Highlights from the SCBWI Winchester Conference

Tags

conferences, travel, writing process

I’m writing in the wake of an exhausting but oh-so-wonderful weekend at the British SCBWI annual conference in Winchester. So much to think about, so many people to thank, so much unpacking to do! But I did want to write down a few highlights right now, while they’re fresh in my mind.

Frank Cottrell Boyce (author of Millions, Framed, and Cosmic) spoke for two sessions, and he made us laugh and made us think in both of them. Here are a couple of the things he said that won my heart:

“Children’s books are about taking something you love and passing it on.”

“If you’re disciplined you’ll get what you planned for… but there is a grace in chaos.”

David McDougall, the Art Director at Walker Books echoed many in saying he was excited about digital possibilities, but he added:

“In a digital age, it is important to make books you want to keep” (He cited the truly astounding A Monster Calls as an example.)

Finally, one of the most amazing speakers at an amazing conference was Candy Gourlay, winner of the European Crystal Kite Award for her debut Tall Story. Candy is a legend within British SCWBI, and her speech is worth reading in full, but here’s a taste of it:

“…I got that this long journey was not just about getting published, it was about LIVING A CREATIVE LIFE and all the striving, the struggling, the honing your craft, the finding the time, the rejections? That was part of the package. I had to stop yearning for the Creative Life because the Creative Life was NOW.”

The sweet spot

Tags

food, writing process

A friend of mine from college threw a chocolate party last weekend. Picture a table laden with a dozen different dark chocolates, labeled and broken into nibblish pieces. And another table with two different kinds of chocolate cake, a selection of chocolate drinks, and the best brownies I’ve ever eaten. And surrounding those tables? Lots and lots of happy people!

Forget the colored pens, the mood music, the special paper, the candles and incense: For me there’s nothing like chocolate to summon up the Muse.

My current dru chocolate of choice is Chocolove Organic 73%. Thankfully two squares is usually enough to make me a happy woman.

I know that I can write without chocolate. I’ve done entire drafts that way, just to prove I can. But the older I get, the less inclined I am to be puritanical: If a little chocolate makes me so happy, why not indulge?

Spooky

Tags

writing, writing process

Have you ever had a scene snippet pop into your head — vivid as real life — and not known where the heck it fits? Or even it it fits at all?

This happens to me again and again, not only at the start of a work (where often a visual snippet is the very seed of the story) but even very late into the process.

Some of these snippets are duds, of course, but it’s surprising how often they’re on target. It’s not uncommon for them to answer questions I haven’t even thought of, which is one reason why it can be hard to place them at first.

I was thinking about this today because of one particular snippet that came to me a good six months ago, one that involved a secret door. It excited me at first, until my logical mind kicked in and said, “But a secret door doesn’t make sense.” So I ignored it, even though the snippet came back to me several more times — before bed, while paging through an art book, and in that all-time great snippet-studio, the shower.

And then last night I hit a snag — for which that snippet turned out to be the perfect solution.

Spooky, no? But it’s this kind of spookiness that makes me fall in love with writing all over again.

Ten hours

Tags

revision, writing, writing process

Ten hours a week may not be much, but I’m trying to make use of every last minute. Naptime? Scribble, type, type, type. An offer of an hour’s break from my husband? Scribble, type, type, type. A quiet moment when Sweetpea is doing puzzles and doesn’t want help? Scribble, scribble, scribble.

I’ve covered almost 5,000 words so far, though I’m not entirely through with them yet. Not terribly quick progress, I know but these were chapters that needed major changes throughout — the wholesale ditching of some parts, construction from scratch of others, and drastic modifications to the rest. So I’m actually quite happy about the progress I’ve made.

I wish that I could write after P has gone to bed, but every time I try this my mind runs riot and I can’t sleep that night. And without sleep I crash the next day. But this week I’ll have some sitter time to write, so I should be able to break the ten-hour barrier without crossing into insomniac territory.

If I don’t run out of steam, that is!

Onward

Tags

enchantment, revision, writing, writing process

Realized this weekend that I could outline and fill out plotting worksheets forever, but I think I’ve gotten as much good as I can from that approach by now. It’s time for me to plunge back into writing again. At this point I think I’m only going to have a handful of hours free for writing for the foreseeable future (maybe 10 or so in a good week, less in a bad one). But a handful is better than none, and I want to make use of what time I’ve got.

So I’m about to start this rewrite. Scared as anything, but I have a gorgeous iris blooming on my desk, and the sun is shining, and it’s time to begin.

I’ll start with a fresh file, though I’m not above importing text as and when I need it, to save my hands. (If the hands weren’t an issue, I’d just re-type, but they are, and that’s that.)

And as I go, I’ll keep these wonderful words from Antonio Machado close at hand, as I always do when I need courage:

Traveler, there is no path.
The path is made by walking.

Five Things on a Friday

Tags

garden, publishing, writing, writing life, writing process

1. Plenty of kerfuffle this week, but fewer icy patches. Fingers crossed, but things are looking less dire. Now I just need to find the energy to make good use of what writing time I’ve got.

2. I went ahead last night and signed up for the NESCBWI Conference in April. This will be the first conference I’ve been to since P was born. Despite David’s encouragement, I’m still not sure whether I’m ready to stay overnight, but oh, how I’m looking forward to it all — seeing good friends that I haven’t seen in years, making new friends that I don’t yet know, and above all to spending a weekend immersed in WRITING.

3. After weeks of being buried in snow, my rosemary bush has emerged with its fragrant needles intact. I just ducked out for a snippet — heavenly! I’m used to thinking of rosemary as a frail flower in these northern climes, but this particular plant seems to be tough as old winter boots.

4. You’d think with all shake-ups in publishing right now I’d be fairly shock-proof, but the news this week that Harper was closing Bowen Press stunned me. What a loss! And before they’d even had a chance to launch their first list…

5. On a happier note, the fabulous Sue Williams, who writes wonderfully about writing (and much else), has a great blog entry about messy drafts this week. If you’re feeling discouraged about your own drafts (and even if you aren’t), I recommend reading it!

A Damascene moment

Tags

writing process

Had a blinding insight yesterday about the heart of the novel-in-progress, one that transforms the whole way I see the story.

For most of January, I’ve been stumbling around trying to figure out what my main character’s core emotional journey is. I’d come up with some elaborate ideas, but I distrust such elaborations on principle; they usually mean I’m trying too hard. And lo and behold, the answer that came to me yesterday was very simple indeed. And I remembered suddenly that when this book kindled into life (in the long ago days before P) it was this very idea that called to me.

I see now that this was really what I was writing about all the time, even when I thought I was writing about something else. There’s much work to be done, but the pieces are finally falling into place and I’m seeing new possibilities everywhere.

Huge thanks to Cheryl Klein, whom I’ve never met, but whose Aristotelian Plot Checklist was my jumping-off place. (If you like Aristotle or Austen, or even if you don’t, you should check out her site.)

Truth be told, I think drinking hot chocolate helped, too.

Naming the rose

Tags

writing life, writing process

Still plenty of stormy seas, but I’m trying to snatch time here and there to work on this revision. I’ve been examining subplot arcs, checking for inconsistencies in the main plot, and tracking scenes to see how they build (or don’t) from one another. Sometimes this is fun, particularly when I see a way to do something better, but some days it’s slog, slog, slog.

Fortunately I also have a few characters who need new names, and for me naming is pure indulgence. Since just about everything I write is historical, it’s an excuse to go dipping into all kinds of fabulous primary sources — ships’ lists and census data and church records and diaries — trawling for names and nicknames.

I’ve been known to spend days, even weeks doing this, mostly because it’s so delicious. The best part is finding a name that is both historically appropriate and apt for the character in question, but happening on wildly inappropriate names has its merits, too. I’ve yet to write a novel about early Puritans, but with names like Repentance and Faint-not (not to mention Safe-on-high and Small-hope), it’s tempting.

Thanks to the internet, I can now search for just about any kind of name in any kind of period (17th century Dutch surnames, anyone?), and be sure of coming up with extensive, well-researched lists. Genealogy sites are wonderful for this. Depending on the era I’m working in, I also spend time over at the SCA’s Medieval Names Dictionary or at the Social Security Administration’s site on Popular Baby Names (which lists the top 1000 names by decade, starting in the 1880s).

Wonderful as the internet is, however, I also rely a lot on books. My favorite is The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, which I ran across when we were trying to name our daughter. I used this as an excuse to buy more naming books than anyone has a right to, but this is the one that’s been most useful to me as a writer. It gives me the lowdown on meanings, origins, and relationships between names: Where else would I learn that Marigold and Rosemary had their beginnings in the 19th craze for flower names, but that Rose has its roots in the early Middle Ages?

Ringing out

Tags

writing process

I’m ringing out the old year in my usual way, looking back and looking forward, mulling over what I’ve done and what I’ve left undone and what I aim to do in the future.

This has been a hard year, but a healing one. And one of the most healing things about it was the way I was able to give myself over to writing again.

So I’m excited about diving back into writing in January. Revision is hard work, I know. At some point, usually many points, I always get that dismal I’m-lost-in-the-swamp-and-I’m-sinking-fast panic, which sometimes leads to the So-help-me-I-will-never-write-a-novel-again angst, and thence to I-am-only-good-enough-to-write-grocery-lists despair. But if there’s anguish in rewriting, there’s also a lot of joy (and sometimes pure fun) involved in getting closer to the truth and core of my story.

I’d love to start revising next week, but I’m not sure if it’ll happen that soon. There’s some post-holiday kerfuffle to take care of, and a couple of new books on revision that I want to read first (well, new at least to me — more posts of those later). But I’m hoping that will only take me a week, and after that I want to make the leap to real (re-)writing.

If you’re leaping into revision, too, let me know. I’m always glad to have company!

Geiger counter

Tags

history, writing process

More thoughts on “blueberry moments” (see entry below)…

Reading jeannineatkins‘s comment made me think of a conversation I once had with an editor who asked me about the way I approached source material in my work.

The image that popped into my mind was a geiger counter: When I’m reading source material, certain details light up in my mind. Very odd details sometimes, about a sixteenth-century boy king and his heavy jaw, or a seventeenth-century inventor making a self-regulating oven, or the way early tobacco fields were pock-marked with black stumps because no one had the time to fully clear the old trees out.

I don’t know how to explain it except to say that it’s like an electrical flash, and for just a moment I am connected, immediately and intimately, with a visceral sense of a place and time far removed from my own.

I was a bit embarrassed talking about this strange process to an editor, even though she was the one who had asked me about it. But instead of chuckling, she took me seriously and said my “geiger counter” was part of the reason she wanted to buy my manuscript.

Since then I’ve trained myself to pay even closer attention to that geiger counter. And even if I can’t see how on earth I can use the material it’s pointing me to, I make sure to note it down. Because when I start writing, time after time it’s those odd facts that prove crucial and make the piece come alive. And the opposite is true, too: If I try to ignore those flashes of insight, I usually lose my bearings.