ way through the book, they will start to see her transformation, but if the reader puts the book down for lack of connection, they’ll never get there.

My job now is to create more compassion for her at the beginning of the story, so that even though she engages in this bad behaviour, we love her anyway.

I thought perhaps I should do this by writing her with more compassion. The thing is, I DO have a lot of compassion for IdoLL, but I was relying on her sense of humour to carry her through. Cleverness and a sense of humour in your protagonists can often persuade readers into liking them. But this time, it wasn’t enough.

Your Workout

Set your timer for 5-7 minutes.

Start at the top of the page with the following startline:

1) The wound that festers in m y character’s heart is made up of …

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

When the timer stops, Set your timer for 7-10 more minutes.

Start with the following line: 

2) My character feels utterly betrayed when . . .

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

When the timer stops, Set your timer for 10-12 more minutes.

Start with the following line: 

3) The pain of this betrayal looks like…

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

Read your exercises, make notes, highlight what makes sense.

Happy Weekend!

The Next Big Thing Blog Crawl

I was tagged to do this blog hop by Tod McCoy, missed the deadline, but was determined to do it anyway, because I said I would.

The thing is, I honestly think there is nothing more boring than talking about one’s W.I.P. I warn budding authors not to do this on a daily basis. You’ll tire people.

So, unless

a) I’m at an author’s reading and everyone in the audience is just dying to know what said author’s next project is, or

b) I am in a writing group/workshop and the subject of conversation is my W.I.P.

I try to keep this kind of thing under my hat as much as possible. But, hey, since he asked . . .

1) What is the working title of your book?

INTERGALACTIC: A Pop Space Opera

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

From one my own teaching exercises, actually, soon to be published in the Tarcher/Penguin anthology Now Write: Speculative Fiction. I heard an editor on a panel once say that she wanted to find the “Lady Gaga of authors” and my mind wandered to, as the exercise goes, “Lady Gaga . . . in space!”

The two rival intergalactic pop stars were so clear in my head at that moment I drew illustrations of them in my notebook, not something I normally do.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

I call it a Pop Space Opera, but since that is not technically a genre (yet!),  I would say Light Science Fiction.

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

There is actual music in this story, so protagonist IdoLL would be played by someone like Keke Palmer (she could do her own singing). And for Jettison Prix (IdoLL’s rival) I want Dara Sisterhen (I have no idea if she can sing. I worked with her on a film before and she is hi-lar-ious), and if I could get a contemporary, edgier version of Bobby Womack for Reggie Backstone, that would be great, thank you.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

In a galaxy where fame can falter at the flip of a switch, a petty pop star must team up with her musical rival in order to prevent an interplanetary war.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I would like it to be represented by an agency because of the multi-platform elements. I don’t really know how to handle that, nor do I want to, so I’ll need someone else to manage it.

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

I wrote it in a month for NaNoWriMo 2011.

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

It has been described as Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with a soundtrack. I’d say with a healthy dose of The True Meaning of Smekday.

9) Who or What inspired you to write this book?

See Question #2

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

The novel is divided into “tracks” and I have written an original song for each track. The idea is that the music will accompany and complement the book. I am currently working with a musician to produce the first three songs of the book to use in the pitch materials.

~     ~     ~

And now I will end this blog crawl by turning the camera like they do on The Amazing Race and say: I choose not to tag anyone. (and yes, I was always the kid who broke the chain letter)

Middle Grade Mondays: We Like Spies

I mentioned before that I’ve been going through an adult fiction (no not THAT kind), reading streak to stretch my perspective and challenge my mind a bit. (and increase my vocabulary, I’ve picked up these words among others: commove, impecunious, and avoirdupois). It feels good, like yoga for the brain.

So, this week I decided to ask some fellow writers (and one husband) what their favourite books were when they were 10. And why.

I’ll start with The Husband, whose favourite book was THE SPY LADY AND THE MUFFIN MAN by Sesyle Joslin. It’s actually the only kids book he owns other than The Places You Will Go (by Dr. Seuss).

Never heard of it? Neither had I. And unfortunately, not many other people have either. It came out in 1971, it’s out of print, and there’s not even an image in GoodReads or Amazon for it.

I read his copy 8 years ago when we exchanged favourite kids books (he read my copy of Phantom Tollbooth).

It’s about four brothers and sisters, the members of the Secret Society For The Detection And Solution Of Crime, who are faced with a dull summer on Cape Cod with their single Dad until the Spy Lady comes to live next door. Of course everything she does is highly mysterious and they make it a point to figure out her evil plans. They’ve got code names and disguises, and the book contains the children’s spy log book and is illustrated by the youngest brother.

I won’t tell you how it turns out, just in case you can get a copy of it. But it’s definitely more Harriet the Spy than Alex Rider. It is Cape Cod after all.

When I asked my husband why he liked the book so much he said, I liked the humour in it. And I loved kids books in which the kids were spies. I don’t think that trend has changed. I think kids still love stories about young sleuths.

Speaking of… Tod McCoy (author and publisher) said that his favourite books were ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE THREE INVESTIGATORS (by William Arden and a few other authors). Thirty books in the series were released between the years 1964 and 1979.  I hadn’t heard of this one either (when I mentioned them to The Husband he said – Oh, I loved those books).

According to GoodReads, these classic mystery/adventure stories feature three boys who establish a detective firm with the motto “We Investigate Anything!” In the first book in the series, the boys arrive for an overnight visit at Terror Castle–home of a long-deceased horror movie actor–and soon find that the place lives up to its name.

Of this series, Tod says: it had almost nothing to do with Alfred Hitchcock. Why did he like it? There was just something so cool about having a junkyard all to yourselves, with secret entrances all over the place.

And finally, author friend Jennifer D. Munro (who I will ALWAYS be jealous of for being anthologized in the book The Bigger the Better the Tighter the Sweater – for those who know your Judy Blume), had this to say about one of her favourite childhood book series: the THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE.

I recently re-read the first Little House on the Prairie and loved it. I learned all kinds of things, like how they made a balloon for the kids out of the pig’s bladder after it was slaughtered, and how Ma at certain times of the year would strain grated carrots to add more color to the butter (at other times of the year, depending on what the cow was eating, the butter was already yellow enough), and how for guests they would buy white granulated sugar instead of the lowbrow brown sugar or natural maple syrup they had. I don’t think I understood any of that when I read it growing up in Hawaii.

At least with Little House, they weren’t missing a parent (or two) like so much kids’ lit. (Nancy Drew and Black Stallion both feature a kid with one dead parent.)

I didn’t see a real prairie until I was 35… Yup, on our cross country motorcycle trip, we ended up by accident on Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway.

Why would a little girl in Hawaii care about Little House on the Prairie? Because I think it had all of those universal themes, most important of which was how was Santa going to get to them during a record blizzard on Christmas?

I am fairly certain I never read any of the Prairie books. I was, like Tod and The Husband, more into spies. But, perhaps I’ll give them a shot one day. They are classics, after all. Plus I want to find out how to make a balloon from a pig’s bladder.

Are there any old, out of print, hard to find children’s books that were your favourites?

FOR MORE MIDDLE GRADE MONDAY POSTS, VISIT Shannon Messenger’s Blog

Weekend Workout: For the Sheer Pleasure of It

Sometimes when I’m working on the White Forest series I find myself worried, overwhelmed, and slightly stressed about it all. I feel a pressure to deliver each story as good, or preferably even better, than the last. Sometimes the romance of writing gets lost in the day-to-day nitty-gritty of having to produce.

Sometimes I have to remind myself of my more “innocent” days of writing. When there was no pressure but to write for the sheer pleasure of it.

Hence, lately, I’ve been blogging about those “secret projects,” the ones no one knows I’m working on, where I can experiment and play, try a new form, a new direction, a new genre for the sheer pleasure of it.

by Alison Woodward

This morning I started thinking about the “sheer pleasures” of my series protagonist, Brigitta. As the series continues, as she faces greater and greater dangers, she has much less time for daydreaming in the lyllium fields, languishing in the mist of Precipice Falls, or interpreting shadowfly dances. She has her own pressures and responsibilities (that’s also mistakenly called “growing up,” because really, we should not forget our sheer pleasures).

What do your characters do for the sheer pleasure of it? Not just your heroes and their allies, but the villains, antagonists, and monsters, too. Even Hitler loved art and was wild about the opera. That doesn’t detract from the monstrous things that he did. As a matter of fact, there was a curated art show a few years ago depicting Hitler as “a perverted artist” and theorizing about how his artistic aesthetic was echoed in his politics and Nazi pageantry.

I find it particularly sinister when an “evil” character has time to sit back and enjoy a piece of music and at the same time have no compassion for his victims. How could someone like Hannibal Lecter, for instance, recognize the beauty of a song and at the same time violently destroy a life? In the average person’s mind, the two cannot be squared.

How can you use a character’s “sheer pleasures” to demonstrate losing innocence (as Brigitta’s story does) or complement / contrast a character’s twisted nature?

Your Workout:

Set your timer for 5-7 minutes.

Start at the top of the page with the following startline:

1) My Protagonist/Antagonist/Villain has an uncanny talent for…

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

When the timer stops, Set your timer for 7-10 more minutes.

Start with the following line: 

2) My Protagonist/Antagonist/Villain sees great beauty in . . .

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

When the timer stops, Set your timer for 10-12 more minutes.

Start with the following line: 

3) My character’s appreciation for beauty becomes obsession/repression/twisted when …

Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.

Read your exercises, make notes, highlight what makes sense.

Happy Weekend!

 

 

Middle Grade Mondays: The One and Only Ivan

(I just realized this is my first post of the New Year. So, Happy New Year!)

At the end of the year I was cruising through several “Best of 2012 Middle Grade Reading” lists and I would say that the most common denominator among them was this book:

I really don’t need to sing its praises to you. If you spend any time in the blog-o-sphere looking for middle grade reading material, you came across this title.

As a matter of fact, I had heard so much universal praise for it that I bought it, hoping to be able to use it in the classroom at some point. I actually thought it was a novel in verse when I bought it (may have something to do with the book store owner telling me it was a novel in verse).

It’s not marketed that way as far as I can tell, but visually it does appear like a novel in verse, the rhythms of Applegate’s language sometimes come across as poetry, and at the very end of the book there are a few pages of what looks to be genuine poetry.

(sample from page 2 of book)

Personally, I wouldn’t have put this book at the top of my general MG 2012 list, but before anyone boos me off my own blog, that’s only because this book is geared younger than the MG books I generally read and enjoy.

I would definitely put it on top in terms of the lower MG range.

Based on a true story about a gorilla that spent 27 years in a tiny cage in a shopping mall before public outcry got the gorilla moved to the Atlanta Zoo, the premise was enough to break my heart. I tend to be quite sensitive when it comes to the treatment of animals, as are most children. (Don’t worry, the true story and this one both have a happy ending).  Kids will also love that the real gorilla and the fictional one both like to draw.

In the book, Ivan lives at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade and vaguely recalls life in the jungle. His old life doesn’t haunt him much, instead he thinks about TV shows, talks with his friends Stella, an elderly (and injured) elephant, and Bob, a stray dog who sleeps on his chest, and tries to figure out how to capture the things around him in his drawings. To save their dying attraction, their keeper adopts Ruby, a baby elephant taken from her family, and through her innocence and loss, Ivan see their home—and his art—through new eyes. Ivan vows to make life better for Ruby.

Kids will love the animal perspective, told with subtle gorilla humor, and I think it would be a great book for 3rd-5th graders to have discussions about endangered species or our human responsibilities on the planet when it comes to the other beasts who live here.

Applegate does have a talent for treating complex emotions with a verbal simplicity that will appeal to both children and adults. Adult readers will also appreciate her subtext. She manages a restrained tone of fear underneath Ivan’s child-like voice. I personally enjoyed his dead pan humor.

If you haven’t picked this one up yet, and you enjoy the kind of profound simplicity only a middle grade book of this quality can provide, I highly recommend it.

For more Middle Grade Monday postings, visit author Shannon Messenger’s Blog

End-of-Year Plerk-out!

It’s funny how little down time I allow myself by before I feel the need to get something done. My husband’s the same way. We like to be productive.

During the “holidays” one would most likely find us in our respective offices brain-deep in some type of creative or career project: digitizing rare audio cassettes, typing up old journal pages, writing a proposal for a conference, a class, a book.

Between the productivity we take a walk to a local coffee shop and the subject of how we rarely relax comes up. “It’s because we like our work,” I say to him. “But our work is our play. We don’t work; we plerk.”

(SIDENOTE: we discussed the spelling of the combination of “work” and “play” and decided against “plork” because no one would pronounce it right.)

Plerking for me is writing this now. It’s editing a manuscript. It’s jotting a poem down, capturing a melody, brainstorming TV movie ideas. Plerking is when one enjoys the work of one’s life so much that it doesn’t feel like work – which is not to be confused with the ease of the endeavour.

Play can be just as challenging as work. Have you ever played sports? Sports are challenging physically and mentally, but we never ask, “what sport do you work?” Not even to professionals.

A few weeks ago I gave myself (and invited others) the challenge of writing a short story by the end of the year using a paragraph from the 50 First Lines exercise. I posted my top 5 and ended up choosing the following paragraph:

Green, red, blue . . . what mattered the colour of his blood when his heart was a broken hinge? He lay his head back down on the institutional hospital pillow. The nurses didn’t know what to do with him. He had red blood spurting from a gash in his arm and green blood coming from his nose. He reached up and touched it. His nose. Where Karmen had punched him.

EDITING YOUR PLERK

I was on a panel about editing at VCon with four other authors. All of us had different techniques and rituals around editing. The only thing we all completely agreed upon was the importance of it.

When someone asked if it was possible to spend too much time editing, I said, “Perfectionism is the opposite of done, but I have never heard anyone say, ‘Wow, that was a great story, too bad it suffered from over-editing.’ It’s a bit of a balance.”

Here are some basic steps I take when I edit a short story:

-After I pound out the first draft, I usually read it over a few times and do some straight intuitive editing.

-I tend to explain too much in the first drafts of my short stories. If I explain anything I first ask myself, is this information necessary? If so, is there a way to show it in action or dialogue instead?

For instance, here’s a doozy:

Karmen had always loved attention, had loved flaunting her nerdy boy toy with his natural, baby-faced good looks. One-hundred percent human, not like those trendy “mutants” with their artificial modifications. She liked showing him off like a pet, daring any man, woman, or hermaph to challenge her claim.

Instead of explaining all of this, I could have a scene where she takes her boy toy to a party and threatens someone or makes a snide remark about a “mutant.”

-I examine each character individually. What is her motivation? What is his character arc? Who is this person? I visualize each character in my mind doing something. I think it’s important to visualize them in action, not just what they look like physically.

-Once I’ve edited it a few times, I give it to one or two people in my crit arena. I get some feedback, take some notes, read over my notes, and then set them aside. (I don’t obsess over notes. If something clicks, it will reveal itself in the rewrite)

-I PRINT the story out and read it OUT LOUD. This is vital. I read every line for “sound” and “sense.” Meaning, does it sound good and does it make sense for the story.

-I question my “darlings.” If certain lines make me feel clever, I examine them in the context of the story. Yes, cleverness is good, but I was a bit in love with the last line of my story so that each of 3 versions of the ending still contained that final line. I wanted to make sure the last line actually worked.

-I look for the logic of the story. The overall holds-together-ness of it. If I look at it objectively, do the pieces of the story fall together so that the outcome is believed to be a necessary conclusion?

Sometimes when I’m editing I freeze up and procrastinate, fearing that I will somehow “ruin” the story by editing. That I’ll make it worse. I can’t say that has ever happened. I have to remind myself of that. I always save each new version just in case, but I rarely find that I need to refer back to it.

Your End-Of-Year Plerkout:

If you’ve started a short story, use that. If not, find something you’d like to “plerk” on that needs finishing (assess that it is finishable in 6 days). A poem, a song, a collage, even a novel – but only if you’re that close to the end.

The idea is to FINISH something, as in, ready for submission. An actual edit and polish so that you can start the New Year with a brand new story to toss to the story-catchers.

Have a Great New Year and Be Safe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing Life: The Short Shot

I had written short stories for classes or if someone invited me to write one, but I had never thought about writing for the short story market until about a year-and-a-half ago when I was asked to teach a dystopian fiction class to teenagers focused around producing a short story.

I always write with my students and use the development of my own story to demonstrate the creative process. I ended up creating something in my first dystopian fiction class that I really liked and thought there might be a market for the story.

I started reading more short stories on line, attending short fiction readings, and picked up several speculative fiction anthologies, and you know what? There’s some really interesting work out there.

Many people, including myself, romanticize novel writing and make that their number one goal. But it can take years to finish a novel to satisfaction and years more to see it in print. Short story writing can be extremely satisfying because one can finish a short story in a matter of weeks or even days with genuine focus.

You need to write as much as possible to hone your skills, and short stories allow you to explore numerous ideas and worlds and characters without too much of a commitment. It’s much less tragic to toss a short story that isn’t working then to trash an entire novel.

Getting short stories published is also a great way to keep your work in the public consciousness before your novel is published (or between novels being published to). Sometimes it can take a while, but generally short story publication happens much quicker. For instance, I submitted to the Futuredaze anthology in June, was accepted the following month, and the anthology will be published in February 2013. From first draft to publication was less than a year. How many can say that about a novel that wasn’t self-published?

The best part? You don’t need an agent to submit to most publishers of short stories. And, unless it’s an “invitation only” anthology, publishers will put out calls for submissions, often inspiring the write with themes for their magazines and anthologies (Canadian Zombies! Doppleganger Dragons!)

There are also paying markets. You won’t see advances and royalties, but you’ll get paid for your words and rights revert back to the author upon publication, so if you love your characters and your story and want to expand it into a novel later on, that’s your prerogative.

Or you could choose to self-publish “ebooks” of each of your short stories at .99 a pop if you want.

Pretty sweet.

If this inspires you and you want to check this world out, here are some recent calls for short stories in the paid market:

http://www.clockworkphoenix.com/#guidelines

http://stonethreadpublishing.com/contests/

http://gabrielle-edits.com/hero2_open_submissions/

If interested in finding these markets, subscribe to yahoo groups CRWROPPS (Creative Writers Opportunities List and Duotrope (soon to be a paid listings @ $5 / month) to keep abreast of new calls for work.

And please feel free to post links to any calls you’ve found lately!

Middle Grade Monday: Best of 2012

Really, that title should read Best IN 2012, because the books on my own “best of” reading list were not necessarily published in 2012, that’s just when I happened to read them.

I case you feel hornswoggled by this, I have added some other reviewers “Best of 2012″ Middle Grade fiction lists of books that actually were published this year.

My favourite MG book I read that DID come out this year was WONDER. I was afraid this book would be too “Hallmark” for me and it wasn’t. A three-hankie read, I appreciated the multiple POV storyline, which I had not been expecting. You can find my original review HERE.

My favourite Upper Middle Grade book this year was Scott Festerfeld’s GOLIATH (released late 2011), the conclusion to his Lethiathan series. Granted, I did like the first two books in the series slightly better than the third, but it was such a satisfying conclusion to the story, which I find rare. I literally closed the book and sighed with satisfaction. As I’m struggling on my own series right now, I find the way he managed his story particularly remarkable.

I posted about the whole series HERE.

A close second was Catherine Valente’s THE GIRL WHO CIRCUMNAVIGATED FAIRYWORLD IN A SHIP OF HER OWN MAKING. If I could bottle her imagination and sell it, I’d make millions. I’ll just have to settle for reading her books. Review here.

And finally, my favourite MG book I read this year that came out not-even-close to 2012 was Adam Rex’s TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY. (published 2007) This is the only middle grade book that I have ever been in danger of peeing my pants from laughing. Original review HERE.

It goes without saying that I recommend any of these as holiday gifts for the young readers in your lift.

There are so many MG books I did not get around to reading this year, so here are some other Best of MG Reads from around the Interweb:

The Atlantic Wire’s: 2012 MG/YA Awards – More YA heavy than MG, this list has categories such as “Most Lyrical,” “Most Page Turning,” and “Best Reality Check.”

THIS LIST by School Library Journal that I conjured runs the reading age gamut, but the bulk appears to be Middle Grade books.

And the Top Ten MG books of 2012 according to Amazon is HERE

If you have any top 2012 MG book lists you’d like to share, please do. (not that my reading list needs any more books to be added to it).

And if you want to read more Middle Grade Monday reviews, check out that list on Shannon Messinger’s blog.

Weekend Workout: End-of-Year Short Story Challenge! (or 50 First Lines Redux!)

I’ve been jumping up and down in my mind (I do that) to use some material from the 50 first lines exercise I started months ago. I used this exercise, another of my favourites, for a writing contest back in February and the results were terrific.

The whole 50 First Lines exercise is a blast and it works. I’ve proven to myself over and over again that it works, and now I have an excuse to use some of my results.

There’s an open call for a short story anthology I’m interested in submitting to and the deadline is Dec 31st, so it’s perfect timing. If you’d like to join me and submit to this anthology (or to any other anthology or magazine or just want to finish a short story by the end of the year), you can play along. You can play along regardless of anything, but having a goal and a deadline is a great motivator.

If you did not participate in February and want to catch up, or start over again, here’s the whole exercise:

STEP ONE: Write 50 first lines. Seriously. This is not as difficult as it sounds. I recommend doing it in one 30 minute sitting. Just crank them out off the cuff. Don’t think too hard or you’ll crush the gems.

For inspiration, here are the winners from the first round of the contest last Feb.

STEP TWO: Pick your Top 10. Here were mine:

It was the colour of vomit… probably because it was vomit.

The clown nose was the last straw.

The idea was half-baked – - but then again, she liked things a little raw.

The horse was her neighbour’s and they were both studs.

Green, blue, red . . . what mattered the colour of his blood when his heart was a broken hinge?

It was a perfect morning for picking mushrooms.

I was taking a short cut through the cemetery when I spotted it. Him. It.

If he had told her about his origami-folding autistic idiot-savant brother in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this jam.

“I think it can be reattached,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time she had been arrested for bar-fighting, and the other time wasn’t her fault either.

STEP THREE: Write 10 first paragraphs.

After you’ve chosen your Top 10 first lines, write the first paragraph for each. Again, just crank them out as quickly as possible in one sitting. Don’t edit, don’t over think, just write.

Here are the winning paragraphs from the contest.

STEP FOUR: pick 3-5 of your own that you like

Here were my 5 favourite paragraphs:

Green, red, blue . . . what mattered the colour of his blood when his heart was a broken hinge? He lay his head back down on the institutional hospital pillow. The nurses didn’t know what to do with him. He had red blood spurting from a gash in his arm and green blood coming from his nose. He reached up and touched it. His nose. Where Karmen had punched him.

 ~ ~ ~

It was a perfect morning for picking mushrooms. Green and misty in that way that spring teases. If she could identify them, she’s pick them now. They had sprouted up overnight, literally overnight, on the median across from the bus stop. But she couldn’t tell the difference between the poisonous and nonpoisonous ones. Nor did she know how much of the poisonous ones to add into a tincture, so that it would be just this side of magic, and not lethal.

 ~ ~ ~

I was taking a short cut through the cemetery when I spotted it. Him. It. The limping coyote. I had always assumed it was a he. I hadn’t seen him in weeks and I was glad he was safe, although not glad it was almost dark and that I was alone. I shifted my grocery bag to my left arm. Was I supposed to make myself big or small in the face of a coyote? Run towards him, back away, play dead?

 ~ ~ ~

If he had told her about his origami-folding autistic idiot-savant brother in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this jam. Instead he had told her to “wait” outside the non-descript building while he went inside. When he reemerged, sheepishly introducing Simon to her, almost apologetic, she was pale as a ghost. Unresponsive, even when he waved his hand in front of her face. He had no idea what had happened in the 20 minutes she had been sitting there on the bench. He was spooked, but Simon seemed to be all right. His brother placed his paper crane in Marion’s lap and she snapped out of her trance.

 ~ ~ ~

“I think it can be reattached,” he said.  He examined the finger more closely.  The wires had fried, but the finger itself seemed functional. “Here,” he said, handing the finger to ROY, “hold onto that until we can get back to the garage. I’m going to collect some more conch shells from the beach.”

 ~ ~ ~

STEP FIVE: Pick the paragraph that “clicks” for you, ignites the proverbial light bulb, and write a draft of that story by NEXT FRIDAY (Dec 21). That’s one week for a short story (2,000-5,000 words). You can do it. That still leaves 10 days to edit it for submission.

If you’re having trouble choosing from among your brilliant 5 paragraphs, try working on each one a little and see what happens. Since the anthology I’m submitting to is themed (it’s about heroes coming home) it helped in my selection. I looked for the “hero coming home” in each one. I started three different possible stories until one took off.

You’ll know when it does.

NEXT WEEKEND WORKOUT: We’ll edit and polish them by the end of the month.

Have a great weekend!

P.S. Someone just told me writer couple Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch suggested starting a short story each Monday, finishing it during the week, and submitting it that Friday. Now that sounds like a great challenge, and with 50 first lines, you’ve already got a year of stories waiting for you. (Hmmm, I smell a 2013 writing challenge for me)