SOUP

Brain Freeze

Okay. I was good with the moving scenes around in the first part of the story. It worked and I really like the voice that's come out of the fast pace. Now we're getting into the 'rest of the story'. Brain Freeze! Yep, that's right. There are a bunch of really good scenes, and rats! a lot of really good lines and I may have to cut them. <sob>. 

I don't want to. Is this time to check my email? Play solitaire? Make a cup of tea? Pay the bills? Talk to the dog? OMG, should I iron? All right, too desperate. 

Is this the sign of a professional writer? One who knows what has to go and then does it? Sheeze, it's hard. So back to the index cards.  Time to review my notes from LSP's Scene Master class. Time to remember what I really wanted to say in the story. What is my story arc. Damn, I may have to rewrite, not just revise <double sob, gut wrenching sob>. 

This is not the progress I wanted…and yet, I think it is. So, off to tear this book apart <sigh>  and start all over again. <don't tell Tom, he thinks this is almost done :-)> Sláinte, Teresa

Moving into the Frantic Season

    With the cooling of the air, the blowing of the winds and the falling of the leaves I begin to think of the final quarter of the year. A couple of days until All Hallow's Eve and then All Saints Day and we're off to the frantic season. What to get the girls for Christmas. What Christmas cards to buy and then mail. [I think I missed last year totally <sigh>]. Do we have a party? Or several? Do we go to Baltimore for Thanksgiving? Will the girls be home for Christmas?

    This year I need to remember my job. The one I'm now committed to.

    We took a short vacation the beginning of October. Off to Ocean City MD. Soak in a hot tub, eat good food, drink, eat some more, drink, go shopping in tax-free Delaware, lose all ambition to continue writing. Sheeze, it's taken me a couple of weeks to get back in the groove.

    Now. Whoosh! We are moving into this hyper-active, all-consuming, mayhem-creating albeit excitement-packed, over-indulging, good-feeling producing time of the year. Yes, I love Christmas.

    Couldn't it have waited just a couple more months to arrive? I could do a really good job of Christmas in spring of next year. Well…maybe not. February is the trip to NYC for the Winter Conference and Spring brings not only flowers and green leaves and time in the screen room and great tennis weather but the Spring Retreat. So, no that wouldn't work. Move it into summer and it will compete with the registration for the fall conference. Fall, of course, would mean the conference, so not there either.

    All right, already! Okay, I agree to keep Christmas where it belongs if I also agree that I will continue to work at my stories, my imagination, my craft, my passion.

    Sigh. Compromising with the universe is not an easy thing.  Sláinte, Teresa 

Good Lord!

Wow! The last post was August 31 by Gretchen. I can't believe it. Here we are on the Ides of October. Not perhaps as auspices as the ones in March, but Ides none the less.

For me the last post was about Linda Sue Park's Master class at the LA conference. Since then I've divided my story into scenes,written a one sentence description of the scene and then put them all on a cork board. I had the sense that my story wasn't right. It has been an interesting process, rearranging scenes like pieces of a puzzle. But a different type of puzzle,sort of existing on a different plane,  a puzzle that has several ways of being put together.

There's  Good. Then Better and  I hope I'm moving toward Best. The most amazing part of this is this time, in the re-writing and revising, I feel as if I have this view of my story and this view has really reinvigorated my job as a writer. I know where it's going, I know how it's going to get there, I know where it's going to end. I know it all! Now, and this is the cool part, my job is to make sure I take the reader with me, through all of the twists and turns, through all the red herrings, through all the mistakes and the setbacks.

I basically have to step outside myself. I have to find the story that will be of interest to the reader. I already like it. After all the story is based on my paradigm; my own  limited vision of what mystery is, how I frame a mystery that is different from the way others write and frame their mysteries. Oh, there are substantial parts that must be included; a detective, a villain, a problem,  progress and impediments, a solution. But what it it that makes my story unique? So, that's where I am. Taking the story and making it mine. Sláinte,  Teresa

Walking in the tracks of my research

I'm back from vacation in the NC Outer Banks and a great time with family, but that's another story. This story is about a discovery I made.

I was able to sneak away from grandparenting duties one of those hot days last week when the grands were preoccupied with the ocean. I was free to explore the site of an historical nonfiction manuscript I wrote last year. I've not submitted it yet because I wanted to walk the streets and soak up the atmosphere, not just the facts.

Plus I wanted to see what was already in print about this remarkable event. I went to the visitor's center and browsed the books. Nothing. I went to the actual house and toured and browsed through the gift shop. Nothing. I asked the guides at both places and they pointed me to a page or two in locally published materials, all basically the same.

Finally, way back in the corner of a third gift shop, I found a short historical fiction stapled-in-the-middle kind of booklet written in 1998 by the great, great, great, great granddaughter of one of the original characters. I'm determined to look her up when I go to Raleigh in a few weeks. The copy I purchased is already signed by her, but I'm taking it with me for an in-person note. 

How can this be, though, that something so historical is not out there for the world to know? Even the London newspapers of the late 1700's found it significant enough to report, going so far as to drawing a political cartoon about it. My fourth graders reinacted it yearly during North Carolina Heritage Week and they knew its importance...because I presented it to them and that's the key. It's time the rest of the world learns, too.

Authors of historical works have an important calling to make sure our heritage is not forgotten and to insure that each new generation knows the whys as much as the whats. So this first day at my desk after vacation, I'm thrilled to be writing again. I'm digging out that manuscript and looking at it with a new eye. I've seen the place now. I've walked the steps my characters walked hundreds of years ago. I'm ready to write.

Gretchen

The Hero's Quest

     No, I'm not talking about The Hero's Journey. THJ is pattern and pace of the story. The hero leaves the ordinary world, goes into the extraordinary and be challenged and fail again and again until, getting it right, they finally become the champion by saving the world. The Hero's Journey is always on macro scale.
     I'm talking about the main character's, i.e., Hero's quest. In the Master Class at the SCBWI Summer Conference, Linda Sue Park said Tree-ear's internal quest was a desire for family and his external quest was to be a potter. She reinforced the internal by showing his relationship with Crane-man and his interaction with Mim's wife. His relationship with Mim was what stoked his external quest. [that's me in the upper left corner.]
     The Hero's Quest answers the 'what' in any book. What drives the character? The Hero has decided to fulfill some internal need, be it family, fame, inclusion, acceptance, love or any other human want. The external quest is one that we can all see, but the internal is elusive and difficult and maybe not even realized or verbalized by the character.
     My problem with my PB character Bartholomew has always been WHAT? What drives him to try on all those clothes, why does he care? I need to identify Bartholomew's internal quest. Seems to me once I answer that question, now that I have a good ending [thank you, Alexis O'Neill], Bartholomew will have a great book.
     I've always felt that Tommie's internal quest is to be the world's greatest detective and that her external quest is to solve a real mystery. I'm wrong, that is too superficial. What drives Tommie to maintain the world's greatest detective-in-training mantra when even her own family chides her about her failures? Why does she keep it up even when alienating half the town and the police department for fiascos in crime solving?
     This may seem off-topic but I find there is nothing better than cleaning the house or working in the garden or following through on some other mundane chore. While being totally engaged in manual labor my mind wanders and all to the good. I realized Tommie's external quest remains; to explain Amelia Washburn's  disappearance and, hopefully clear her of embezzlement charges and maybe solve a murder.  In that order. Her classmate's missing mother becomes her real mystery case. But… the internal still had me stumped. Does wanting to be the world's greatest detective seem too shallow, cursory, not engaging? Unfortunately for me, the answer was yes. <sigh and weep>
     The idea of running two storylines in a book is something that LSP said to stay away from, but I've been hooked on this idea for a long time and find that I am tied to it. But, OMG, what if Mom's 'condition' is the perfect stepping off point for Tommie's internal quest? It loses it's 'second storyline' status and become what drives Tommie.
     Okay, then, gotta go. Have tons of work to do. Sláinte  Teresa Fannin

The "aha" at the end isn't just about the STORY!

I got my EUPHORIC moment today. Remember, I said that when I finished my novel I didn't feel anything? Well, it really bothered me. I passed it off as wanting something too prematurely, after all, it's not really done--edited and all.

 

But, then...

Roger, Mr. Comma Man, read the last chapter. He said it was okay, but later, while mulching the front hill, he came into the house with a suggestion to change the ending--said he'd been thinking about it. And, it was perfect! One of those "why didn't I think of that" moments. I removed Part Two/Chapter Twelve and gave the ending to Chapter Eleven. It was/is perfect!

So, for the second time in two days I've finished my novel, but this time with a tear in my eye and a twist in my gut that wouldn't leave me for hours. Euphoric doesn't begin to describe the feeling. 

 

I've come to the conclusion that the "aha" at the end of the story isn't just about the story. It also has to do with how YOU feel when it's finished. If you don't feel the "aha" in your gut, then maybe it's just not there and maybe you need to revise, one more time.

 

Sandra :-)

New Project in the Works

All we planned was a quick trip to the ice cream shop. Just a little scoop of Bunny Tracks and then go home.

Didn't happen that way.

Well, we did get the ice cream.

We also ran across a friend who had a question. Would I collect the stories about an old schoolhouse that he had purchased and write a book about it?

Would I? Are you kidding? Me, the keeper of the stories. Me, the history is everything person, the one who must know the story behind the story.

Of course I would.

And so, now I have a new project to go with my other two works in progress projects. I'll invent new hours in the day. I'll drop what little TV I do watch. Well...exception, Jeopardy, my must-do. I'll give up Facebook and Twitter. Well...I'll limit those. 

I start the week after Labor Day, but my mind is already at work. Check back, I'll keep you posted.

But first, a week in the Outer Banks with my family.

Gretchen

LA Conference

quick, 'cause I have to go to breakfast. Sherman Alexi made me cry and realize I had no life as a kid. Linda Sue Park make me forget time and wish that we could just stay there forever. Jennifer Hunt again reminded me I had no YA life, but maybe, just maybe I could invent it? If I could do it authentically. And, NON FICTION ROCKS! think loud yell. more later. Teresa

An old journal, a private viewing of the past, and Me

I'm hard at work typing the true life journal of my historical fiction character, in case you missed my earlier blog.

Delicate thing, this is, the looking into someone else's private thoughts and dreams. I know the end results. I know how God used her in her remarkable life. At this point in her life, seventeen years old, she was full of questions and dreams and doubts. Imagine that, teenage angst in 1894. In her latest entry, she is lamenting the recent engagement of the love of her life...to someone else. She's broken hearted and wondering what's ahead.

Thing is, I know what's ahead for her. I want to reach back into time and tell her that God has plans for her beyond anything she can imagine. That she will slay dragons. That she will be up against many Goliaths and fight the good fight. But she is seventeen, and in her room, and sad and I can't do anything but watch.

Thus goes history.

Gretchen

Oh Glorious Day!!

    I'm dancing now and I can't wait to tell why. I will, just give me one more minute to do another little jig here.

    My passion is historical fiction and that's what I'm working on in two separate projects. One is specific to only one week in 1948, and I'm fairly along in it. Worked on it for a couple hours this morning. 

    The other spans from the 1700's through to present time, an enormous amount of research involved, but specific to one small area here in the Appalachian's. But today, TODAY, I was handed the most precious item a researcher/writer could get. The real, true, personal diary of one of my main characters. The great, grand niece entrusted me with this 1894-98 fragile, faded diary and asked me to transcribe it. I'm blown away.

    No, actually, I'm humbled, because now I can get into this real person's head and see her innermost thoughts. I will hear her voice as if she were speaking straight to me. A hundred years ago she dared to write ideas and comments that I will now type into a computer, save on a flashdrive, and share with her family. I'll dare to make her come alive again through the printed page in a fictionalized version, so I must do her justice.

    Historical fiction writers have this burden I never imagined when I set out to tell a story. I relish the challenge.

Gretchen