The Joys of Writing for Middle Grade/Teen Readers

Guest Post: 5 Reasons I like Writing for Middle Grade/Teen Readers 

By Cheryl Carpinello

http://www.beyondtodayeducator.com

1. Being able to write the types of stories I loved to read as a kid.

As a kid, I devoured books: adventures, mysteries, fantasies, animal stories. As an adult, I still enjoy the same types of reading, but I don’t find myself getting ‘lost’ in the adult reads. And so I write the stories of my youth.  ex. The Harry Potter series

2. Knowing that kids lend themselves to imagination easier than adults.

Young readers, like adults, can be a difficult audience to write for. What I’ve found, though, is that they eagerly enter into the world of a book easier than adults. The innocence and imagination of young readers knows no limits at this age.  ex. The Hunger Games, The Twilight series

3. Helping young readers to see their world in a different way or from a different viewpoint.

Frequently, young readers only see their world from their own point of view. Try visiting a middle school or high school and seeing all the drama that goes on with the boys as well as the girls. Creating the types of characters that these readers can identify and empathize with, helps them to see their real-life situations differently.  ex. A Child Called It.

4. Understanding that while young readers enjoy stories, they are also looking for truths about themselves and life.

Being a hero isn’t easy. Sometimes heroes doubt themselves as well as those around them. Sometimes, heroes even fail, but they don’t give up. Young readers tend to think that they have to be perfect all the time, succeed all the time. As adults, we know that isn’t true or even possible.  ex. The Lord of the Rings

5. Getting letters/emails from young readers.

Young readers are not shy. One of the exciting reasons I enjoy writing for these ages is that they have no qualms about saying what they think. Kids may not always be tactful when expressing their feelings, but they are truthful. It is the truth about your writing that will make you a better writer. As a high school writing teacher, I always tried to couch my criticisms in a positive, but instructive manner. In a way, this is what young readers do also if we as writers listen.

About the Author: 

Although a retired teacher, Cheryl Carpinello still has a passion for working with kids. She regularly conducts Medieval Writing Workshops for local elementary/middle schools and the Colorado Girl Scouts. She is not the only one who loves Medieval Times and the King Arthur Legend. The kids thoroughly enjoy writing their own medieval stories complete with dragons, wizards, unicorns and knights!

She loves to travel and her other job is with a major airline. Her favorite trip was a two week visit to Egypt with her husband that included traveling by local train from one end of Egypt to the other.

Some of her favorite books include The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Once and Future King, and any by the duo Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

 

The World of Ink Network will be touring both of author Cheryl Carpinello’s Middle Grade Arthurian Legend books, The King’s Ransom (Young Knights of the Round Table) published by MuseItUp Publishing and Guinevere: On the Eve of Legend published by Outskirts Press throughout January 2013.

Some stories become legend while some legends become stories!

You can find out more about Cheryl Carpinello, her books and World of Ink Author/Book Tour at http://tinyurl.com/ajka7zv

Follow Cheryl Carpinello at

Beyond today Educator http://www.beyondtodayeducator.com

Carpinello’s Writing Pages http://carpinelloswritingpages.blogspot.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ccarpinello

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cheryl.carpinello1

Publisher Website: https://museituppublishing.com

 

Stuck

I love my critique group, but they are a picky lot. I began to clean up my NaNo story and gave them the first chapter. This was after reviewing notes from various sources on how to start with a dynamo beginning. Of course, they would only be awestruck with such wisdom in my arsenal.

They weren’t.

They offered suggestions and I’ve spent all week trying to make repairs. I’ve looked at it, re-read, re-typed a phrase here or there, looked at it some more, and an hour later, closed the lid to my laptop. I’ve repeated this several times and I’m stuck.

Being stumped is a major time-suck. I’ve dealt with this in several manners. A butt-in-chair mentality seems like a good idea. Keep typing and inspiration will strike, something will come. Good old-fashioned stick to it-ness usually works. Yet, staring at a screen with little keyboarding has only killed a few hours and did precious little to advance the story.

I tried a different approach. I pulled out another project I’m revising and spent a night on that. But the next day I was still stuck. I ignored writing altogether and read the next night; didn’t work.

I figured I’d just Google “writer’s block,” trade one time-suck for another. That ranged from interesting, to does not apply, to the bizarre. One site said to talk to a monkey – to explain what you’re really trying to say to a stuffed animal or cardboard cutout. Seriously. (Would talking to my dogs work as well?) I’m not sure if “writer’s block” is the correct term. Maybe I need a better phrase to put in the search field. Bottom line: writing-wise, one more evening wasted, though I was entertained.

Seems like the best thing to do is to put it away for a while. The critiquers are just going to get the next chapter. One of these days I’ll open it and try again.

It’s either that or start talking to stuffed animals.

What do you do when you’re stuck?

Think Small

by Scott Rhoades

When it comes to following a dream like writing, teachers and others tell you to think big, to reach higher than what you can easily.

I'm here today, on my soapbox, to tell you to ignore them.

Think small.

I mean, really small.

When I start a project, I don't like to say I'm writing a book or a novel. I'll usually say I'm working on a project, or a story, or "that little thing I'm writing."

Why? Because writing a novel brings expectations of something big. It's easy for that little voice inside my head to say I have no business writing a book. A book is a Big Thing, both in size and scope and value. If I think smaller, I won't be buried by the weight of something as heavy as a novel.

Of course, I'm not really fooling myself. I know the ultimate goal is a big stack of pages. But I have to write them one at a time. So I'll work on a chapter, or even better, on a scene. My current WIP is a bunch of scenes right now. I haven't started to break it into chapters. Chapters belong in a book, and this project is nothing like a book yet.

A scene, or a "thing that needs to happen" is not very intimidating. It doesn't give that voice room to start telling me this is too big for me. It's just a bit of writing, that's all, something I've done hundreds, maybe thousands of times.

Some days, when writing isn't coming easy, instead of working on my book, I'll write a page, or even a paragraph. After I write one paragraph, it's easier to write the next one. One page leads to another.

But as soon as I tell myself I'm working on a book, it's likely I'll become paralyzed. I know so many people who say they are writing a book, or getting ready to write a book, but many never finish. For many of these failed writers, I think it's because they open all the doors in their head wide open and let that voice in. Pretty soon, they believe their own thoughts. Who are they to write a book? A book is a Big Deal. They're not good enough.

Many much more successful writers go through the same thing. That's why I like to read about writers, to see that even highly successful authors had to struggle through their projects, one sentence at a time. Douglas Adams used to get so paralyzed by writer's block that he wouldn't write. Up against the deadline, his editor would put him up in a hotel room with somebody in there with him to make him write. Writer's block is often no more than a bad case of nerves, analysis paralysis caused by the fear that a book is much too big a thing for somebody like us to write. That fear hits many writers over and over again during the process.

Take John Steinbeck. He knew a thing or two about finishing a story. If you've ever read his journals, though, you know that throughout the writing process, he was constantly under assault from that voice telling him that the book is no good and he had no business writing it. He should just quit. In an interview published in The Paris Review in 1975, he said:

"Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised."

That's good advice. We should listen to him.

Self Editing for Fiction Writers, Chapter Two

(Come on, get your own copy, will ya?)

Characterization and Exposition

Before I start, a few comments. Of all the lessons I have been given along my writing path, the one about exposition was the most profitable. It makes so much sense to me. The trouble is, it is now getting me into trouble. My thinking is evolving to the point that I detest conversational exposition. My mind keeps seeing Jack Webb sternly stating "Just the facts, Ma'am". (IF and when my wife reads this, I will be sleeping downstairs for awhile.)

Anyway, I cannot preach exposition enough. So pay attention. You will know when you have it right when you can quit your day job. I still do not have it right. Otherwise I would not be up at midnight writing.
My thoughts are in parenthesis.

(The chapter starts out with a few, very dull paragraphs about Eloise.) After reading the these paragraphs, you know something about-possibly something very important-about Eloise. But do you care? (I didn't.)

In fact, the show and tell principles underlies many of the self-editing points we will talk about from now on. But there's a second problem here: the writer introduces Eliose to h is readers all at once and in depth-stopping the story cold for an overview of her character. (Next time you are reading a book and you come up short, as if you have been jerked out of the story and back to your reality, stop and ask yourself why. Then take a look at what you have just read. Very telling.)

It is often a good idea to introduce a new character with enough physical description for your readers to picture him or her.As with describing your settings, all you need are a few concrete idiomatic details to jump start your readers imagination. (I tried to do this in my novel, only giving what is needed but nothing more. I want the character to become the readers character, not mine. Too much detail about physical appearance and the character is mine, not the readers.)
If your characters actually act in the way your summaries say they will, then the summaries are not needed. If they do not, then your summaries are misleading.

When you (completely) sum up your characters, you risk defining them to the point that they're boxed in by the characterization with no room to grow.

Allow your readers to get to know your characters gradually, each read will interpret them in his or her own way, thus getting a deeper sens of who your characters are.

Delving into your characters past can be a good way for you to understand the character in the present. But though it may have been helpful for you to write a character's history, it may not be necessary for your readers to read it. (I like this. In fact, I did not write out a history for any of my characters in The Sin of Certainty. After reading this point, I like it even more. My characters are still alive to me, growing and in a few cases, dying.)

Since you bring your present story to a halt whenever you start a flashback, it doesn't take too many flashbacks to make your story jerky or hard to follow. (This is taught in Writing to Sell also. Good advice. I used one  and only flashback in my novel. I could not find a way around it and the information was pivotal. In fact, without it, the reader will never learn the answer to the mystery. Let the reader learn about the character from the present, not the past.)

If you want to learn who someone is, watch what they say and do. If you want your readers to get a feel who your character really are, show them through dialogue and action. (This is true in life, in a movie, and in a book. And remember, action speaks louder than words.)

The information your readers need in order to follow and appreciate your plot...should be brought out as unobtrusively as possible.
Give your readers only as much background information or history, or characterization as they need at any give time.  (I really like this.)

When your characters start talking  solely for the sake of informing your readers, the exposition gets in the way of believable characterization. So be on the lookout for places where your dialogue is actually exposition in disguise.

Readers can best learn about your locations and background not through lengthy exposition but by seeing them in real life.

B Y Rogers   http://www.byrogers.com/

Point of View, Viewpoint, and Perspective

by Deren Hansen

Ambiguity gives natural language its power: when vocabulary and grammar are fluid we can describe new situations for which we otherwise would not have the words. Specificity and precision give science its power: being clear about an object, its preconditions, and the forces or processes applied to it helps us avoid spurious and distracting information that would confound the subject. Scientific language breeds jargon in an attempt to minimize ambiguity

I may be guilty of the same thing, but I found myself unsatisfied when I heard someone assert that viewpoint, point of view, and perspective were synonymous. Of course the statement is true in a general sense. Outside of writing about writing, I would never want to be constrained to use a particular term only in a particular context. But the advantage of having a writer as reader is that the writer has terms and concepts with which to more specifically identify issues with the narrative. Instead of guessing why a reader may have lost interest in a section it is much more helpful to hear that the pacing suffered because of the long descriptive paragraphs devoted to back story.

When someone says your story has a problem with point of view they could be referring to one or more of three related but distinct storytelling dimensions: the grammatical person, the viewpoint character, or issues of characterization.

Point of View

When we discuss point of view, we usually focus on the grammatical person and the associated narrative conventions. If a story is told in first-person then logically only events in which that person participated can be related directly. A story told in third-person can stay close to one character or follow many characters without defying logic. There are subtle and not-so-subtle challenges with each point of view over which beginning writers often stumble, so it’s almost always a good place to go when troubleshooting a story.

Viewpoint

Stories are always told from the viewpoint of one or several characters. Even in omniscient mode you still have the viewpoint of the narrator. The storyteller selects what to include and omit from the narrative. Generally, someone close to the action will include more detail than someone farther away. Because story is fundamentally about understanding the why behind the external events, we usually want to hear the story from the perspective of the person closest to the action—and while physical proximity is important, emotional proximity is even more so. Sometimes, however, the story is better served by someone removed from the action: Holmes is more brilliant in Watson’s telling because we never see the internal debate in the great detective’s head before he announces his deduction. Getting the viewpoint right is much trickier than fixing the grammar and logic of point of view. Reading widely helps develop your instinct for storytelling, but when it comes to your own story you may be best served by writing several scenes from different viewpoints to see which resonates most strongly.

Perspective

Beyond the mechanics and logic of constructing a consistent point of view and the choices of what belongs in the story we reach the rarefied air of the perspective the viewpoint character brings to the narrative. We would expect, for example, a monk who had taken a vow of pacifism to describe a fistfight differently than a Mongol warrior. (And how would that description differ if the monk were a former Mongol warrior?) A perpetual challenge when writing for children and young adults is to create characters whose perspective isn’t contaminated by the mature perspective of the author.

How, What, and Why

Perhaps a simpler way to understand the distinction between viewpoint, point of view, and perspective is that they address, respectively, how the story is told, what comprises the story, and why the character or characters telling the story believe it is significant. The distinctions are important because the way you fix a mechanical point of view problem, like a character in a first-person narrative knowing something they didn’t experience, is very different from the way you fix a problem in perspective, like a child having adult sensibilities.


Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

Building Better Characters with Mr. Potato Head

Lisa Mangum gave a great, hands on, presentation at Book Academy using a childhood toy.

How do you build a better character?

What does your character see?

• How does he perceive the world? With paranoia or rose-colored glasses?
• What does he need to survive?
• Look outside the character to how the setting affects him.
• Is it an urban setting? Rural? Alone? 
• Think how the boy who lived under the stairs saw Hogwarts. When a character moves to a different environment, he will naturally compare it to what he has seen before.
• Look inside.
• Use introspection. Does the character have to plan everything? 
• Are they confidant in themselves?
• What are their flaws? Exploit them!

What do they hear?

• Do they only hear complaints? Compliments?
• What does the character say when they talk to themselves when they are alone?
• What do they think about? Process?
• Do they believe they are good? Bad?

What do they say?

• Pet phrases
• Slang
• Do they lie?
• Prefer silence?
• Dialogue reveals something about the character like education level, beliefs, prejudice.
• Words can hurt AND heal. For some, words are weapons.
• Voice is one of the best ways to showcase a character

  
What dreams or goals do they have?

•  
• What are they reaching for?
• What is their hearts' desire?
• Evaluate 'nice to haves' and 'have to haves'.
• Dreams drive us! Withholding the fulfillment of dreams will force the character into action, into growth
• Be specific about dreams!

Where is the character going?

• What actions will they take? 
• Motivation is a powerful tool for revealing character

Where does your character stand?

• What does he believe in? Fight for? Die for?
• Where is their boundary? Push them over that line over and over again

Characters with well-defined values--even if you don't agree with them--make compelling, interesting and memorable characters.
Characters with conviction are characters who move the plot.

Killer first lines

Life just ain’t fair. You work your heart out on a story, spend months writing, revising, and rewriting some 50,00 words or more. Then you send your precious darling off with high hopes and what happens? An agent or editor may not read more than the first sentence. If you’re lucky or your writing shows promise, maybe they’ll finish the paragraph or even first page.

What’s up with that? Alane Ferguson taught a WIFYR workshop a few years back. She said agents and editors are busy people and hundreds of manuscripts cross their desks each year. They’re not looking at story but need to quickly assess writing potential. Agent John Cusick receives 5,000 queries a year. In a few short sentences, you have to stand out from the crowd. One way to do that is with a powerful first line.

The local SCBWI chapter sponsored an evening event at the Salt Lake City library once with speaker Clint Johnson. In his presentation, titled “Great Beginnings,” he said he tries to hook the reader on the first line. If they are intrigued, maybe they’ll read on through the 1^st paragraph, then the 1^st page, and on and on.

Johnson went further. He said there are three things imperative to a story’s opening. You should present conflict, pose questions, and reveal character. Conflict is the driving element of the story. We naturally want to see conflict resolved so it is a reason to read on. Pose questions, or better yet, write so that readers pose their own questions and thus want to read further for answers. The main character’s POV is the door into the story. Johnson said to try to hit all three in the first line.

Similarly, John Cusick said he wants the entire book in the first line or paragraph.

Then comes the question of where to start the story. Gone are the days of the soft break-in of character or setting. Readers today (and publishers) want action from the get-go. We’re told to never begin at the beginning, but start at the middle. Avoid too much backstory or info dumping.

I rewrote the start of my NaNo story and shared it with my critique group. They get hungry and I have to feed them every once in a while. I spent a few hours perfecting that first chapter. My first line was good, but they didn’t like where I started. They want me to do it again.

Life isn’t fair.

"They even turned it into a movie"

by Scott Rhoades

Twice in the last couple weeks I've read printed statements about books being so good they were even turned into movies. Both were worded in ways that strongly suggest that being turned into a movie is the height of success for a book, that there's something so intrinsically superior about a movie that books must aspire to become films.

Obviously, as far as the author's bank account is concerned, a movie contract is a very good thing, and it's even better if the movie is actually made and is successful. Depending on the contract, the success of the movie version doesn't necessarily mean more money for the author, but it can be huge when it comes to spawning book sales, and more book sales are always a wonderful thing.

Does that mean a writer's ultimate goal should be to see his or her story on the big screen? I guess the answer is, as is so often the case, "It depends." It depends on an author's goals. I know writers who write as if their books are movie treatments, in the hopes that their stories will be turned into films. Because of the popularity and power of movies in our culture and the potential financial rewards, I can understand that. And those writers are certainly in good company. One of my favorite writers, John Steinbeck, sometimes wrote so that his stories could be used as scripts. Of Mice and Men and The Pearl are prime examples.

Personally, I love books more than I love movies. When I do go to a movie, which I do fairly infrequently, it's often to see the movie version of a book I loved. It's also almost always a bit of a disappointment.

Is there really something wrong with enjoying the book for the sake of the book? Can a book succeed on its own merit today, or does it have to be turned into a movie to validate its greatness? I like to think that a great book is great in its own right. A brilliant book stands on its own, much like a great piece of music or a beautiful poem.

Books and movies are, to state the obvious, different. To make a book work on the screen almost always requires changes. The movie versions that work best are the ones where the changes make a better movie and still maintain the integrity of the book. The amazing film version of The Grapes of Wrath is a good example. This is a case where if you know the book, you know the movie, but if you only know the movie, you have only a vague idea of the basics of the book. And yet, the movie is a classic piece of American cinema, and can be fully enjoyed even if you've never read the novel. There are many other classic movies that started as books and succeeded in both formats.

In recent years, The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books resulted in entertaining, even great, movies. One of the Harry Potter movies, the fifth one, is a rare case where I liked the movie better than the book. I almost gave up on the books after number 5. But to fit the format of a successful movie, those stories had to be altered considerably, and many people who didn't know the books had a hard time following the film versions.

Some great books have been turned into movies multiple times without the film ever approaching the greatness of the novel. I can't think of a completely successful movie treatment of Twain, for example. I can think of some that were entertaining, but none that even came close to affecting the viewer the way the way the books affect the reader. Many people refer to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the (or least a) great American novel, but none of the attempts to put it on film make the lists of greatest movies ever. You'd think Twain would be easy. His stories are funny, meaningful, and are about regular people doing things that can be filmed without a lot of special effects and other movie trickery. But it is apparently impossible to make a truly classic film version of a Twain story.

The bottom line, I think, is this: whether your ultimate goal is to write a book that becomes a successful film, or simply (right, like it's really "simple") write the best book you can, your book needs to succeed. Few literary failures become successful movies. The book must be able to succeed on its own. No matter how many beta readers tell you your book would make a great movie, you have to write the book first, and make it good enough to be noticed. So, while there is nothing wrong with desiring the financial success of a film contract or dreaming of seeing your great story become a great movie, your goal should be centered around the book.

I like cake better than I like frosting. In fact, I love cake so much that I often scrape off the frosting. A book is my cake. If I ever write something that is eventually made into a successfully realized film, that will be frosting, sweet validation that my story works in two very different media. But I'd be thrilled to write a very good book that never makes its way to a 3D IMAX screen.

Self Editing for Fiction Writers, Chapter One

Show and Tell

Some time ago, I wrote about "Writing to Sell" by Scott Meredith and how this book made a difference in how I write. I still think it is a fantastic book and should be a staple in every writer's libraruy. Last week I found another book while reading a blog by David Gaughran. David recommended a book titled "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. As I took a look at the book I figured I might as well see what it had to offer so I purchased it. It arrived Saturday. I read the first chapter today. I wish I would have had this book five years ago. I wish I would have had BOTH of these books five years ago. (For additional insights, check out Dave King's website here.)

As I read today, I decided I would blog about each chapter as I go through the book. I am going to list only the highlights, with a little comment as I go along. My comments will be in parenthesis. I am doing this primarily for my benefit, as my entire blog is primarily for my personal benefit. It's not like I have 100M followers who are impatiently waiting to discover what I am thinking about tonight. But by blogging on this book, I hope to drill the principles a little deeper into my cranium. So, for the few of you who may accidentally stumble on to this post, here you go.

Tonight I will be covering the introduction and the first chapter: Show and Tell. My apologies to Renni Browne and Dave King, who wrote "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. I will be paraphrasing at times, which means I may get something wrong. I hope I got the points you meant for me to get. If not, well you can always leave a comment and point me in the right direction. Or tell me to cease and desist. But I pray you do not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Introduction.
Writing and editing are two different skills, and even strong writers can make poor editors.
A word of warning: because writing and editing are two different skills, they require two different mind-sets. Don't try to do both at once. The time to edit is not when you're writing your first draft. But once the first draft is finished...use the principles in this book.

Chapter 1  Show and Tell
(Most of this chapter Matt Stover taught me in our brief email exchange two years ago. In the past, I have found that when I have tried to explain this concept to others, some just do not seem to understand. Perhaps that is my fault for not communicating properly. This chapter gives some wonderful examples and sage advice.)
(after giving two examples of narrative, which I will leave for you to find out for yourself) It's a matter of showing and telling...The first version is a secondhand report. The second is an immediate scene.
What, exactly, makes a scene? For one thing it takes place in real time.
Nowadays, literature is leaner and meaner and it's often a good idea to give your readers just enough detail to jump start their imagination so they can picture the setting for themselves. (I try to do this with my characters as well. I am not too concerned what a person looks like as much as what they do or say. I want my reader to see Uncle Willy when they read about Charley. This brings the reader into the story, making it personal.)

Scenes are usually harder to write than narrative. Many writers rely to heavily on narrative summaries to tell their stories.
Readers today have become accustomed to seeing a story as a series of immediate scenes. Narrative summary no longer engages readers the way it once did.

You want to draw your readers into the world you've created, make them feel a part of it, make them forget where they are. And you can't do this effectively if you tell your readers about your world secondhand. You have to take them there.

The first chapter is not the best place for narrative summary. (I learned this from Stephen King's "The Stand". From the first word on you are engaged in the story.)

One of the easiest ways to look like an amateur is to use mechanics that direct attention to themselves and away from the story. You want your readers to be so wrapped up in your world that they're not even aware that you, the writer, exist.

To write exposition at length--describing your characters' past or events that happened before the story began or any information your readers might need to understand your plot--is to engage your readers intellect. What you want to do is to engage their emotions.
Narrative summary has its uses, the main one being to vary the rhythm and texture of your writing.

Some plot developments are simply not important enough to justify scenes. (What I am doing is saving those scenes and publishing them as short stories, for free. If I end up with enough of them, I will publish them as a collection of back stories. I am willing to kill the little darlings but not bury them.)

Telling your readers about your characters' emotions is not the best way to get your readers involved. Far better to show why your characters feel they way they do....you do not want to give your readers information. You want to give them experiences.

Resist the Urge to Explain. R.U.E. (Or you will rue the day you did.)
More often than not, writers tell their readers things they already shown by dialogue and action. It is as if they're repeating themselves to make sure their readers get the point. (When Matt Stover introduced me to "Writing to Sell", this was my sin. He took me to task for this and rightfully so. My tome at the time was just over 121,000 words. Today it is just over 71,000. I have 42% excessive exposition. At least, that is how I look at it.)

When you show rather than tell it, you treat your readers with respect. And that respect makes it easier to for you to draw them into the world you created. (Matt told me to trust my readers. I think this is crucial.)

BY Rogers is the author of The Sin of Certainty. His blog is at byrogers.com. 
He can be contacted at by@byrogers.com

Closing the Books

by Deren Hansen

In a world where the only constant is change, how can you say what something really is? We like to think of our adult selves as relatively fixed. At a physiological level, however, the ongoing processes of cellular senescence and regeneration mean that roughly every seven years we get completely new bodies. Are we really still the same person?

Questions like that keep philosophers gainfully employed but they also bedevil other fields. Accountants, being eminently practical, have a simple solution: they close the books. While originally a concrete activity involving physical accounting books the phrase now refers to the end of one accounting period and the beginning of another. By creating accounting periods, it becomes possible to say exactly what the balances were at that point without the distraction of pending transactions.

Closing the books, in accounting and beyond, has two advantages: first, it enables us to take stock of our situation and assess our progress toward our objectives; second, it allows us to start with a new baseline uncluttered by the uncertainties that accumulated during the last period.

The beauty of the notion of closing the books for writers is that we’re greeted with a blank page when we open the new book. Some people find blank pages terrifying to the point of immobility: what should they put where? But filling blank pages is what we’re all about. How will you fill yours?


Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

Writig resolutions

In his post yesterday, Scott asked who does resolutions.

Maybe I’m an old fashioned kind of guy, but I like making New Year’s resolutions. The start of a new year is a time to reflect on what has been accomplished the last twelve months and how things could be improved. It’s a new beginning on the same old life. A fresh start is a chance to break old habits and establish new ones.

Not that I stick to them.  Sometimes they are out of here as fast as the Christmas tree waiting on the pick-up curb. A stroke of genius on December 31 can become a hazy memory on New Year’s Day. Some may make it a few weeks out. That new gym membership gets used for a couple of weeks but by March is a waste of money. Good intentions. Lousy follow-through.

After failing consistently for the last umpteen New Years, I’m becoming an expert at making resolutions. General, overall goals seem better than specific, time-dated ones. For example, if I resolve to exercise daily, then I give up on it after the first day I miss, usually around Jan. 3^rd or 5^th. When I tell myself to walk three or four times a week and fit in a yoga class here and there, I am more successful.

A few years back I took stock of things and resolved to write that book that had been on the brain for twenty years. Look where I am now. I thought I had talent and could write and made a rough draft. A friend suggested WYFIR. I learned there’s a difference between talent and writing skill. Six years later and I’m still learning the craft.

So, be it resolved:
-of course the usual: end to world hunger, lose twenty pounds, fast car, etc., etc.
-and the more doable goals: garage cleaned by 2018, think about what I'm eating once in a while, and what-not.

My Writing Resolutions for 2013

1. Finish revising project A by the end January.

2. Research agents and editors, find the best fit for my manuscript, create a killer query, and turn off writer mode and switch to salesperson.

3. Get Project A signed on with an agent or publisher. (Out of my hands. I know. Had to throw it in.)

4. Figure out project B. That is my new NaNoWriMo story and it is far from finished.

5. Attend a writing conference. I’m going to WIFYR again this year; that is a given. I’ll make it two conferences then. I did Cheryl Klein’s plot class in November. Nothing better to inspire writing than a workshop on the craft.

6. Stay connected with my critiquers. You guys are great.
7. Write daily. I do best with a 60-minute a day goal. Some days it doesn’t happen, but the goal itself keeps me there even on those days when you can’t squeeze in an hour.

8. Read daily. Someone once said that reading counts as writing time. Though most people my age read adult fiction, we children’s writers tend to go for something aimed at younger audiences. There are a lot of excellent children’s stories out there and reading them makes your own better.

9. Establish an online presence. Publishers want to know the writer is doing what they can to promote their book.

All this and yet balance it out with the rest of my life. Oh, and one more. I resolve to have my Saturday posts finished by Friday evenings.

Resolutions

by Scott Rhoades

It's my last post of the year, and I almost forgot to write it. In fact, I almost forgot it was even Friday. one of the great things about the holidays and working for a company that gives us the week from December 24 to January 2 off with pay is that, for a short time, the calendar barely matters. Truth is, right now, I don't really have any need to know what day it is. And I like it like that.

So, what I want to know is, do you make New Year's resolutions? I don't. Not really. But the change of the calendar (and several carefree days off) gives me time to reflect and, since I don't like to spend a lot of time looking backward, to think about some of the things I want to do next year.

In 2012, I set a couple of reading goals. One was to continue my three-to-four year plan of rereading John Steinbeck's novels and selected non-fiction in the order written, to study his development as a writer. I've read all but a couple of his books, but never in any particular order. I started this quest last year, after taking three years to read all of Shakespeare.

My other reading goal was to read at least ten frequently challenged books. I exceeded that one, and in the process read some truly great books that I had either avoided or had not gotten around to.

For 2013, I don't have any really specific reading goals, other than to continue my Steinbeck reading, but I'm formulating a mental plan that has to do with reading more award-winning authors, particularly Nobel prize winners. I haven't set a number yet. I'm thinking about adding the Newbery Award to this goal. I still have a few days to figure it out, and I can always modify the goal as the year moves on. I also want to read some of the longer books I've been avoiding because I self-identify as having a short attention span.

I also, of course, have some writing goals, although they are not particularly specific. As members of my writers group, Sharks & Pebbles, can tell you, I've gotten really bad at querying and submitting lately, for no good reason. So I have to set a goal to keep them off my back, and the only way to do that is to send stuff out. I grew up on the West Coast, so I know that it's always a good thing to keep the sharks away.

Next year I will reach the end of my current novel in process, again thanks to Sharks & Pebbles. if I'm calculating correctly, my group will probably see the last of this draft in March, maybe April. That means I have some writing and a ton of revising to do, and I need to start thinking about what comes next. 

And, I recently rediscovered some of my old short stories and poetry. I think I'd like to get back to writing those, and maybe see about doing something with some of those old pieces that aren't as embarrassing as others.

Writing this, I realize (not like I didn't know it before) how important my group is, so I want to do a better job keeping up with the group, provide better critiques, and generally do a better job as the token dude in the group.

But, mind you, none of these are resolutions. I've found in the past that messing up on a resolution makes me prone to say, "Well, I blew that one," and move on to breaking the next one. So I don't make resolutions. I just have a mental list of Stuff I Wanna Do. If it's not formalized, I no longer have a good reason to fail when I reach a rough patch. I just pick back up and work on getting it done.

The Power of Story

by Deren Hansen

There’s a powerful story at the heart of this holiday season for the Christian world—and no, it doesn’t involve a charitable trespasser or a bioluminescent proboscis.

Setting aside distractions, like the claim that the event we celebrate didn’t actually occur when we celebrate it, the Nativity—also called the greatest story ever told—is, in fact, the most common story ever told. Until the dystopian clone factories open, I can say with absolute confidence that all of us have experienced this story as one of the major characters. And many of us have experienced this story as one of the other two main characters.

What is remarkable, as a writer, is to consider the way in which this story transformed the most common of events into something of world-changing—and some would say eternal—significance that has echoed through two millennia and counting without losing its potency.

Many of us simply hope someone will notice our stories. And none of us can predict which of the stories now being told will still be told in a hundred or a thousand years. But there are stories that resonate across time and space, illuminating the very core of who we are or hope to be.


Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

Merry Christmas

By Julie Daines

Have a wonderful Christmas and Holiday Season! In the mean time, enjoy this Norman Rockwell painting titled "The Discovery." Nobody does expressions like Rockwell.

Season's greetings

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I don’t really have a topic to write on today. ‘Tis the season, but the loss of innocents has put a damper on the festive mood reserved for this time of year. Why do we do these things to ourselves? Answers seem elusive. We are a culture of gun violence. Unfortunately, we will have to learn to accept such episodes until we re-examine our principals.

As it seems impossible to solve, at least we can take minds off of it. We have language and we are imaginative. We can create stories. We write for kids.

Are you working on a story? I’m involved with two of them and the distraction from the senselessness and the punditry is completely welcome. My latest project has something there. It’s still a WIP, but I can get lost in it. Today is NaNo - day 52. I’m 30,000 words shy, but at least I’m finding story.

My other diversion is an old project; a re-vise after my critique group went through the beta-read. Being away from it for November and part of this month was good. I just revisited it today. The goal was to finish this rewrite and have it ready to push in the new year.

The brain likes two stories going on at once. Each slows the other from completion, but letting them both stew is good. You stir one for a while then put the lid back on and stir the other. Dive into a story, a different life and the crazy real world recedes into the background. I like two pots bubbling on the stove.

Season’s greetings. May you find the peace a good story affords and the time to escape into it.

Jack of all Trades, Master of None

by Deren Hansen

For the vast majority of our history as a species, humans were content to live in relatively small groups and spend their time hunting and gathering—and no wonder: most hunter-gatherers work about twenty hours a week to get their living. Yet in the last 10,000-year blink of the evolutionary eye we suddenly have cities and civilizations exploding all over the planet. The culprit, according to a number of anthropologists, is the specialization made possible by agricultural surpluses.

The power of specialization is obvious to every writer who dreams of walking away from the oppression of the day job and devoting his or her full-time to the craft. Imagine the all books we could write—perhaps two or three a year—if we weren’t limited to an hour or two of writing each day.

If you think artisan publishing offers a shortcut to becoming a full-time writer, I have bad news for you: artisan publishing is actually a shortcut to becoming a full-time publisher.

The difference between a writer who is published and a publisher who writes begins with the contrast between the passive phrase, “a writer who is published,” and the active phrase, “a publisher who writes.” One of the reasons for the traditional separation between authors and publishers is that it allows each partner to specialize: the writer delivers a finished manuscript and then the publisher goes to work.

There’s so much to do as an artisan publisher that you can’t afford to specialize. Serious writers understand how much time and effort it takes to go from idea to finished manuscript. Publishers understand how much time and effort it takes to go from finish manuscript to book for sale. You’ve got to be a generalist if you’re going to do everything that needs to be done between the idea and the book. Even if you engage freelance editors and designers you still need to understand enough of what they do to be able to review and approve their work.

But it’s worse than that. You actually need to become a serial specialist. Many of the nontrivial tasks—like writing and design—require focus and skill. And yet just as you’re getting the hang of it you need to move on to something else. In practice this means you’re constantly relearning things. If you feel like you’re being pulled in too many different directions when you try to write now, you’ll find artisan publishing more frustrating than fulfilling.


Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.