Banning the Books that Shaped America

I recently read an interesting article about some of the books from the Library of Congress's exhibit on the books that shaped America, about the books on the list that have been banned.

The following books, which reflect our history and culture and have helped to make us who we are, appear on the banned book lists:

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain*
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley
• Beloved, Toni Morrison*
• The Call of the Wild, Jack London*
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller*
• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger*
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury*
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway*
• Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck*
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald*
• Howl, Allen Ginsberg
• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
• Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison*
• The Jungle, Upton Sinclair*
• Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman*
• Moby-Dick; or The Whale, Herman Melville
• Native Son, Richard Wright
• Our Bodies, Ourselves, Boston Women’s Health Book Collective
• The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane*
• The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne*
• Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred C. Kinsey
• Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
• A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams*
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston*
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee*
• Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak*
• The Words of Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez

That's a staggering list. Read the article to find out why  they were banned, and where.

I've read 18 of these 29 books (marked with *), if you include the one I'm reading now, and some others are high on my to-read list. Others don't really interest me much. I can't imagine the impact on my life if I had been restricted from reading these books. I've learned a tremendous about writing and about life from these books, and the ideas in those pages have helped shape the person I am.



Every time a school or a library removes one of these books, they rob students and the community of the opportunity to expand their view of the world, to think about the world in a new way and to experience the artful delivery of words and ideas. The potential cost of each of these removals is staggering. Imagine your own life without the ones you've read.

Ideas: Don't Stop with One Good Idea

by Deren Hansen

Animator Patrick Smith, writing at Scribble Junkies, shared some of John Lasseter's advice in a post on the 7 Creative Principles of Pixar.

The first principle is, "Never come up with just one idea."

Here's how John explains it:

“Regardless of whether you want to write a book, design a piece of furniture or make an animated movie: At the beginning, don’t start with just one idea – it should be three.

“The reason is simple. If a producer comes to me with a proposal for a new project, then usually he has mulled over this particular idea for a very long time. That limits him. My answer always reads: 'Come again when you have three ideas, and I don’t mean one good and two bad. I want three really good ideas, of which you cannot decide the best. You must be able to defend all three before me. Then we’ll decide which one you’ll realize.'

“The problem with creative people is that they often focus their whole attention on one idea. So, right at the beginning of a project, you unnecessarily limit your options. Every creative person should try that out. You will be surprised how this requirement suddenly forces you to think about things you hadn’t even considered before. Through this detachment, you suddenly gain new perspectives. And believe me, there are always three good ideas. At least.”

The first key here, and it bears repeating, is, "this requirement suddenly forces you to think about things your hadn't even considered before." There are a lot of people out there having good ideas. If you stop with your first good idea, chances are very good that someone has already thought of it. But with each additional good idea you bring to the table, the chance of someone else thinking of the exact same ideas drops dramatically.

The second key is the perspective you gain through detachment. That is, if you have more than one good idea then you've got a fall-back if one of the ideas proves less good than you thought. More importantly, you can compare and contrast the ideas and get a better sense of their relative merits than if you have only one, precious idea ... gollum.

Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. This article is from Sustainable Creativity: How to Enjoy a Committed, Long-term Relationship with your Muse. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

5 Diseases All Writers Should Be Aware Of

By Julie Daines


Writing is generally considered a low risk profession. But there are several serious--and even terminal--diseases to be on the lookout for. Here are a few that affect me.

1. Obsessive Compulsive Editing Disorder (OCED). I edit everything from the back of cereal boxes to notes from my kids to whatever novel I'm reading. I wish I could turn it off, but there doesn't seem to be a switch. It's almost impossible for me to read a book without a pencil in hand to add a comma here or delete a word there. I hate it. I just want to enjoy the story.

2. Unintentional Analytical Plot Predicting Syndrome. (Also known as Beat Beating.)  I can't watch a movie or TV show without analyzing the plot and trying to predict the ending. My husband asks me why I even bother watching any more because I always know what's going to happen.

3. Author Attention Distraction Disorder (AADD, also frequently referred to as "crazy"). I'm constantly distracted. Not by shiny toys and squirrels, but by everything inside my head. "Mom, this is really important. I have to have one hundred..." One hundred. Yes! That's it! What if my main character lives a hundred miles away? That would put enough strain on the relationship to make the scene work better and lead right into the climax. But then the villain... "Mom? Did you hear me?" "What? Is someone talking to me?"

4. Blood Shot Twitchy Eye Syndrome. Some call it insomnia, when you wake up in the middle of the night because you just had this great idea and you can't go back to sleep because scenes and dialogue keep playing out over and over in your mind. Please just make it stop!

5. Acute Hyper-Friendlessness Complex (AKA: Loner's Disease). I've always been an introvert, but since I started writing, it's blossomed into an epidemic. A single person epidemic. How can I have time for friends when I have scenes to write, edits to make, and research to do. I've already got hoards of voices in my mind, why do I need more? Come on people! What's more important here? Real life or the fictional world I've created in my head?

What disease do you suffer for the sake of your art?

Character or plot

A friend asked what is my greatest weakness as a writer. There are so many to choose from, yet the nature of the question eliminates a long diatribe.

As I thought about all the things that go into a good story, I wasn’t sure if the weakness is one of plot or of characterization. The two of them are inter-twined. Nathan Bransford calls them inseparable.

The problem I have with character is my people are too simple, not multi-dimensional. They don’t seem to show the growth that is supposed to accompany the lessons learned from facing an adversary.

Bransford says a compelling character is one who starts off seeming normal but events soon show personality traits that were previously unknown to them (think Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter) or someone battling internal demons. A normal person observing a crazy world also makes for a compelling character. At the heart of every compelling character is “conflict, more conflict, and still more conflict.” He says to reveal conflict through plot. What interesting character isn’t doing something? “Plot tests a character and forces them to make choices. Plot is what makes the character interesting (because the character is tested) and character is what makes the plot interesting (because we’re learning about the character).” The plot changes the character. Every compelling character starts in one place and ends up in a different one. How they get there is plot.

MJ Bush of WritingGeekery says “strong characters are complex enough to carry the story, pull in the reader, and give a sense that there’s more going on under the surface.” She has four cornerstones of strong characters (fear, a secret, a flaw, and a quirk). They help establish character dynamics and the unfolding of the plot. Major characters should have two to four of these, and are best served with all four. Fear propels the story. Without fear, readers would wonder why the MC doesn’t just ignore the problem. High stakes make for good story and fear causes the high stakes. Secrets: everybody has a dark side, which they never show anybody, and the MC has one, too. What do they have to hide and how does that clash with the external events of the story? Everybody has flaws, as well. What kinds of mistakes does the character make, and what circumstances cause the flaw to surface? Quirks are there to create symbolism for something she calls the character theme.

So, my biggest weakness is my characters. Or my plot.

(This article also posted at http://writetimeluck.blogspot.com )

Banning Science Fiction and Fantasy

September 22-28, 2013 is Banned Book Week. In honor of that week, I will be blogging about banned or challenged books this month.

Perhaps more than any other genre with the possible exception of literary fiction (and that's an iffy comparison), Science Fiction, and its cousin Fantasy, is about ideas. Ideas can be controversial, and often bring out the would-be censors.

Worlds Without End has a Web page that lists 47 frequently challenged or banned Science Fiction and Fantasy books. What do you think of the books on their list? I'll bet that, if you are a SF/F reader, some of your favorites are on their list. How would your life be different if these books had been kept from you by well-meaning parents or community activists?

• The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathon Stroud
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• Carrie, Stephen King
• Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
• Cujo, Stephen King
• The Day After Tomorrow, Robert A. Heinlein
• The Dead Zone, Stephen King
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
• Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• The Giver, Lois Lowry
• Grendel, John Gardner
• Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
• The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
• Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
• The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
• Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
• Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
• Roadside Picnic, Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky
• The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
• Shade's Children, Garth Nix
• Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
• We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
• Welcome to the Monkey House, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• The Iron Dream, Norman Spinrad
• The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
• The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman
• The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
• The Lovers, Philip Jose Farmer
• The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
• Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
• Tithe, Holly Black
• Valiant, Holly Black
• Ironside, Holly Black
• Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow

Crossroads: The Future of this Blog

Dear readers and contributors:

We need your input.

Throughout the blogosphere, blogs are seeing less traffic. Unless they are very popular blogs, usually by famous people or well-known experts in their fields, blogs are not attracting readers like they used to. It's partly a matter of over-saturation. The number of blogs has sky-rocketed, and people only have so much time to read them, so smaller blogs don't get as much attention as they once did. It's also due to things like Twitter and Facebook, which have become popular places to look for information.

Here at Utah Children's Writers, we've seen a reduction in readership and comments over the past few months, and a similar drop in the frequency of posts. It might be a summer slump, or we might be following the current trends in the blogging world, or maybe it's a combination of both.

Let us hear from you. How much value do you get from this blog? How could we make it better? What topics are interesting to you? What will keep you coming back and commenting?

How can we make this a more vibrant part of the Utah writing community? Do you like reading blogs, or would you prefer to see us make our Facebook page (yes, we have one--look for Utah Children's Writers) a more active center for our community?

We don't plan to go away anytime soon. We enjoy providing what we hope is interesting and useful information for writers of all levels. But we want to make sure we are providing a useful service, and that there's not a better way to build and support our community of writers. If there's a better way to support the community these days, we're open to change.

Let us know how best to serve you.

Thanks for your input,

The blog admins

Ideas: Rebuttal Theory and Adding to the Conversation

by Deren Hansen

I once heard that Shannon Hale's approach to retelling fairy tales is motivated by the question, "What's bugging me about this story?"

I started thinking seriously about this question after reading several books that bugged me enough that I wanted to make a rebuttal (it's hard to set aside old debating instincts). It's not that I had problems with the books themselves as much as some of the ideas in the stories.

Two interesting things happened as I thought about the ideas that bugged me in each story and they ways in which I might handle them differently:

1. I was drawn into the "normal science" process of thinking through each idea (that I described last week) and uncovered a host of interesting ideas.
2. The different lines of inquiry came together as a fascinating story molecule.

Shannon's question, "What's bugging me about this story?" is a powerful idea generator if you follow it with a second question: "How would I do it differently?"

There's another important consequence: as you work through the ideas until you can clearly express what bothers you about the story and how you would handle it differently, you find you have something to add to the conversation.

Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. This article is from Sustainable Creativity: How to Enjoy a Committed, Long-term Relationship with your Muse. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

Is NaNoWriMo right-o for you?

It's all downhill from here. That time of year that brings dread and butterflies all at once. The season many, many writers anticipate every year.
We are sliding right into NaNoWriMo time. 
How many of you have experienced National Novel Writing Month in November? Some of you have finished and "won" (written 50,000 words) and some of come close but are still winners in getting words on paper.
I tried NaNo. It's crazy and fun. I, myself, have finished four stories, thanks to NaNo. I've worked and typed and penned and eked out 55,000 every time. NaNo is a great motivator to writing a new story, it's the editing that drags on me.
But November is soooo hard! November is soooo busy! November is full of family activities, Thanksgiving vacation and planning Christmas. My family wants me to be with them during this month.

This summer I heard about Camp NaNoWriMo, a summer camp for NaNo-ers. When you sign up your get cabin mates who encourage you along and fireside talks to get your backside into gear. So I signed up and guess what I learned? July is busier than November! I only got 13,000 words written. July is summer vaca, so everybody is home. And bored. At least in November the kids are in school for most of the month and its easier to find free writing time.

I need to insert here that I made a personal writing rule for myself. This rule makes for a happy home: I'm off the computer while the family is home. See how this rule conflicts with summer vacation?
And I'm not going to lie--NaNo is hard. I don't write on Sundays and many times Saturdays are spent with family, then Thanksgiving break comes along and any other holidays and wham-o! There really are not thirty days to write. It's more like twenty. Which equals *counts on fingers**gives up* a lot of words a day.

NaNo may not seem right for everyone. There are many who write slower than others. And you have to totally turn off and ignore your inner critic. But I believe it's worth a shot. Even if you don't make 50,000, you have started a new story, which is always good. And who knows what that will end up? Could be your next published work.

Positives:
Focused writing
Complete a novel in thirty days
New, fresh ideas will surface
Can be done if you are a pantser or outliner

Negatives:
Stress
Hard to find time to sit and write
Finishing on time 
Harder to do if you are an outliner
 
 
Have you participated in NaNoWriMo? What did you think? How did you do?
When do you think is a good month to do NaNo? February? September?

Generating ideas

Generating ideas

I found an interesting thing on generating story ideas. It was a video posted at http://writeoncon.com/08/13/idea-factory/ by Natalie Whipple, author of Transparent. It fits in with Deren Hansen’s post earlier this week.

Many, including Rick Walton, have touted the advantages of brainstorming to help jump-start a story. The whole idea of brainstorming is to throw out many, many ideas. That way, once the ordinary ideas have been exhausted, creative, unique ones come to surface.

Natalie takes it a step further. She says the key to generating story ideas is to let go of your preconceptions. Authors need to overcome their negative thinking that the idea is ridiculous or not new. Natalie admits that there are a lot of silly ideas are stupid and she notes many are not new. Yet ideas are just the beginnings of stories, not the end results. What you put into it, as a writer, is what takes the idea from silly and ordinary to refreshing and unique. The original idea is the first draft.

Ideas can come from inspiration, Natalie says. Seek ideas in other stories or through researching some aspect of your setting story or the setting. Finally, Natalie suggests living the life worth writing about. The more things you do, the more you have to write about. You experience things, come into contact with new people, new activities, all of which can inspire ideas.

Hmm. I’m okay with dull, but perhaps I should consider skydiving.

(This article also posted at http://writetimeluck.blogspot.com )

The Evils of Winnie-the-Pooh

September 22-28, 2013 is Banned Book Week. In honor of that week, I will be blogging about banned or challenged books this month.

Imagine a world without Pooh. I mean that "tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff." That's exactly what some people have tried to leave us with. Our dear little silly old bear is ranked #22 on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most frequently challenged classics.

Attacks on A.A. Milne's characters have come from many places. A state-controlled television station in Turkey banned the Winnie-the-Pooh films because of scenes that included that most innocuous of characters, Piglet, because they feared that some Muslim viewers would object to the depiction of a pig. The books were banned in a UK school for similar reasons, until the Muslim Council of Britain petitioned the school to return the books to the shelves and end their misguided policy.

In Russia, Winnie-the-Pooh came under attack for being a pro-Nazi character, after a search of the belongings of a political extremist turned up a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh wearing a swastika.

Surely, nobody in the United States would go so far as to try and ban these lovable characters that teach so many positive lessons to children.

Well, except the parent group in Kansas that challenged Winnie-the-Pooh and Charlotte's Web because talking animals are an insult to God. Other places in the US are reported to have gone after Pooh for the same reason. Or Redwood Middle School in Napa, California, which placed a girl into their "Students With Attitude Problems" in-school suspension program because she violated the school's dress code when she wore socks that had a depiction of Tigger when Winnie-the-Pooh characters were considered inappropriate. It has also been mentioned that Winnie-the-Pooh wears no pants.

Green Eggs and Ham has been banned for containing scenes of homosexual seduction. Where the Wild Things Are has been challenged for being frightening, for containing scenes of sadistic punishment, and like Harry Potter and JRR Tolkien's works and countless other books, for promoting witchcraft and the supernatural. An edition of Little Red Riding Hood was attacked in 1990 because the basket Red carried to Grandmother contained a bottle of wine, thus promoting alcohol abuse. The Diary of Anne Frank has been challenged for sexuality, and specifically homosexuality, as well as for being "too depressing." That book still comes under attack, including in May of this year, when a mother in Michigan tried to get pulled from schools because of the book's "pornographic tendencies."

Where's Waldo was pulled from school shelves after it was discovered that one beach scene contained a tiny picture of a topless sunbather lying on her stomach, with her head and shoulders slightly raised. In 1988, Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree was banned from a public library in Colorado for being sexist. It was also attacked because of questions about the tree's motives and for criminalizing the foresting industry. Dr. Seuss's classic The Lorax was attacked in Northern California, also because it was feared that the book would give children a negative attitude toward loggers. James and the Giant Peach was banned by a school in Texas because it contained the word "ass."


One of my favorite books, Harriet the Spy, has been banned for presenting a bad example for children, and for "teaching children to lie, spy, talk back, and curse." The offenses of Bridge to Terabithia are almost too numerous to list, including a fantasy world that might confuse kids, teaching disrespect to parents, and using the word "Lord" and the phrase "Oh, Lord." Alice in Wonderland supposedly depicts sexual fantasies and masturbation, alongside drug use. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory shows a "poor philosophy of life." In 1928, all public libraries in Chicago removed The Wizard of Oz because it presented an ungodly view of the world by depicting women in strong leadership roles. In 1957, it was pulled from the Detroit Public Library because it was deemed to have “no value for children of today.”

It's easy to look at these cases and call them silly. But this kind of stuff happens all the time. Actually, you might even have looked through my list above and thought at least once, "I understand that one."

In our own state, one half of a writing team being openly gay caused a local publisher to back out of a publishing deal within the last couple weeks, even though the book had nothing to do with homosexuality. We frequently see news stories of books that are challenged by parents who deem the book unacceptable for schools or libraries.

Sure, it's important for parents to be involved in their children's education, and for schools to be sensitive to certain community standards. But even in Utah, our community includes many types of people with a variety of beliefs and standards and attitudes. So should we just let the majority decide what's appropriate? Anti-censorship laws exist partly to protect minority opinions and beliefs from being trampled by either the majority or by the government. Besides, community standards should not be set by one noisy parent or group of parents, and it's usually a very small number of people who make a loud enough fuss to get a book removed from a class or a library, nothing even close to a majority.

It's one thing to go to a teacher to privately raise your child's sensitivity to a book depicting child abuse because of something that happened to that child. A good teacher should be understanding and suggest an alternative. It's another to demand that no child have access to that book, including the kid who, unknown to you, is going through that hell right now and needs to see that he is not alone and to see how the book's character deals with it. If you have a serious beef with assigned reading material, raise it with the teacher. Maybe there's an alternative for your child. But don't rob the whole class of the opportunity to read something that could turn out to be meaningful or even life-changing. And if there's not an alternate book to read, it's a great opportunity to discuss the book with your child, and to teach that not everybody has the same standards or ideas, a lesson that will prove valuable many times in life.

Removing books from schools irks me, but it's the attack on library shelves that bothers me the most. A library has no value if it is not allowed to contain a broad spectrum of ideas, even those that are found offensive by some. Art, including literature, often contains big ideas and big ideas are sure to offend somebody. In fact, if an idea doesn't upset somebody somewhere, it's probably not worth much.

"The truth is, outside of arithmetic, it’s hard to teach anything worth learning that someone won’t find offensive or upsetting or frightening or off-putting. If it’s interesting, if it’s something people care about, then people are going to have opinions about it. That means somebody, somewhere, isn’t going to like it. The drive to keep our children perfectly safe from dangerous knowledge just ends up reducing their education to a bland, boring, irrelevant slog." --Noah Berlatsky (Quoted at http://cbldf.org/2013/03/missing-the-point-on-persepolis/) 

And my friends who are deeply into numbers remind me that even deep math principles can cause arguments and upset people.

Last year, one of my reading goals was to read a certain number of banned books throughout the year. Some of the most valuable and enjoyable and meaningful books I read came from the lists of frequently challenged books. This year, I have different goals, although I have read several books from the lists. If you read much, it's hard not to. So many great books have been challenged or banned. This year, in support of Banned Book Week, I will read only banned books in September. Try it with me. Discover for yourself what other people want to keep from you under the banner of "community standards."

Ideas: What do you do with a Great Idea?

by Deren Hansen

What do you do with a great idea?

First, a reminder: one idea isn't enough to carry a novel. Long-form stories are best understood as a complex molecule made up of great idea atoms.

So, what do you do when you have a number of ideas in intriguing relationships?

Like any good evil genius, you turn to science!

Kuhn, 1962 (from Wikipedia)

More to the point, you turn to the history of science. Thomas Khun, a physicist who also studied the history of science, wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. In that book, Kuhn challenged the notion that science was steadily progressive and argued that it is in fact episodic.

The two key ideas I want to introduce here are the alternating phases of revolutionary and normal science that make up an episode in Kuhn's model.

Revolutionary science is the time when a breakthrough throws the field wide open. Like settlers pouring into newly open territory, scientist rush from one discovery to the next as they map out the new landscape of possibilities.

Once the early leaders in the revolution have discovered the extent of the breakthrough, the discipline settles back into normal science mode. Normal science is far less glamorous than revolutionary science because it's about the careful work of confirming the initial findings and filling in the details.

"That nice for historians and scientists," you might say, "but what does it have to do with writing or creativity in general?"

A great idea is like the breakthrough that triggers a period of revolutionary science. But that's only the beginning of the job. In order to develop a novel-length story, you must do the literary equivalent of the work of normal science.

What do I mean by that?

Let's say you've just had an epiphany: the world will end when pigs actually start to fly--it's the Flying Pig Apocalypse! Tingling with excitement, you sit down to write ... and immediately run into questions: how do they fly? Levitation? Wings that grow because a mad scientist wanted bacon-flavored buffalo wings? Lighter-than air gas bladders? Do they flock or are they loners? Do they cause the apocalypse by flying, or is the fact that they take flight a sign of the impending apocalypse?

My point is that a "great" idea isn't ready to become a story until you've done the detailed, far less thrilling work of thinking through the implications of the great idea.

Like science, which we tend to think of only in terms of revolutionary breakthroughs, creativity is more about the normal work of thinking carefully about the "great" idea than the revolutionary work of having the idea in the first place.


Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. This article is from Sustainable Creativity: How to Enjoy a Committed, Long-term Relationship with your Muse. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

What Were Your Favorite Summer Reads?

By Julie Daines

The kids are back in school and summer has come to an end. Time for homework, writing, and all that responsible grown-up stuff. I'll miss having all the extra reading time.

Some of my summer reads this year:

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier (Not a children's or YA book, but I loved it.)

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (Also not YA but a lovely retelling of the snow child fairy tale.)

Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier (Not YA. This is my third time through on this book. If you like Irish-based fantasy, Juliet Marillier is amazing.)

I didn't read much in the children's, MG, and YA category this summer. I usually try to read a lot of YA because that's what I write, but I felt a need for some mature reading.

What did you read this summer that you loved?

Antagonists

The basic formula for a story goes something like this: a main character wants something; MC sets out to achieve that thing; MC meets with obstacles; MC overcomes obstacles. Simple, right? Everyone can write a novel. No big deal

Quiet often the conflict the MC faces is generated by an antagonist. Antagonists can be the demons floating around in the protagonist's head or they can be the classic arch-villain, the schoolyard bully, Darth Vader, or Lord Voldemort. We will stick to the human, physical antagonist for our purposes here. The writer needs to understand their antagonist.

Antagonists are not just bad guys wearing black hats. They are complex people with their own histories and goals. It is not that they oppose the protagonist. They have their own agenda that they are trying to accomplish. In a reversal of roles, your MC is the obstacle the antagonist encounters in reaching their goal. The school bully wants money to buy cigarettes. Vader tries to bring Luke to the dark side. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wants power and immortality. And they all have histories that rationalize their behaviors

John Truby in his Anatomy of Story says that “the trick to defining your hero and figuring out your story is to figure out your opponent.” He says writers should love their antagonist because he will aid the writer in so many ways. The opponent is important structurally. Antagonists attack the MC’s weakness, forcing the hero to deal with them and grow. Thus, the MC learns through the antagonist.

The repeated theme at WIFYR this summer was to torture your characters. A session by agent, Ammi-Joan Paquette, touched on the subject. Your role as a writer, she said, is to be the evil overlord, not the hero’s mother. Make your antagonists bigger, stronger, and smarter than the MC. Let them throw up the roadblocks and thwart your hero at every turn.

Antagonists, you’ve got to love them.

(This article also posted at http://writetimeluck.blogspot.com )

Reducing Clutter On Your Windows Desktop

There are many ways to reduce clutter on your desktop to help cut down on distractions when you are writing. You can delete unnecessary icons by installing a launcher, for example. One of my favorites is to use a virtual desktop app like Dexpot, which lets me set up a Windows desktop screen with nothing but my writing programs and a suitable background.

Today, I've been testing another way, and I've decided I like it.

The Windows interface is familiar and comfortable. At least it is if you like Windows. But it is not particularly clean. Most of us have everything we ever use, right at our fingertips. This is convenient, unless we want to focus on something, like getting that manuscript finished.

But did you know you can replace the standard Windows shell (the stuff you see on your screen)? Your computer still runs Windows underneath, and you can easily switch back to the regular Windows interface.

There are several free shells available. I tested three today, and decided I like one called SharpEnviro. SharpEnviro is easy to install and configure, and it gives me a sleek and clean Windows screen:

This does not look like the Windows you are used to, but I assure you, all it is is Windows 7 with a new skin. I created my own theme with my own favorite background picture, but there are premade themes that make setup even easier.

I can still get to all my programs from the Scott menu at the top left. Frankly, the program menu in that main menu is not designed very well, but in this case, that's a good thing. If it's inconvenient to get to my favorite software distractions, I'm less likely to go there.

Because this shell is completely customizable, I placed links to my favorite writing programs in an application toolbar just left of top center. I even created a Writing menu with links to programs, project files, and my writing folder:

Everything I need is easily accessible.

I could easily take this a step further. Right now, I've set up my screen to provide everything I normally use. However, I could set it up so stuff that has nothing to with writing is harder to get to, or even hide everything that has no place in my authoring environment. Because switching to this shell requires a restart (once there, I can switch back to my regular Windows with a click, but I could hide that if I wanted), it would be inconvenient to leave my environment to check Facebook or email, provided, of course, that I don't make an easy link to my browser.

For me, and probably for you, the browser can be part of my writing environment because I use it for research. My browser is my primary dictionary and thesaurus. So I wouldn't hide it. But what I might do is set up a different browser with bookmarks only to my writing tools. For example, right now my main browser is Firefox, so maybe I would set up Chrome or Opera or Safari as a writing browser. Or maybe I would set this writing environment solely for the writing part of the job and do my research on a different space, or keep it off the main screen by using one of the built-in virtual desktops. The virtual desktops lack the customizable icons and backgrounds that Dexpot provides, but they give you additional screens so you can keep different tasks separate, like you can on the screens on your iPad or Android tablet. So you could keep your browser tucked away on Screen 2 while you work on screen one, so it requires some effort to get there. Even if it is only a click, at least it's out of your sight while you write.

You might find the idea of using an alternative shell a little frightening. You don't need to, as long as you are moderately comfortable with menu-based configuration screens. There's no scripting or hacking required. Plus, all of your usual Windows stuff, including the look and feel you are used to, is a click away. Even if you don't use the one-click way to get back because it's a little too easy, you can set things up to go back to regular Windows when you restart.

I added the option to go back to Windows with a click to my launcher, a separate program called RocketDock, which I keep hidden out of the way at the top of my screen. I have to move the cursor to the top center of my screen to get to it. That link is also in my Scott menu, but at least it's not on the desktop, which is the default configuration. Desktop icons are distracting and too easy to hit when I should be writing.

 So, if you are looking for a way to create a unique writing environment on your all-too-familiar computer, you might want to give SharpEnviro a try, or at least read up on it to see if it's what you're looking for.