8 Terrible Titles

My friend Laura tagged me in a game of 8 Terrible Titles, where one scrolls through a manuscript, stops in a random place, and picks the phrase on which the cursor lands.

I'm using my current YA WIP (temporarily titled Raven, which is pretty lame itself).

Here are my 8 Terrible Titles:

1.) Eat Them Raw

2.) And I’m Not?

3.) Bow Over One Shoulder

4.) Only Shrugged

5.) Magical Healing

6.) Tell You Later

7.) Fool’s Errand

8.) Pewter Mug and Belch

I think # 8 is my favorite.

World Jumping

As a reader, I’ve never had a problem jumping worlds. I can hop from Narnia or Middle Earth to Hogwarts to the Glade to Veronica Roth’s futuristic Chicago (occasionally all in one day) and have zero trouble completely immersing myself in each world without them really bleeding into each other. If I’m in a book, I’m all in. If you ask me to do the dishes or walk the dog, I will not hear you because in my head I’m busy following Katniss through the arena or trying to figure out what Eugenides is really up to in Attolia. Likewise as a writer of mostly MG fantasy, if I’m stuck on one story, I can usually hop from it to another and sink right into the new world without a second thought. Sure, they have some similarities. I have a fascination with castles (and evil queens if you ask one my critique partners), but there are plenty of societal differences between the worlds too.

Since I’ve never had a problem with this, it came as a bit of a shock to me when I got stuck on my YA fantasy. This is the one I began during NaNoWriMo ’13. Since November is one of my busier months as a teacher (end of first quarter and parent-teacher conferences) I actually turned it into NaNoWriMos by including December. I got about 2/3 of the way through and finished outlining the last third, but I realized I needed to do a bit more research into Joan of Arc and other teenage girls who got armies to follow them before actually writing the last third. I probably won’t have time for the depth of research that entails until spring break, so I started revising the horrible fast-draft that included a lot of  and-then-this-happeneds. Despite my VERY busy February, revisions were actually going pretty well.

Enter last weekend.

I mentioned that I finally bit the bullet and sent out query letters for one of my MG fantasy novels. I was super happy with my manuscript’s final-for-now revisions. It had gone through five or six rounds of revisions, and I was positive it was as polished as possible. Until I got a request for a full.

Then I panicked.

I spent all of last weekend reading through it just to be sure. (And two awesome friends read through it looking for typos as well.) Between the three of us we did find several typos/missing words that I’d somehow overlooked the last eleventy-billion times I read it over, so I’m very glad I didn’t send it right away.

At any rate, once I did send it, in order to (try to) keep myself from obsessing, I returned to the YA fantasy revisions only to feel like I’d smacked headlong into a tree. I worked at it for a few days, but anything I wrote just fell flat. While this was frustrating, I wasn’t too worried. I’ve had people mention to me that they have a hard time jumping from project to project/world to world. I’d never had this problem before, but there’s a first time for everything and I figured something about this particular world wasn’t working for me right now.

 Since the best cure for writer’ s block is to write, I started going through my other files and stumbled upon a MG sci-fi I had sort of outlined over a year ago before deciding I needed to do more research. As I played around with it, I found the words flowing pretty easily, despite it being set in such a drastically different world than any of my fantasies. That’s when I realized jumping worlds wasn’t the problem; shifting voices was. Having just spent a lot of time reading my MG voice, I’m finding it difficult to find my YA voice again.

Now that I’ve identified the problem, hopefully I’ll be able to overcome it soon. In the mean time, I’ll keep having fun with a couple of ten-year-olds aboard a spaceship.



P.S. If anyone else has run into the same problem, I'd love to hear about it. Especially if you have any quick fixes! :)

The Blessing of the Dreaded Synopsis

I finished the first draft of Cracked (the manuscript I'm currently shopping out) in late 2005/early 2006, and at the time it was the best thing I had written. Back then it was called Reflection. It began with a ten page prologue that happened when the main character was four years old and set the rest of the plot, which happens nine years later, into motion. The whole thing was from his POV, but the narration was self-indulgent; his vocabulary sounded more like mine, including during the prologue when he was four. Also at one point, he referred to porridge as "the watery concoction" because Heaven forbid I use the word "porridge" twice in one paragraph.

But I didn't see any of that as a problem then.

My problem was the synopsis. I couldn't write one to save my life. At least not a decent one. I wrote one before heading to Chautauqua that summer because I had to send one to my critique-r, but it was mediocre at best, and I knew it. Chautauqua was seriously amazing, but it did not, unfortunately, magically fix my problem with writing synopses: mainly that I suck at it.

Fast-forward a few years, and I returned to this story. I realized I needed to ditch the prologue and integrate the salient information into the actual story. As I did that, it quickly became clear to me that I'd been wrong completely delusional in 2006. What I thought was really good when I finished it was extremely...not. So I pulled it apart and put it back together again. It took for.ev.er. But it was totally worth the effort. The beginning is more hook-y (I think) and the narration is more authentic. No more "watery concoction"; it's just porridge.

All-in-all, it's a much stronger piece now than it was in 2006. And as much as still I loathe the dreaded synopsis, if it hadn't slowed me down, I would have attempted to send out a much weaker manuscript and gathered an armful of form rejections without really understanding why.

So thanks, dreaded synopsis, for tripping me up. (And you can stop doing that any time now.)

Querying update

So I've come to the conclusion that the first query fiasco ended up being a good thing. I was SO nervous before I sent it. It not only took me an hour to scrape up the nerve to press send, but also a volley of text messages between me and a friend and (because I'm a big dork) background music from Wicked the musical.

It's time to trust my instincts,

Close my eyes and leap...

I did. With my eyes closed, I pressed send right on the word "leap". (I did mention I'm a big dork, right?)

Anyway, I had originally started with just that one query as sort of a test, thinking that I'd wait to hear back (or not) before sending out any more. I was very concerned about unnecessarily blowing opportunities, which is exactly what happened with the first query. Once it happened, it didn't seem so bad.

I sent out four more queries last Saturday. On Friday night, I received a request for a full from an agent I really like!

Thanks to everyone who offered words of encouragement after my last post. You all were right.

Really bummed

So I finally took the plunge and queried an agent a few days ago. I've spent more than a year just writing the dumb query. First query ever. I only sent it to her. I re-read it about 10,000 times before I sent it just to make sure there were no typos. I was so nervous I spent over an hour gearing myself up to press send.

And I addressed it to Ms. (Agency's last name) instead of her last name.

HOW DID I MISS THAT 10,000 TIMES????

I heard her speak a few years ago at a SCBWI convention, I follow her on Twitter, I've googled her pet peeves.

I KNOW HER FREAKING NAME!!!!

From what I've read, that's an automatic delete.

Maybe some day this will be a funny story, but right now I'm going to go eat chocolate.

Edited for further thoughts: It could've been worse. I could've gotten her name wrong on television, on stage at the Oscars...

Choice, choices...

Shannon Hale's new book Dangerous was released today. It's downloading to my Kindle as I type. I'd dive into it RIGHT NOW except the third book in Jennifer Nielsen's Ascendance trilogy also came out, and I finally have time to read it.

Are you trying to kill me, publishing industry?

Today has been an odd day. After a period of extreme busyness helping to prepare my school's six competitive Destination Imagination teams for the regional tournament last Saturday, we've had a Sunday and two snow days during, which allowed me to watch Adele Nazeem sing "Let It Go" on the Oscars, (Seriously, Trovotlo? I thought you were a theater guy. How do you NOT know how to pronounce Idina Menzel?) and catch up on critiques for my writer buddies, who generously allowed me extensions because of DI.

I also tinkered a bit with a query letter to an agent and managed to resist mentioning our mutual love of wombats in the off chance that marsupials aren't the best foundation on which to begin a business relationship. The wombat-free message is sitting in my e-mail box right now, but I can't bring myself to press "send" yet. Because I'm a humongous chicken.

Writers' Remote

Don't you wish SCBWI would issue all its members with a "writers remote controller"?

No, seriously. It could be awesome.

We'd have tons more time to write if we could pause our real-life obligations like cooking dinner and grading the fifty-three science notebooks currently sitting in a bag next to me us.

We could also fast forward the more unpleasant aspects of being an aspiring writer (like fighting with synopses and endlessly debating whether the time is right to send query letters that don't mention a mutual adoration of wombats to one's dream agent.) Oooo! And we could even fast forward to when we get rejection letters, then rewind and fix things (either in the query or the partial) prior to sending them out. It would be like an endless supply of do-overs! 

I'm liking this.

Get on it, SCBWI. (Please.)

Boys Without Names (Spoilers Ahead)

Every year my fifth graders study two novels in addition to expository texts and short stories from an anthology. They study Tuck Everlasting in January and Carolyn Reeder's Shades of Gray. (And yes, we do get raised eyebrows and sometimes confused e-mails from parents when we announce this, which is why I've started referring to it as "the-children's-post-Civil-War-novel-Shades-of-Gray-by-children's-author-Carolyn-Reeder.")

This year my awesome principal gave my team permission to add a third novel study. Instead of just picking a novel for the entire grade to read, we decided we want to offer choice literature circles to introduce our Heritage unit. The school where I teach is incredibly diverse. We have students whose parents are from six out of seven continents and something like forty different countries, so we wanted to offer novels that reflect some of the different cultures and backgrounds of students at our school.

Before the end of last school year, we decided on A Single Shard and When My Name Was Keoko (both by Linda Sue Park), Esparanza Rising (Pam Munoz Ryan), Dragonwings (Lawrence Yip), The Storyteller's Beads (Kurtz), The Breadwinner (Ellis), and Number the Stars (Lowry).

Then over the summer, I read Boys Without Names by Kashmira Sheth. Right away, I knew I had to add it to our list.

The story begins with Gopal's family secretly escaping moneylenders in their rural village by moving to Mumbai to live with Gopal's uncle. Things don't quite go as planned, and after falling for another boy's trick, Gopal ends up locked in a sweatshop making beaded frames from dawn to dusk.

It's hard to place my finger on exactly why I love this story so much, but I think it comes down to Gopal's purity of heart, and how he doesn't lose that even when his situation deteriorates. Even in the face of horrible conditions, he remains others-focused, which is a characteristic many of us here in the U.S. could stand to develop further. Additionally, Sheth creates a clear picture of Indian culture in modern Mumbai through Gopal's eyes, which makes it perfect for our novel study.

I'm really excited about these literature circles. My team and I hope to add more choices each year as we come across them. If anyone knows of additional middle grade novels (realistic fiction) you'd recommend--especially those set in South America and Africa--I'd love to hear about them!

Good News, Bad News

I'll start with the positive. I interacted on Twitter every day this week. I also managed to set aside at least a half an hour to write every day this week. Most days it was at least an hour. So I wrote...and deleted...and wrote some more...and deleted some more.

...and I'm starting to identify with Sisyphus.

Obviously, it did not go well. But it went, so that's something, right?

The problem is I'm stuck on chapter 18 of Cracked revisions. Not plot-wise because that's pretty set. No matter what I did, the writing itself just came out so forced and clunky. Since my friendly neighborhood pharmacy was fresh out of magic potions that make one's writing not suck, I just kept trying. It did not get better. Eventually, I switched to a different story and worked on it for awhile before returning to Cracked. That didn't help either.

So now I'm staring with some trepidation at "chapter 18." I just rewrote the entire first paragraph again, but it's really the middle of the chapter where the writing goes kaput. (Please excuse the interruption because I suddenly wondered where we got the word "kaput" and feel compelled to look up its etymology immediately.)

Okay, I'm back. It's German. I should've guessed that.

Maybe the problem is my attention span...

Anyway, stuck on chapter 18. I'm going to give it one more try before I just move on to chapter 19. I can always come back to it later. 

Stats & Goals Update (It's about time.)

Stats for the Day

Chapters Revised: Technically 1, but I revised a few of the same sections more than once, so it feels like more.
Conferences Attended: 1
Number of Times Chris Crutcher made me LOL: Yeah...I lost count

Goals Update

Wow, I kind of suck at this goals thing. I set first quarter goals for 2013 back in December of 2012. I didn't completely forget about (most of) my goals, but I never blogged an update in March. Or at all since December.

So here's the update:

Goal 1. Get halfway though major revisions of my MG fantasy novel currently titled Reflection.

I met this goal, though I can't remember whether or not I met it by March. It's September, but since I'm currently on chapter 18 of 28 chapters, I'm giving myself credit--or maybe half-credit.

2. Find a snappier title for Reflection.

Goal accomplished pretty soon after I made it. I'm going with Cracked for now.

3. Polish the first two or three revised chapters by February, in time to submit for critique at my SCBWI region's March conference.

The polishing was done by February, but I wasn't able to go to the March conference because I was on a plane to Puerto Rico that day. I know. I felt bad for me too.

4. Write a daggone synopsis to submit along with the first two or three chapters, again in time to submit for the March conference.

Goal sort of accomplished. I put together a two paragraph synopsis for a query letter. I'm almost happy with it. I haven't started revising the longer synopsis, though. Maybe 2/11 credit for this one. (It's kind of like Who's Line. The points make no sense because they don't really matter.)

5. Write a rough draft of a query letter and post it to the Blueboards for critique.

I only wrote and posted the synopsis from goal four. I'll pick a random fraction's worth of credit to give myself later. Maybe.

6. Update the blog more regularly--at least once every two weeks.

I think I have to give myself negative points for this one.

New Goals for the Last Quarter of 2013

1. Finish revising Cracked

2. Write a complete query letter

3. Spend at least 20 minutes three times a week interacting in the writing world on Twitter

4. Update this blog at least every other week. Really this time.

Caring Too Much...

Last night was phenomenal. This was THE game. Against THAT team. It was a long time coming.

And the stress of it gave me a headache.

If you ask my parents, I’ve been a fan since before I was born. Mom says I’d jump around inside her so much while she watched the games with my dad that she swore I’d turn out to be a cheerleader. Ummmm...not so much with that, but still. Lifelong fan here, through A LOT of bad years, and although I shy away from trash talk, fans of certain other teams don’t mind dishing it out anyway.

                                                                                                                    

I’m talking about the game that would determine who clinched the NFC East Division title as well as who would move on to the playoffs.

Traditionally, over the past few years decades, these games have not gone well for us, and the sportscasters weren’t shy about voicing their doubts that this one would be any different. It didn’t matter that we went from 3-6 to win seven straight games. It didn’t matter that so many Sportscasters (coughTerryBradshawcough) already had to eat their words regarding their predictions for our final record. It didn’t even matter that we have, arguably, the most explosive rookie QB/RB duo in the NFL right now.

None of it mattered unless we won the game.

And, although like every other game this season, it came down to the finger-chomping final minute of the game, we did.

And all I have to say is

Hail!

Okay, that’s not really all I have to say. I’m proud of my Redskins. Since last night I’ve pretty much been watching Sportscenter on a loop and clicked in to Comcast’s On Demand game highlights so I can, you know, actually ENJOY them this time around. Even if our playoff run ends after one game, I’m still elated that my team has gotten this far.

But what’s the big deal? How would it really have affected my life if things had gone the other way? I might have (okay, I know I WOULD have) taken some ribbing from acquaintances of mine who, for some reason unknown, call themselves fans of the other team. (A few of these friends couldn’t pick a football out of a lineup, but that's beside the point.) But really, that’s not exactly life-altering.

Sometimes I think I care too much.

Oh who am I kidding? I know I do. I care about pretty much everything too much.

In some cases, this isn’t bad. Caring about my students pushes me to do my best to meet their individual needs and to encourage their growth. Caring about those in need keeps me donating money that might otherwise go to Starbucks to provide safe drinking water and educational opportunities to children in third world countries. Caring about real people helps me stay others-focused. Caring too much, in these instances, is a good thing.

I’m not sure I could make the same argument for the same devotion to my football team. But good or bad, in the case of sports, television shows, books…once I’m invested, I’m all in.

And that’s what I think what my favorite authors do so well. They make me care about the characters so much that I have an emotional reaction when they struggle, when they suffer setbacks, and when they triumph.

They make me care. Sometimes too much.

2013 First Quarter Goals

Between teaching, building my school's S.T.E.M. program, and finishing my Master's degree, I've decided that quarterly writing goals sound more manageable than New Year's Resolutions. So from now until March, here goes...

1. Get halfway though major revisions of my MG fantasy novel currently titled Reflection. I'm currently on chapter six of twenty-seven, so I think I'm on track for this.

2. Find a snappier title for Reflection. I'd like it to have some connection to a mirror, but an obscure connection would still work. I'm considering Cracked, Shatter, and Shattered, which all have double connections to the story (and in the case of Cracked, a triple connection.)

3. Polish the first two or three revised chapters by February, in time to submit for critique at my SCBWI region's March conference.

4. Write a daggone synopsis to submit along with the first two or three chapters, again in time to submit for the March conference.

5. Write a rough draft of a query letter and post it to the Blueboards for critique.

6. Update the blog more regularly--at least once every two weeks.

Unstuck!

"The only thing that made me able to bear it was jut the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know — if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away."

--Eustace Clarence Scrubb

 Voyage of the Dawn Treader

There's something exciting about watching stuck things come undone. Band-Aids might hurt coming off, but there's a perverse pleasure in that rip. Same with scabs. And remember when you were a kid, bored in class, and you'd smear Elmer's glue all of the back of your hand just so you could peel it off? Or was that just me? 

Unsticking something is WAY more fun than getting it stuck in the first place (unless you're talking scratch-n-sniff stickers. They trump just about anything, right?)

Anyway, anyone who writes is no stranger to getting stuck. I "finished" my second novel (for which I still do not have a snappy title) some time around late 2005. I thought it was really good--smoothly-written, good plot, etc. In short, the best I'd written so far. It probably was the best I had written to that point. I made a few minor edits and decided it was ready to send out. Then I got stuck on the synopsis and query letter. They are the dual banes of my writing existence, and I know I'm not alone in dreading them.

In this case, they turned out to be a blessing. I put the manuscript aside while I worked on other projects. When I picked it back up a bit later, I realized the manuscript was definitely not ready. Not even close. You know that new Earth-like planet they recently discovered? The one it would take a shuttle traveling at the speed of light about 75 years to reach? Still closer than my manuscript was to being publication-worthy.

Forget the half dozen glaring errors I found on a casual re-read. Forget the loose threads of plot devices I dropped and apparently just hoped no one would notice. A ten page prologue in a MG novel? Really? As my Chautauqua mentor gently (and wisely) advised: That's not a prologue; that's called chapter one.

What in the world was I thinking? 

It's a little embarrassing now. So thank you, wretched synopsis, for sparing me a bunch of form rejections!

Despite this minor (okay, ginormous) epiphany, I still felt this was a story worth telling. I decided to undertake some larger revisions. At first, I tried to make the prologue shorter and more engaging, but after several failed attempts, I suspected that what I needed to do was ditch the prologue entirely and integrate the crucial information along the way. The s-l-o-w reveal. This would mean completely demolishing the manuscript and building it back up from almost nothing. But I  was willing to do it--reluctantly.

I couldn't do it. I made a few half-hearted attempts, then put it away. Every once in awhile, I  opened it and started reading, remembering how much I love this story. I would make up my mind to try again, and I would...but again...Nothing.

Until this past Thursday.  Enter metaphorical adhesive remover. (Industrial strength.)

 It took SIX YEARS 

but I finally figured it out.

I am unstuck! And while the revisions are not going as easily or quickly as I wish they would (Do they ever?) I am making decent progress. I have a workable plan. And the journey, the scab of being stuck, hurt like billy-oh, but it is such fun to see it coming away!

Word Vomit

So I'm on spring break, and after an insanely busy winter on the teaching front, and a one-day SCBWI conference for inspiration, I have spent the past two days writing. It feels SO good.

The writing itself isn't so good. Frankly, it's a puddle of word vomit, and I know I'll have to toss some kitty litter on it later and sweep some of it into the bin.

I'm okay with that. Sometimes you have to get stuff out of your system, right?

And now that my own far-too-extended metaphor is making me nauseated, I'll get back to writing.

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.