A Quandary

Why is it that when I am so completely swamped at work that I can barely have time to take a breath (the solution there, of course, is taking fractional breaths at strategically placed intervals) I have TONS of ideas, motivation, and inspiration to write.

Now that it's summer I actually have time to write. Where did my inspiration go?

Totally not fair.

SCBWI Winter Conference--part 2

What I enjoyed about my first national conference:

1. Meeting Lois Lowry. Meeting Lois Lowry. And meeting Lois Lowry. Now if I can just meet Megan Whalen Turner and Katherine Paterson, that pretty much takes care of all the authors on my top nine list! (I’m not holding my breath for Alison Croggon, since she lives in Australia, and JK Rowling? Yeah, right.)

2. Networking with other SCBWI Members in my region: The luncheon was fun. I wish I had taken a picture because they crammed so many tables into that room and jammed so many chairs around each table that I half expected the NYFD to storm the building at any second for fire code violations. Of course, who knows how they’d have gotten in the room, it being so stuffed with tables and chairs and excellent food and socializing children’s writers and illustrators. I had fun talking with other writers, and I started a business card collection in the back of my plastic name tag holder.

3. Keynotes. I enjoyed the keynotes much more than the breakout sessions. To be clear, it’s not that the sessions were bad; I’m just very good at picking the wrong sessions (for me) to attend. If I ever lose my mind and strike out on the pageant circuit, I have my talent prepackaged and ready to go.

4. Ginger Clark’s talk. She was wry and funny and at the same time, very down to business. There were two things I didn’t enjoy about her session, both completely out of her control. One was being crammed between two women, neither of whom were very large, but both of whom seemed compelled to take up part of my chair (and they didn’t have people encroaching on their other sides.) That was rather bizarre. In retrospect, I’m kicking myself for not glancing around the room for the Candid Camera people. The other frustrating thing was people asking the same questions over and over again. Poor Ginger Clark answered the same one about four times in one session. She was much more gracious about it than I was feeling. Apparently, I need to keep working on patience. (But other people need to work on listening.)

Anyway, back to the keynotes. Most of the speakers were awesome. The closing keynote was my favorite, delivered by Linda Sue Park. I had met her once before, briefly, when my roommate at Chautauqua (Hi, Natisha!) introduced us. I’d never before heard her speak, though. She’s so inspiring. Her basic message was…

DON’T believe in yourself.

TBC…

Twitter Update

Okay I joined Twitter, but I am not super happy about it. It wouldn’t let me be mirrorsandmagicfrogs. Too many characters. Grrrrrr. I should blog about the evils of an outside entity limiting my verbosity. But anyway, feel free to follow (Who came up with that terminology? It makes me think of follow the leader, which makes me think of that song from the Disney cartoon version of Peter Pan, which is now running through my head. Tee-dum! Tee-dee! A Teedle ee do tee day!) me. I’m mirrors_n_frogs.

SCBWI Winter Conference

Okay, right off the bat...

Best thing about SCBWI’s Winter Conference: I met Lois Lowry!

Second best thing: I was in NYC for three days!

What I learned (Part 1):

1.) I still appear to be the only member who refers to SCBWI as “Skib-we.” Hey, we all have our quirks.

2.) Apparently, I need a dog. Lois Lowry (and a few of the other authors) showed some letters they received from kids, and nearly every single one ended with “And do you have a dog?” In case you were wondering, Lois does. I wonder if my landlady will accept that as an excuse to violate the “no pets” policy…

3.) I hate my Blackberry’s spelling autocorrect. Also if you correct your Blackberry’s auto spell correct of your facebook status update with a comment on said status update bemoaning your Blackberry’s stinking spelling autocorrect…your facebook friends will still make fun of you.

4.) I am an atypical writer personality. When one of the speakers—Sara Zarr, I think—said something about most of us being introverts, just about every head around me (and we’re talking over a thousand heads) nodded in agreement. I am SO not an introvert. I must have people around me. If there are no people, there had better be a bunch of books so I can get sucked into a story with people. Actually, I think that’s why I started making up stories in the first place. I had brothers—no sisters with whom to play Barbies and My Little Ponies. Although my brothers and I *did* often play GI Joe in the land of the giant women and talking ponies, they didn’t always want to play. Then I was stuck by myself. So I made up stories wherein my Barbies and My Little Ponies and Strawberry Shortcake dolls went on epic adventures that literally spanned weeks if not months. Anyway, if there were no people with whom to interact, I made some up. But I digress…

5.) I really have to join Twitter. :(

(part 2 to come...eventually)

Word Count Woes

Brevity is not my strong point.

Well, that was an ironic opening, huh? Seriously, though. I'm constantly battling unnecessary verbosity. Case in point, the first version of my opening chapter to Kissing Glass was seventeen pages. I've gotten it down to eleven and a half, which is probably still too long. Where this really kills me, though, is in the short story genre.

It's not that I dislike writing short fiction. Half of the novels I've started began as short stories (see above re: bad at brevity.) Then they just take off and before I know it, I have 200 pages.

I'd really love to have a publishing credit because currently my resume includes...nothing. I've read that having prior publishing credits are helpful when querying agents and editors for longer works. Not 100% necessary, of course, but helpful. And since it's arguably "easier" to garner a publishing credit in the magazine market, I decided to revisit some of my short stories.

I have three completed. The problem is two of them are well over 1000 words. The third (which I actually DO really like, so it's not like I'd be subbing JUST for the credit) has been slashed to 569 words with a target audience of around first grade. Too long for Highlights (500 word limit for that audience.) Ladybug accepts fiction up to 800 words, but I'm less familiar with that magazine. Plus, I just love Highlights. Between my childhood memories of devouring the stories and combing through the Hidden Pictures puzzles and the scholarship they gave me to attend Chautauqua in 2006, I feel a stronger pull toward Highlights than Ladybug.

So what to do? Try to slash 67 more words and sub to Highlights? Or familiarize myself with Ladybug, add in some of what I cut, and sub to them? That's probably a silly quandary to debate, but...yeah. It's my (teensy) problem of the day.

Best laid plans...

After a week-long grad school class during which I had no time to write anything that wasn't class-related, I had hoped to focus on one (or let's face it, with my attention span as of late, SEVERAL) of my stories today. But then...

Here is a (very lame) poem to convey the problem:

Ow, ow, ow.
Ow.
Ouch.
My head hurts
quite a lot.
Ow, ow, ow.
Ow.
Ouch.
Need coffee.
Have coffee.
No help. Too late.
Need drugs (not the bad kind.)
OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Yeah, so a poet I am not. You were warned. Plus, I have a headache. I mean, it would've sucked anyway, but at least I can blame this particular suckage on the massive pounding in my head.

Hmmm. Bright side to everything.

I HATE SUMMARIZING

No, I mean really. Scout's honor.

This doesn't make me particularly rare among writers, of course. I've yet to meet one who, upon hearing the word "synopsis," breaks out the pom poms and starts doing high kicks or whatever. But really, I hate summarizing.

I just made a first attempt at summarizing Kissing Glass, which I'm posting below. It sucks; I know. If anyone would like to comment and offer advice on how to improve it, I would love to hear!

Kissing Glass Summary

Colette is not the typical princess. Much to her mother’s chagrin, she prefers playing baseball to attending royal balls and collects frogs rather than extravagant dresses. All of the princess lessons in the world won’t turn Colette into her older sister. Gorgeous and full of grace, Lucienne is the perfect princess—except for the horrible temper that regularly sends the line of arrogant suitors sprinting from the throne room under a barrage of anything within Lucienne’s reach.

When in a fit of temper, Lucienne smashes Colette’s favorite glass frog, accidentally breaking a curse and letting out an enchanted prince, Colette discovers that royalty isn’t all bad. Prince Frederick of Ganderland is everything all of her sister’s obnoxious royal suitors aren’t. He’s polite, willing to make his own toast, and quite possibly the only prince in the world who sees Lucienne for the fiend she is.

There’s just one little problem; according to the terms of the curse, Frederick is magically bound to marry Lucienne or he’ll turn back into a frog—this time forever. Lucienne, of course, wants nothing to do with such an un-princely prince, and Colette finds herself helping Frederick in a series of attempts to capture Lucienne’s attention, all while battling her own growing feelings for him. Nothing seems to work, and Frederick is on the brink of resigning himself to eternal frogdom when Colette discovers something about his curse that could change his life for the better. And leave hers in shards.