THE WRITE SISTERS

Women of Wednesday--A Book Recommendation

2012-02-01T06:05:00.003-05:00

I thought today I'd recommend a book for those of you who like nonfiction. It's Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden (Scribner, 2011).

It's a detailing of the author's discovery of her grandmother, Dorothy Woodruff's, early life. Woodruff, and her childhood friend, Rosamund Underwood, were born in Auburn, New York at the end of the 19th century. They both came from well-off families and lived lives of relative ease with servants to take care of their needs. They attended the all-women school, Smith College, and graduated in 1909. But rather than pursue the path of others of their station--marriage and/or performing acts of charity--the women traveled, and then, a half-dozen years later, took jobs as school teachers in the newly settled Elkhead Mountain region of Colorado.

I found the book to be perfectly fascinating, most especially in the way it shattered the conceptions I had of women in the pre-World War I United States. For example, my idea of a Smith College education didn't include this, as related by Dorothy Woodruff, "I loved every minute...I was invited to join all of the fun and social clubs that there were." And, "Life was very relaxed and easy." This easiness was not as a result of Dorothy's being an exceptionally quick learner. According to her granddaughter, with grades of two Ds, two C-s, a B-, and a C+, Dorothy "was put on probation." Somehow I saw a college education at the time as being close to torturous in its demands and expectations. Dorothy stayed at Smith for all four years, had FUN, and still managed to graduate.

Even in the wilds of Colorado, while teaching the "backward children," the two women found the time and energy for extracurricular activities! Wickenden tells the reader that the two "became adept at organizing community-wide parties."

Of course, the book is about more than girls wanting to have fun--there's a little about the settling of the west, a little about the hardscrabble existence of those in Elkhead, a little about western romance, and a whole lot about living a life of your own making!

Nothing Daunted has its own website where there are many pictures--click here. I hope you'll pick up a copy of the book and see if it doesn't make you rethink your idea of early 20th century society women! It would also make a great book discussion title for those of you in a book group.

--Diane

Mentor Monday--What's All This I Hear about Ebooks?

2012-01-30T06:17:00.006-05:00

Ebooks are here, and if you're not aware of that fact, you'd better get your head out of the sand and start learning about them!

A good place to begin is at ereadable: ebooks made simple.

What does it all mean to you as a writer? Lots! Where before all you had to worry about was whether or not your audience could read, now you have to worry about what kind of devices your audience USES to read and how to manipulate your text and/or images to fit those devices. And then you have to figure out how to sell your ebook. Not even the big publishing houses have it all worked out, so you can't depend on them anymore! You may be on your own if you expect to make any money at all from your writing.

To get an idea of how complicated things are getting, check out this article by Anne Hill. Or visit eisforbook.com, a children's writers/illustrators' blog devoted to the topic of producing ebooks for kids.

If you're not already a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, it's probably time you joined. It's a whole new world out there and you're going to need help in navigating it! Check out this article on a recent announcement by Apple and you'll quickly realize you're going to need all the help you can get.

Finally, if you have zero experience with ebooks, I'd suggest visiting your local public library. I'd be very surprised if your local library didn't offer ebooks, either through a service such as Overdrive or 3M, or if they didn't have some preloaded ereaders available to check out, so that you can try out one before buying. It's probably time to visit your local library if you haven't been there in a while!

--Diane

One thing more: Here's a trailer for a newly released nonfiction ebook app: http://www.batsfurryfliers.com/bats/. I can definitely see the appeal! I just wonder how many families can afford an iPad for each kid?

Poetry Friday

2012-01-27T09:41:00.003-05:00

The Snowman

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the Januay sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

Today's Poetry Friday is over at Hey, Jim Hill where you'll find more great poetry.

Hedy Lamarr: Not Just Another Pretty Face

2012-01-25T09:50:00.004-05:00

‘On a recent evening, sitting home alone suffering and brooding about my treatment at the police station because of an incident in a department store, and being replaced by Zsa Zsa Gabor in a motion picture (imagine how that pleased the ego!) I figured out that I had made – and spent – some thirty million dollars. Yet earlier that day I had been unable to pay for a sandwich at Schwab’s drug-store.’

Thus begins the autobiography of Hedy Lamarr, Hollywood film actress and, unknown to most of the world, the woman who created the patent that would lead to cell phones, WiFi, and other wireless technology.

Unfortunately for Hedy, few people were interested in her brain power. All they cared about were her looks. As a teenager acting in Berlin, she was dubbed, ‘the most beautiful woman in Europe.’ During her reign as a Hollywood actress, she was known as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ Hedy had a different take on it. "My face has been my misfortune . . . a mask I cannot remove. I must live with it. I curse it." Her words sound almost like lines from a B movie.

Hedy was born on November 9, 1913 in Vienna, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her real name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. Her father was a banker, her mother was a pianist. Hedy studied piano and ballet, but it was her face that made her fortune. Even as a teen just starting out in film, she landed major roles, and then along came Ecstasy, a film in which she did some nude scenes and, using only her face, portrayed a woman having an orgasm so well, many people thought it was real. Hedy claimed it was simply her director ‘poking her in the bottom with a safety pin.’

That same year, at age 19, she married a 32 year old arms manufacturer, Friedrich Mandl, but marriage didn’t turn out the way she imagined. Friedrich kept her a virtual prisoner locked up in his castle. He put an end to her acting career, and bought up every copy of Ecstasy he could, to prevent others from seeing it. Hedy had little contact with the outside world. Her social life was curtailed to the lavish parties Friedrich threw, where she played the charming hostess to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini, and to being dragged to his business meetings where the talk was all about military technology.

Unknown to the men at those meetings, Hedy understood everything they talked about. While they may have imagined her to be nothing more than the pretty young thing Friedrich was obsessed with, she was sitting there listening and learning. Hedy was a high school dropout, but she hadn’t left school because it was too difficult. She had a natural talent for math and science and had always been a tinkerer. She left school to become production assistant to Max Reinhardt, a famous German director. It was quite an opportunity, especially for a teenager, although one has to wonder at Max’s motives. It was he who dubbed her the most beautiful woman in Europe.

Needless to say, Hedy wasn’t happy in her marriage. After five years of being squashed under Friedrich’s pressing thumb, she knew she had to get away. She disguised herself as a maid and slipped out of the castle. She made her way to Paris and got a divorce, then headed to London where she met Louis B. Mayer. He signed her up and changed her name, and her life as a Hollywood actress began.

In the summer of 1940, Hedy met her neighbor, George Antheil, a concert pianist turned film composer, who had been experimenting with the automated control of musical instruments. He was known for his Ballet Mecanique, a musical score in which multiple player pianos and xylophones were all synchronized to play at the same time. As they chatted, the conversation turned to the war and weapons, which Hedy knew a lot about, thanks to her controlling ex-husband, and before she knew it, they were talking radio controlled torpedoes, jamming, and frequency hopping.

Hedy went home and her and George’s conversation went with her. She couldn’t get it out of her head. After thinking about it for some time, she returned to George and told him about this idea she had about protecting radio controlled torpedoes. As it stood, all the enemy had to do to make a torpedo ineffectual was to jam the radio signal that operated it. And with only one signal being used, it was easy to find. But if multiple radio frequencies were used, the enemy would have a harder time finding the right frequency, which would make jamming much more difficult.

Together, they worked on Hedy’s idea and came up with a piano roll that changed between 88 different frequencies (the number of keys on a piano). They submitted their idea to the patent office in June, 1941 and received a patent for it (US patent 2,292,387) in August, 1942. They presented their idea to the Navy, but it was shot down. The Navy felt ‘it was too bulky and unreliable to use with a torpedo,’ even though Antheil told them it could be miniaturized to fit inside a watch.

"In our patent Hedy and I attempted to better elucidate our mechanism by explaining that certain parts of it worked like the fundamental mechanism of a player piano. Here, undoubtedly, we made our mistake. The reverend and brass-headed gentlemen in Washington who examined our invention read no further than the words "player piano."

"My god," I can see them saying, "We shall put a player piano in a torpedo."

Twenty two years later, after the patent had expired, the Navy used the idea during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1998, Wi-Lan Inc., an Ottowa wireless technology developer, ‘acquired a 49% claim to the patent from Lamarr (Antheil had died) for an undisclosed amount of stock.’ They didn’t have to give her anything. Her patent had expired. But they chose to do the ethical thing. Hedy and Antheil’s frequency hopping was an early form of spread spectrum communication technology, which brought us cell phones and WiFi.

After filing her patent, Hedy tried to join the National Inventors Council but was told she could do more by selling war bonds. They didn’t take her seriously because she was not only a woman, but a beautiful woman, and if a woman had any brains at all, they would have to be in the head of someone far less attractive. So Hedy went and sold war bonds, bringing in $7,000,000 at a single event. It’s said she sold kisses at $50,000 a smack.

Hedy continued on in her acting career and, in nine years, made eighteen movies. She married five times and had two children, and was twice arrested for shoplifting, once in 1966, after her career had fizzled, and again when she was 78 years old. It seems this multi-talented woman could not manage her own finances.

After her autobiography came out, (which may have been written because she needed the money. It came out a year after her first shoplifting incident) she sued her publisher, claiming her ghost writer had invented several anecdotes, including one that claimed she’d slept with a man in a brothel during her escape from Friedrich. She lost the case. On another occasion, she threatened to sue the producers of Blazing Saddles because Harvey Korman’s character, Hedley Lamarr , was constantly referred to as Hedy. They settled out of court. And in the mid ‘90's, she sued Corel, who had used a Corel-drawn image of her on their packaging. They, too, settled out of court.

In 1998, she was awarded the Electronic Frontier Foundation Award in recognition of her patent, to which she replied, "It’s about time," and in 2003, Boeing ran recruitment ads featuring her as a woman of science. They did not mention her acting career at all.

Hedy had gained instant fame at the age of 19 for being beautiful. She would be 84 before the world acknowledged her intelligence. She lived only two years after being recognized for her contribution to spread spectrum communication technology, and died of natural causes in her Florida home on January 19th, 2000. She was 86 years old.

Narrowing Your Focus in Nonfiction

2012-01-23T10:42:00.008-05:00

One of the quickest ways to get overwhelmed when writing nonfiction is to try to cover a subject from top to bottom, especially when your word count is only 500 words or less. Let’s face it, you can’t include everything there is to know about pigs in a children’s magazine article or even a book. The subject is just too broad. In fact, most subjects are. And while you can certainly tackle a broad subject, keep in mind that the broader the focus, the less room you have to spend on any one idea. The result is generally either a big, fat book - the kind you don’t see very often in children’s publishing - or one that is merely a list of facts and general information that reads like an encyclopedia entry.

So if pigs are what you want to write about, consider what you already know. Well, they snort, have curly tails and make mighty fine bacon. While bacon is always a tasty topic, we probably don’t want to talk to kids about butchering pigs, and the other two choices are just meh. It’s time to do some research.

As you pore through everything you can find out about pigs, you perhaps learn they are intelligent animals, that they’re used in medical research, and they have a talent for sniffing out truffles. Consider the information you’ve gathered and choose a topic that interests you. If you decide on truffle hunting pigs, that’s your focus. Everything you write should relate to truffles and the pigs who sniff them out. No matter how much cool stuff you come across, if it isn’t about truffle hunting pigs, or can’t be slanted toward truffle hunting pigs, it doesn’t belong in the article. Save the info and put it aside for now.

If your choice was pigs in medical research, you may have to narrow your focus again. Find out what kind of research is done with pigs and choose one area. Maybe you’re interested in experiments on aging or cancer. Maybe it’s on the unethical use of pigs in experimentation. Again, pick the area that interests you most. If that area is still too broad, like cancer research, you may have to narrow your focus once more to a particular kind of cancer. And if you find that something extraordinary came out of one particular experiment, you may want to narrow your focus yet again to just that one experiment.

A narrower focus will give you a more compelling, reader-friendly story every time. It allows the writer to concentrate on just one aspect of a topic instead of five or seven or ten. It allows you to give a topic some depth. Consider The History of Horse Racing vs Seabiscuit, or How Medical Cures are Found vs Lorenzo’s Oil.

The narrower focus also allows readers to come away from the piece with an understanding of what truffles are and how pigs sniff them out, or how this one particular experiment saved millions of lives, whereas in a broader article, the reader may see just that one line - pigs are sometimes used to sniff out truffles, or experiments on pigs have saved many lives. If they want more information, they have to look elsewhere.

Another advantage of the narrow focus is that it can do much more for your writing career than writing broad. Let’s say you write that big fat book, All About Pigs. How long did it take you to research? How long did it take you to organize all that research? How long did it take to write that big fat book and sell it? And in the end, what do you have? One pay check and a dead topic. Now you have to go research something else, and by the time you finish that, the editor you worked with on the first book has moved on, or has no interest in your next topic.

Compare that to a narrowly focused book. Let’s say you write The Truffle Hunting Pig and the research, organization, and writing time takes just as long as the fat book. In the end, you have a book that’s easier to sell, and once you sell it, you can immediately pitch your editor - still there, still interested in pigs, and still remembering who you are - if she’d be interested in another pig book, this one on how a special pig saved millions of lives.

Another book, another paycheck.

And remember all that cool information you had but couldn’t use in the truffle book? It’s all fodder for future pig books. As long as you keep that narrow focus, you can write about pigs as long as you want to. You’ll end up with a nice backlist of books, (hopefully earning you some nice residual income,) and you’ll have carved out a niche for yourself by becoming the woman who writes about pigs, or strange moments in history, or volcanoes, or Hispanic musicians, or whatever it is that you like to write about. You become, in effect, an expert.

So if you’re considering writing nonfiction (and you should, because it’s easier to break into print in nonfiction than it is in fiction) forget about the big picture for awhile. Limit your perspective. Be specific. And think small.

Poetry Friday: The Chaos

2012-01-20T05:07:00.007-05:00

A delight for those of us who love words, and anyone who has ever struggled with English spelling and pronunciation! This brilliant poem* was originally written by a Dutch teacher and amateur linguist, Gerard Nolst Trenité, as a part of his book Drop your foreign accent. The book went through eleven editions; the poem appeared as an appendix to the fourth edition and then continued to grow and change –you can easily imagine how new verses must have presented themselves to him once he’d gotten started on the project. There are apparently a number of regional variations as well and I suspect others may have contributed their own bits of inspiration to Trenité's original.

I’ll include just a couple of stanzas here to give you a taste of it.

Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.

I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tearin eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer,fair seer, hear my prayer.

Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Diesand diet, lord and word.

I hadn’t heard of this poem until someone started sharing iton Facebook a couple of weeks ago. In case you missed it there, here’s a link to the whole poem and detailed notes about its origins and the development of this particular version.

Libravox, bless them, offers multiple versions of the poem, a downloadable file of the entire book, and several audio files so you can enjoy different readers’ approaches to the poem. Great fun.

*Purists will argue that this is not actually a poem, as it is devoid of any kind of metaphor or other imagery, and that a rhyme, no matter how clever, does not a poem make. Which is of course true, so The Chaos is perhaps better termed a brilliant exercise of doggerel. But then there is an argument about whether doggerel, done intentionally, is not a form of poetry?

Poetry Friday is being hosted this week at Wild Rose Reader.

Women of Wednesday: Funny grammar gurus

2012-01-18T04:55:00.001-05:00

Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Lynne Truss

As I have been obsessing a little about grammar and such, Iam reminded of two of my favorite writers – Karen Elizabeth Gordon and LynneTruss.

If you are uncertain about your grounding in grammar, punctuation, orusage (and if you went to school between the late sixties and the 1980s, youprobably should be), you should seek out the works of these two clever women.

Unlike the inimitable (and insufferable) Elements ofStyle, Gordon’s and Truss’ books are funny and encouraging.

Gordon’s TheTransitive Vampire: a Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and theDoomed came to my rescue back when I was struggling to teach that which I hadnever been taught. It has since been released in an updated edition, and joinsher other books exploring the English language in all its unruly glory.

Twenty years after Gordon’s Vampire created a subgenre forfunny grammar books, Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves burst on thescene to amuse and convict all of us about our increasingly-casual approach topunctuation.

Gordon’s books address a broader range of issues and havethe distinct advantage of indices, while Eats, Shoots and & Leavesis more of a “why” than a “how” book and may inspire the reader to taking up acrusade (the chapter on Apostrophes inspired Kathy and I in our surreptitiousattacks on posters and signs in a number of Boston hospitals).

You should probably still keep a copy of the AP Stylebook onyour shelf, but spending some time with these funny Ladies of Grammar will almostcertainly make you a better – and happier – writer.

Mentor Monday: Revising, Part 2

2012-01-16T05:32:00.003-05:00

For this exercise in editing I’d like to suggest that youpull one of those old manuscripts we all have stashed around the house to usefor practice. You can work on whatever your most recent WIP is, of course, butchances are you’ll be more aware, and more willing to be ruthless, with a pieceyou’re more removed from.

There are, essentially, two kinds of editing to consider.Both are important, and to some degree you will probably do themsimultaneously, but it is worth noting the differences between the two.

First is the editing we do to clean up the manuscript. Thisincludes searching for and correcting actual errors of grammar, spelling andpunctuation, as well as editing to improve the style and flow of the work. Wewant the manuscripts we submit to be the very best representation of our workpossible. We don’t want any distracting conflicts or awkwardness to draw thereader’s attention to the words instead of the content. This is the kind ofediting that these exercises will focus on.

There is, however, another critical kindof editing, and that is the editing we do to make our manuscripts conform tothe requirements of the publisher. If you are writing on assignment, yourpublisher will have given you specific guidelines for the work you are doing.If you are writing on spec (“speculation,” meaning that you are going to submitthe manuscript without the publisher having made any commitment to buying it),you need to figure out what the guidelines are. Many times publishers haveprinted guidelines which you can find on their websites or request by mail (oneof the places where the old fashioned Self-Addressed-Stamped-Envelope, or SASE,is still appropriate). With or without written guidelines, you will also wantto analyze other works in the series or imprint you hope to sell to.

Editingfor publisher’s requirements includes such details as word count and readinglevel. It may also involve subtleties such as how often a key word repeats on apage; stylistic preferences such as whether “Black” and “White” are capitalizedwhen they are being used as race-defining adjectives (and indeed, whether thepublisher uses those terms or not); and such content-preferences as whether thereare an equal number of male and female characters in a story or examples in anarticle. (You should also notice style points like whether the publisher allowsor discourages complex sentences, such as that last one. Many publishers wouldnever print such a thing, although it is grammatically standard.)

I recommend that in your first edit you target thosepublishing requirements. There’s little point in investing time and effortperfecting your parallel structure if your publisher is going to require onlysimple sentences in the final draft, and if your manuscript needs to be cut by15% to make the word count, you don’t want to be doing that after you’velovingly coiffed each phrase. So do the cutting, trimming, and rewording youneed to do to fit the publication first.

Next you want to look for the kinds of grammar errors thatoften slip past us when we’re writing. First and most important step: Read yourwork out loud. Really. Go in the bathroom and close the door if you need to,but read it out loud. This does two things. First off, it slows you down andmakes you notice each individual word. You will be surprised at the things thatleap off the page when you’re reading aloud that slip past when you readsilently. The leftover “ing” from when you changed the verb structure. Thedoubled prepositions. The hanging bits of dialog tags. They all become obviouswhen you stumble across them as you pronounce those sentences you’ve crafted socarefully.

And speaking of stumbling, the other advantage of readingaloud is the number of places where you discover that a phrase is awkward or asentence ungrammatical because it doesn’t sound “right.” You may or may notknow the name of your error, but you can hear it – and, oftentimes fix it,without ever actually identifying its species.

There are, however, species of errors you should be aware ofand search for. Dangling prepositions, for example, which are a particular weaknessof mine (as you will have noticed in this post, if you are sensitive to suchthings.) Dangling prepositions are not the bugbears they once were, as manygrammarians have conceded that they are, in fact, indigenous to the structureof English and were only considered “wrong” because they don’t work in Latin.Nevertheless, in formal writing they are still to be avoided when possible,which generally means flipping a sentence around (or just dropping thepreposition – I could have said, “flipping the sentence” and you’d have knownwhat I meant.)

Agreement is another common problem to look for. Pluralnouns require plural verbs, while a singular noun requires asingular verb form (see?). Collectives can be tricky (and are handled differently in England than in the States) so pay particularattention to those. And don’t rely entirely on your word processor’s grammarprogram. As I write this, Word is insisting that in the sentence above I shouldsay “is a particular weakness” rather than “are,” presumably because it is asingular weakness, although possibly because it thinks “example” is the subject, rather than “prepositions.” If you strip out all the intervening words,it becomes more clear: “Prepositions are my weakness” not “prepositions ismy weakness” (which deliberate error, ironically, Word is ignoring). The use of“their” and “them” to avoid saying “he/his” or “she/hers” leads inevitably tomismatches, and highlights the other big area of agreement issues: pronouns and their antecedents. (The antecedent is the thing the pronoun is standing in for. If it was singular, then the pronoun needs to be singular. If it was male, the pronoun is male. But what if it is neutral or unknown? Standard English says "male," modern sensibilities say "Ack!" Simplest approach is to make the antecedent plural, if you can.(But see this great post about the "singular they."

While you’re inspecting your verbs, check for tenseconsistency. If your account is in the present tense then things that happenedpreviously are past tense, and if your account is written in the past tense,previous action is in the past perfect– but then when you come back to youraccount, did you come back to the correct tense? These kinds of inconsistenciesoften creep in during rewriting.

Parallel structure is another thing to check while you’rescanning the verbs, although it is a nice stylistic touch that applies toadjective phrases as well. “After Johnny ate lunch, washing his hands andplaying with his toys it was time to go home.” “Susie’s favorite dress had pinkbows and gray kittens but was woolen. “ Read aloud. . .

Double check uses of the verbs “to be” and “to have:” whileboth are obviously very useful in their own right, each also gets a great dealof work as an auxiliary verb, and auxiliary verbs tend to lead to weakexpression. Everyone has heard “don’t use the passive voice” (say, “Johnny hitMary,” not “Mary was hit by Johnny.”) Other auxiliaries are similarlyweakening: “he has gone” vs “he went,” “she may be lost” vs “she is lost.” Ifyou want to mitigate the impact, then use the auxiliary, but do sointentionally.

Adverbs and adjectives are other words that can be used tofill in details and make a story more vivid – or that can just be filler. Ingeneral if you can find a single word that conveys your meaning, it will bestronger than a pair of words. And shorter, which is a good thing when you havea strict word count!

It’s best to go over your work looking for just one of thesekinds of correction at a time. You will focus more sharply on the text thatway. (Think of it as having several different fine-toothed combs, each of whichpulls out different kinds of nits.)

Over time (and with the help of your critique group) youwill doubtless discover YOUR particular weaknesses. Be sure to do a final sweeplooking for those.

If you’re uncertain about your grammar, there are somehelpful websites you may find useful:

Purdue has great info for their students.

Grammar Girl has a light approach and a very handy search function: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

The University of Northern Iowa has a “Dr. Grammar” page with lots of goodthings – and a great links page.

Next time (Finally) proof-reading!

Literary Sibs

2012-01-15T13:04:00.002-05:00

One of our readers, Rose King, alerted us to a post that discusses literary siblings "9 Coolest Literary Siblings." We thought we'd we share it with you, too. Click here to read it.

I was happy to see Lucy and Freddy Honeychurch from E.M. Forster's A Room With a View mentioned. I love the book, and the filmed version is excellent, too (as a matter of fact, it is my #3 all-time favorite movie). A book discussion group I once belonged to read the book and then met to watch the video version. It was practically word for word the same--a rare thing in filmed adaptations.

--Diane

Poetry Friday: Canis Major

2012-01-13T09:40:00.000-05:00

The great Overdog,
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye,
Gives a leap in the east.

He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.

I'm a poor underdog,
But tonight I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark.

-- Robert Frost

Tara is a sixth grade teacher in NJ, and I'm sure she's happy as heck it's Friday. Check out today's PF offerings at her blog A Teaching Life.

I know this poem has made appearances at Poetry Friday shindigs before. Still, it's always good to review! For a cool analysis, check out Kelly Fineman's Canis Major post here.

That's my boy, Cooper. He and I are happy it's Friday, too. Tonight, we'll be doing our share of leaping, dancing, barking, and romping . . .

Women of Wednesday: Amy Beach

2012-01-11T00:09:00.001-05:00

Many of the women we feature on our Wednesday blog entries are chosen because they triumphed over fate’s challenges. The story of Amy Beach is different. The renowned composer’s success can said to have come in spite of having too much of a good life.

Amy Marcy Cheney was born on September 5, 1867 in Henniker, NH. She had fair hair and large blue eyes and, as a child, was said to be small for her age. Amy’s mother, aunt, and grandmother were all musically talented and Amy soon proved that she would surpass them all. By age 1, her mother wrote that she could hum 40 different tunes. She was extremely sensitive to sound and pitch. Loud noises frightened her and if her mother did not sing songs as Amy had first heard them, she fussed. Later, when she had learned to talk, she would admonish her mother to “sing it clean.”

Clara Cheney was a strict disciplinarian who intended that her daughter continue to love music but also grow up to be a proper young lady. She feared that if she pushed Amy too soon, she would tire of her gift. She did not allow the child to touch the piano. So Amy played the songs in her imagination, pounding her fingers on a table.

Clara’s sister, “Aunt Franc” as Amy called her, was not as strict. During a visit, she sat Amy on her lap and allowed the little girl to play. Amy played the songs she had heard her mother perform, leaving out certain notes her stubby fingers could not reach but still managing to create appropriate chords. Clara became her daughter’s piano teacher.

The Cheneys moved to Roxbury, MA, and Clara, feeling that she had taught Amy all she could, looked for a more advanced music teacher. In those days, wealthy musical talents went to Germany to study. Clara would have had to split up her family in order to accompany Amy to the continent. Also, studying in Europe would imply that Amy was preparing for a career in music. Proper young Boston ladies did not have careers. Instead, Clara did the next best thing and hired a piano teacher who had studied in Germany.

Amy formally debuted as a pianist in October, 1883 at the Boston Music Hall. For the next two years she performed solo concerts throughout the Boston area. Following an 1885 performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Amy was invited by conductor Wilhelm Gericke to attend any BSO rehearsals so she could study the scores. But Amy’s life took a slight detour.

In August, 1885, the Cheneys announced Amy’s engagement to widower Dr. H.H.A. Beach. He was a year older than her father. They married in December and Amy moved into the wealthy doctor’s Commonwealth Avenue home where servants handled household chores.

Amy ‘s husband allowed her to perform as long as she donated her honorariums to charity. By 1887, Amy’s concert schedule was deeply curtailed. She turned her attention to composition. She could not go out to study. It wouldn’t have been proper. Instead, she became self-taught.

Five years later, she performed her Mass publicly with the BSO and the Handel & Hayden Society. It was the first such composition presented by a woman composer in the United States. Amy was only 25 years old.

In 1893, at the Chicago Columbian Exposition (Chicago’s World Fair) Beach’s commissioned composition, Festival Jubilate, was performed at the grand opening of the Women’s Building. One year later, performances of her work by singers and orchestras outnumbered her own concerts.

Beach’s work was becoming popular all over the U.S. and Europe. Her Gaelic Symphony debuted on 1896. “All Beach” concerts were held and clubs were formed in her honor. Amy was not yet 30.

Amy’s husband died in 1910 and her mother one year later. The two had handled every aspect and decision of her life and career but now Amy insisted on taking over. After her mother’s death, Amy went to Germany.

She toured and studied in Europe until the beginning of World War I. By now, she did not consider herself a concert pianist but instead a composer who occasionally performed her own music and other standards in public.

She continued to play for charity and during the war auctioned some of her original manuscripts to benefit the Red Cross. She became friends with Edward & Marion MacDowell and spent summers at the MacDowell Colony. (See photo, left) She eventually sold her Commonwealth Avenue house and lived portions of each year in a Hillsboro, NH rental, a Cape Cod house, and the Colony.

In 1928, the University of NH awarded both she and Marion MacDowell honorary master’s degrees in music. (Evidently, women weren’t eligible for even “honorary” doctorates). The president of the college later apologized for the gaff.

Her brilliant Canticle of the Sun debuted in 1931 to rave reviews. The next 13 years would mark a slowing of Beach’s number of compositions, a decline in her health, and finally death in 1944. She had successfully worked around the rules set by her mother and husband, contributed large amounts to charity and the arts, and left the world richer for her compositions. The poor little rich girl had done well.

To listen to some of Beach’s work click on the links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc6dCsmKxXM
http://music.yahoo.com/amy-cheney-beach/

Mentor Monday - Adjectives: Sticking to a Fair-Weather Friendship

2012-01-09T04:29:00.003-05:00

So the kids gave me the book I wanted for Christmas: Judy Collins’ autobiographical Sweet Judy Blue Eyes.

I love Judy Collins and her music. I grew up during the folk song craze when television networks actually devoted weekly programming hours to shows that featured the likes of Judy, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, etc. So, I was prepared to love the book. Unfortunately, I forgot that being a writer makes me a pain-in-the-neck reader. The book is generally very well-written. The stories Judy shares about her life are as interesting as I’d hoped. But, I’m sometimes distracted in by her over-use of adjectives. Here’s an example:

“Outside my window, there was a small emerald lawn sheltered by a Russian olive tree whose pale lavender flowers gave off an exotic scent.”

I find such highly descriptive phrases tend to throw me out of the story. My mind does not briefly alight in that place described and use it as a springboard to the following sentence. Instead, I question why I have to know the lawn was emerald-colored instead of just small, and then I think that I’m not familiar with Russian olive trees and wonder what they look like (should I try Google Images?) then I begin to wonder what is meant by an exotic scent (boxwood-like? patchouli maybe?) and on it goes… I realize that I’m no longer in the story because I’ve been told too much about something of little consequence.

Those gods of the written word, Strunk & White, make a point of discouraging the overuse of adjectives. They state: “The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place…In general…it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give good writing its toughness and color.” (pp. 71-72, The Elements of Style)

William Zissner agrees: “Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit—a habit you should get rid of.” (pp. 70-71, On Writing Well)

Become a fair-weather friend of adjectives. Use them only on an as-needed basis. Make accurate nouns and verbs your BFFs. A lawn is a lawn is a lawn and unless it has been dried by drought or burned by a kid with a magnifying glass, we’re going to assume it is some shade of green. Does it matter if it is emerald or kelly or jade? Only if the color alters the story line. Does the smell of the tree’s flowers need to be described? Only if that scent returns later on to help a plot point. e.g. “The exotic scent of the blooming olive tree reminded Evan of the night he’d witnessed a murder in his own back yard.”

Often, writers get stuck in their elementary school writing lessons, when teachers explained how to make descriptions more accurate by using adjectives. But remember that in those days, your vocabulary was still limited. You know a lot more nouns and verbs than you did in the 3rd grade.

Use ‘em.

Poetry Friday: Dishwater

2012-01-06T11:57:00.000-05:00

Slap of the screen door, flat knock
of my grandmother's boxy black shoes
on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep
of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride
out to the edge and then, toed in
with a furious twist and heave,
a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands
and hangs there shining for fifty years
over the mystified chickens,
over the swaying nettles, the ragweed,
the clay slope down to the creek,
over the redwing blackbirds in the tops
of the willows, a glorious rainbow
with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.

-- Ted Kooser

I think Dishwater is one of the BEST POEMS EVER. To find some other candidates, stride on over to Teaching Authors where JoAnn is hosting today.

Women of Wednesday: Isabella Bird

2012-01-04T05:12:00.001-05:00

Isabella was ill. Again. It seemed like every time she returned to England, she was soon suffering from one thing or another. There was only one cure. She had to pack her bags.

Isabella Bird was born in North Yorkshire, Great Britain in 1831. The eldest daughter of a minister, she was a sickly child. When a doctor suggested that a sea voyage might help Isabella find some relief, her father gave her £100 and allowed her to travel to America to visit relatives. She could stay, he said, until her money ran out. Isabella managed to make the gift last for nearly two years.

Unwilling to let this be her only respite from the confines of life in England, Isabella decided she must find a way to fund more travel. Women in the 19th century had few options when it came to making an income, so she wrote a book that detailed her trip to America. The Englishwoman in America was published anonymously upon her return in 1856. Her writings would continue to make future trips possible.

When her father died, Isabella, her mother, and sister moved to Scotland. Isabella visited the Scottish Outer Hebrides (Western Isles) and was shocked at the plight of the tenant farmers there. In later years, she donated some of her writing royalties to help the farmers move to America.

In the following decade, Isabella visited Australia, Hawaii, and Colorado. There she was pursued by “Rocky Mountain Jim” Nugent, whom she would refer to as a “dear desperado.” He was a man, she wrote her sister, that any woman would fall in love with but that none should marry.

Instead, she returned to England and married a doctor, John Bishop. The couple was happy enough (though of course, Isabella again became ill) but Bishop died only five years after their wedding.

Isabella’s next travels included the Asian countries of Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, China, and Malaysia. She wrote books and travel articles about her adventures. Isabella began to feel that her travels and the books she’d written had done little to benefit mankind. She decided to become a missionary and established two hospitals in India, one which she named for her late husband.

As she became more and more famous for her travels, the Scottish Royal Geographical Society made her a fellow—the first woman invited to join. Her next trips included Korea and another visit to China. Her final journey was to Morocco in 1901. Isabella died in 1904.

Was Isabella really sick or did she use illness as an excuse to travel? One writer felt that it was not uncommon for “high-spirited girls” like Isabella, who were “thwarted by…social conventions” to suffer from poor health. Others have suggested that her illnesses were all in her head. Either way, Isabella left us a terrific legacy of information about life in the 19th century world.

Mentor Monday: New Year’s Resolutions for Writers

2012-01-02T04:02:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year! The Write Sisters wish all our fellow scribes a creative and successful year in writing.

It’s traditional to make resolutions each new year. I’ve collected some common ones and have included them here, with a twist for writers:

1. Get organized
*Clean your desk.
*Focus on one or two writing projects and plan to complete them in the upcoming 12 months.

2. Change a habit
* Write every day—even if it’s only for 15 minutes. 15 x 365 / 60/ 24 = nearly 4 full days of writing. Admit it: you spend more time watching TV.
* Create a trigger that will start the writing process e.g. a certain piece of music, a second cup of coffee, etc. and use it every day.

3. Read at least one book - or professional journal - a month
* Read picture books if that’s what you like to write; read books on writing and continue learning from the experts; subscribe to a writer’s magazine.

4. Get enough sleep.
*’nuf said.

5. Take charge of your finances.
* Keep tabs of the money you spend on writing supplies, software, books, etc.
* Look for ways to make money as a writer so the IRS doesn’t consider you a hobbyist. Start with fillers or puzzles for magazines while you wait for that first big sale.

6. Fit in Fitness
*Walk away from your desk. Keep walking. Take your dog.
*Do some gardening, some laundry, wash a floor.
* While you’re walking/gardening/washing, think about your writing.

7. Spend more time with your (fake) family and friends
* Some writers like to learn about their characters by letting the characters reveal themselves. Others like to develop entire back stories for their characters. What works for you?

8. Learn something new
*Technology is not going away. Deal with it. If you don’t have a web site, why not? Start a blog and use it as a daily warm-up. Learn how Facebook, Twitter, and other social media can help your career.

9. Lose weight
* Go through your story and cut, cut, cut. Mae West may have said that too much of a good thing is wonderful but in writing, it’s just annoying.

10. Make new friends

* Network, network, network. It truly is who you know.

A Little R & R

2011-12-26T09:19:00.004-05:00

The Write Sisters are taking a little vacation this week to relax and to get ready for the year ahead. Have a safe and happy New Year!

Postcard courtesy riptheskull.

Poetry Friday--Everything Old is New Again

2011-12-23T00:01:00.003-05:00

I was surprised to find a poem called "The Newest Thing in Christmas Carols" in a book of poetry that was published more than 100 years ago. I guess I thought that the holidays were a little less stressful back then. I was wrong.

The poem is from Christmas: Its Origin, Celebration and Significance As Related in Prose and Verse edited by Robert Haven Schauffler (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1907), a book that was published for use with "children of all ages, in school and at home."

The Newest Thing In Christmas Carols
by Anonymous

God rest you, merry gentlemen!
    May nothing you dismay;
Not even the dyspeptic plats
    Through which you'll eat your way;
Nor yet the heavy Christmas bills
    The season bids you pay;
No, nor the ever tiresome need
    Of being to order gay;

Nor yet the shocking cold you'll catch
    If fog and slush hold sway;
Nor yet the tumbles you must bear
    If frost should win the day;
Nor sleepless nights—they're sure to come—
    When "waits" attune their lay;
Nor pantomimes, whose dreariness
    Might turn macassar gray;
Nor boisterous children, home in heaps,
    And ravenous of play;
Nor yet—in fact, the host of ills
    Which Christmases array.
God rest you, merry gentlemen,
    May none of these dismay!

Except for the clothes, the illustration from the December 17, 1913 issue of Puck magazine could have been recreated at any mall in America on "Black Friday" 2011!

Head over to Dori Reads for this next-to-the-last Poetry Friday Round-Up of 2011. Have a very merry weekend everyone!

--Diane

Illustration courtesy Library of Congress.

Women of Wednesday--Directors

2011-12-21T06:00:00.001-05:00

In 2009, Neda Ulaby, a reporter for NPR's All Things Considered, said, "When women direct, they're in control. And major Hollywood studios cannot exactly bask in their legacies of female empowerment..." This is the explanation of why women directors have had, up to this point, a limited role in directing Hollywood films--a women in power is to be feared. Can this two-year old statement can be applied to the situation today?

It appears not, if Melissa Silverstein is to be believed. She tracks all things related to women and Hollywood on her blog, appropriately titled Women and Hollywood. Silverstein has lists of new and forthcoming films by and about women. Click here and be encouraged by how long the lists are!

One of the major holiday films of 2011, Arthur Christmas, was directed by a woman, Sarah Smith.

Although Smith has been producing and directing television since the 1990s, this is her first major motion picture! I look forward to seeing many more films from her, and other talented women directors, in the future!

[Note: last month I wrote about one of Hollywood's first woman directors, Ida Lupino, check it out if you missed it.]

--Diane

Mentor Monday--Revisit Project Gutenberg

2011-12-19T06:05:00.004-05:00

If you haven't visited the Project Gutenberg site in a while, then stop by soon. They have taken the plunge into providing ebooks for the Kindle reader as well as Android devices. And, as always, you can read the books on a computer. There are now more than 36,000 free titles, with new titles being added daily!

The books are those that have entered the public domain, which means that most were originally published before 1923.

Some people turn up their noses at the idea of reading books published before 1923, but somehow these people forget about all the classics like Jane Austen's works, or those of the Bronte sisters. Tell me you wouldn't be interested in reading Wuthering Heights again!

Project Gutenberg is also a source for items that would be difficult to find in modern libraries, such as memoirs of once famous people. And, if you're researching a time period before 1923, check out some of the then popular magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Young People: An Illustrated Weekly (note: the illustration at the top is from the December 23, 1879 issue), or Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science.

In the September 1864 edition of The Atlantic Monthly I found an article entitled "The Electric Girl of La Perriere." It begins,

Eighteen years ago there occurred in one of the provinces of France a case of an abnormal character, marked by extraordinary phenomena,—-interesting to the scientific, and especially to the medical world. The authentic documents in this case are rare; and though the case itself is often alluded to, its details have never, so far as I know, been reproduced from these documents in an English dress, or presented in trustworthy form to the American public.
....

The weather, for eight days previous to the fifteenth of January, 1846, had been heavy and tempestuous, with constantly recurring storms of thunder and lightning. The atmosphere was charged with electricity.

It seems a poor prepubescent girl, Angélique Cottin, became endowed with electrical powers after the week of wacky weather. The fascinating story goes on to document the numerous learned and not-so-learned people who attempted to explain the young phenom. For today's reader, it's a look into the way superstition and science existed side-by-side. Fascinating and FREE reading!

If you, as a reader, would like to give back to Project Gutenberg, they are always looking for donations of both money and time. Volunteers are needed for several projects, including proofreading. Learn more here.

--Diane

Poetry Friday

2011-12-16T09:52:00.006-05:00

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.
Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems,
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
does not endear him to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
such wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause him to die -
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill,
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say he loves too much, is irresponsible,
is changeable, marries too many wives,
deserts his children, chills all dinner tables
with tales of his nine lives.
Well, he is lucky. Let him be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what he has to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
and dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that hell is where, to live, they have to go.

Alastair Reid

Curious about other great poetry? Head over to Book Aunt for some wonderful water poetry and more!

Women of Wednesday: Grass Woman - The Other Sacagawea

2011-12-14T14:43:00.005-05:00

Most of us know the story of Sacagawea. She has been part of the historical record ever since Lewis and Clark wrote her name down in their journals. I learned about her in elementary school back in the ‘60's, long before inclusion. She was a woman who stood out, even in the days when nobody noticed, let alone wrote about, women or Native Americans. And if we put aside Disney’s version of Pocohontas, she is, for many of us non natives, the first Native American we ever get to know, simply because she was such an integral part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition which is taught in the classroom.

But there was another Sacagawea, a girl who existed before that expedition and after it, a girl we can only imagine. Her real name was Grass Woman, although she was just a little girl. She was Shoshone, and grew up in the mountains between Idaho and Montana and, in the summer, she would have played tag and others games that all children play. In winter, she and her people would trek down into the valleys, searching out grazing land for their horses and wild game for themselves. Grass Woman would have picked berries and learned to sew, to scrape buffalo hides and turn them into clothing. She would have expected to grow up and meet a handsome man and have children of her own, if she even thought that far ahead, because she was, after all, a little girl.

And then, when she was about eleven, a bad thing happened. Another tribe warred against hers. Warriors rushed in on horses. There was yelling and screaming, guns firing, people and horses dying, and then someone whisked her up on a horse and began riding away. A stranger was taking her away from her mother, her father, her siblings and friends. Everything she knew and was vanished in a moment.

The stranger took her east, riding across the plains to places she had never been, and when he put her down in his village, she realized she was not the only one taken away. Many of her friends had been taken, too. That had to have made things less scary, but still, she must have wondered if she’d ever see her family again. She must have spent many nights crying and thinking about escape or rescue.

She lived among the strangers, who may have been Minatarees, and saw some of her friends escape and others sold. But she adapted to the strangers. She learned their language and their ways. Even as an eleven year old, she must have known that was the way to survive - to get along and not make trouble. She may have also been forced into good behavior. And there she was, growing into her teens, making a new life for herself, perhaps still dreaming of returning home some day, when she was suddenly taken for another horse ride, heading east once again, getting further and further away from home, until she reached the Missouri river and the people known as Mandans.

The Mandans stayed put. They farmed and built homes that couldn’t be rolled up and put on a sledge. What might she have been thinking as she stood there in that strange place and saw herself traded for food or guns or cooking pots? Did she give up her idea of ever returning home, or did the hope linger? Did she console herself with the fact that at least the Mandans wouldn’t be moving her further east? And she hadn’t been sold alone. Her friend Otter Woman, about the same age, was sold along with her, and both were purchased by the same man, so neither girl was totally alone.

It was here that Grass Woman was given her new name. The Mandans called her Sacagawea, or Bird Woman, but she was still not a woman. She was probably in her early or mid teens. Did she hate the Mandans for taking away her name, the last thing she had that connected her to home and family? Was she still Grass Woman in her heart, or had she resigned herself to her fate?

Whatever her feelings, she became Sacagawea and learned to farm and speak as the Mandan spoke, until one day, the man who owned her took her and Otter Woman to a new house. Inside, there was a man. A white man. His name was Toussaint Charbonneau and he spoke a strange language. He was a trapper who had come down from the north, from Canada, and had made his home among the Mandan. She and Otter Woman were given to him. It is unclear if she was sold or lost in a gambling game, but it was evident to her that this strange white man was her new master.

She and Otter Woman served Charbonneau, doing all the work that women do, and eventually, he married both of them. Sacagawea once again adapted and learned her new husband’s languages. In the Winter of 1804, when Lewis and Clark arrived, Sacagawea was about eighteen. She was also pregnant.

As soon as Charbonneau heard about the expedition, he applied for the job of interpreter. He told Lewis and Clark about Sacagawea and all the languages she knew. Lewis and Clark didn’t seem to want Charbonneau at all. Sacagawea was the prize, but then, well, she was a woman, a girl, really, and an expedition was no place for a girl. Besides, she was pregnant. Did they really want an infant along?

After much thought, Sacagawea’s skills as an interpreter outweighed her pregnancy, her sex, and her husband. Lewis and Clark agreed to take them all. By the time the expedition got underway in April,1805, Sacagawea was 18-19, and her child was two months old. Was she happy to be going? After being bought and traded and sold and won for seven long years, did she see this as an opportunity to return home, or was she content in her home with Charbonneau? Did she see the expedition as an adventure, or just something else she had no control over?

The expedition set off and Sacagawea led Lewis and Clark across half a continent - a teenage girl with a baby on her hip. And we know from expedition journals that she was considered a valuable member of the expedition because, when she got sick, she wasn’t left to die. Nor did they leave her behind in the care of someone else. Lewis and Clark saw she was nursed back to health so she could go on with them.

And when they finally reached the Shoshone, was Sacagawea happy at last? According to Clark, she expressed immense joy at being back, and her people were just as happy to have her. And yet, she didn’t stay. She continued on to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark, and stared out into the ocean for perhaps the first time in her life

And then she disappeared. Her name is no longer mentioned in historical records.

Legend says she lived a long life, traveling the west, and on one hand, it seems perfectly plausible. She was obviously intelligent and had a knack for languages. And she certainly knew how to adapt. But it also seems that if that’s who she was, we might have heard a bit more about her.

The other side of the coin is that she was a teenage girl who, for seven of perhaps the most formative years of her life, had been constantly uprooted and forced from one life to another. In seven years, she had been captured, sold, bought, possibly won, married, had a child, and crossed half a continent twice. None of it had been her choice. Did it take a toll on her mind at all?

In 1812, one of Charbonneau’s wives died in the Dakota Territory. The record doesn’t tell us which wife it was. If it was Sacagawea, she would have been only 25-26, a sad, much too early ending for anyone.

I like to believe she lived long and happy, and that she looked back with joy not only on her days as Sacagawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but also on her days in the mountains when was Grass Woman of the Shoshone.

You Gotta Have Friends: Why They're Important to a Story

2011-12-12T10:30:00.002-05:00

Everyone needs a friend, and fictional heroes are no different. Whether you’re writing high fantasy, a rip-roaring adventure, or a quiet contemporary story, your MC and story will be better off for having one.

Why?

Because it’s hard to be a hero.

If Harry Potter hadn’t had Ron and Hermione, who would have stopped him from belting Malfoy? And if he had hit Malfoy all those times Malfoy was calling him names, what kind of hero would he have been? In the Hunger Games, the whole premise is to kill or be killed, yet Katniss only kills her competition when her own life is in danger, or to save someone else. She never picks off anyone in their sleep just to cut the competition, because readers don’t want to root for a cold-blooded killer. Even on a YA level, in a story about killing, Katniss’ competition will die at the hands of others or through accidents. Or Peta will do it. That’s what fictional friends are for.

Their job is to make the MC look better, to make sure he stays clean and unsullied, to keep him heroic. They will commiserate with him when he’s upset, cheer him up when he’s feeling down, and inspire him when he’s ready to give up. They will stop him from doing things that go against his better nature, and they will tell the lies, do the killing, or steal the math tests if it needs to be done. Frodo may have been the bearer of the one ring, but he only got to Mordor and destroyed it because of his friend, Samwise Gamgee, who fought the orcs and drove back the spider, who found them food and shelter, and who nursed Frodo back to health when he needed it.

Fictional friends also help your story on a technical level. A hero alone is forced to do a lot of thinking and talking to himself in order to impart information to the reader and advance the plot. That means a lot of introspection, and introspection slows the pacing. A friend also gives your main character someone to interact with, which allows you to show characterization and growth that will make both characters more genuine. You can use the friend to inject humor into a desperate situation, to be a sounding board for a venting hero, or lift the hero’s spirits and inspire him to courageous deeds. And because it’s much easier for two people to get in trouble than it is for one, you can also use the friend to create conflict, tension, and suspense. Without a friend, your hero has to make the story work all on his own which, again, means more introspection and plot stalling.

For instance, consider this opening.

John sat in the waiting room, staring at a magazine, hoping the x-ray didn’t show anything bad. A broken ankle would mean he’d miss the entire track season, and that would mean no chance to show off for the scouts, no chance at a scholarship, and no chance at college or the Olympics. Everything he had worked toward for the last ten years would all go up in smoke. Why did that dumb rock have to be in the road? He sighed. Without college, without track, he’d end up just like Dad, scrounging all his life to just get by.

There really isn’t anything wrong with that, but all it does is impart information. The reader now knows the situation, but nothing else. Now let’s add a friend.

"Do you think you broke it?" Pete asked. He peered at John through a rolled up magazine.

John looked up from his own magazine and grinned. "Playing pirate, are we?"

"No. Just wondering how your entire body fits into this tiny circle. Perspective is weird, isn’t it?"

"I don’t know," John said. "You’re the artist. Not me."

"So did you break it, or what" Pete asked again, rolling the magazine even smaller.

"I don’t know," John said. "I hope not. That would ruin my whole life. If I miss the track season, I miss the scouts and that means no scholarships, no college and no Olympics. It means ten years of my life have gone up in smoke." He tossed his magazine onto a low table. "Dumb rock."

"Yeah, well the rock’s not sitting in a hospital, waiting to see if it’s life is over or not," Pete said.

He was grinning, making joke, but John didn’t find it funny. His life wasn’t like Pete’s. He had to worry about more than perspective. Without college, without track, he’d end up just like Dad, scrounging all his life to just get by.

Both bits impart the same information, but the second example moves quicker (even though it’s longer) and is more interesting to read. It even looks better on the page. All because John has a friend. Now he can talk to someone else instead of himself, and they can react to each other. The dialogue also gives us a bit of insight into each character. John isn’t so upset about the situation that he can’t laugh at his friend’s magazine telescope, and we get to know a bit about Pete - that he’s into art and he’s better off financially than John. I was also able to add a touch of humor and throw in the bit about perspective, which helps create a theme to build the story around. All because I added a friend.

And it isn’t that one way is right and the other is wrong. It’s that one way will do so much more than the other. Do you want to use the phone that allows you to make and receive calls, or do you want to use the one that lets you text, e-mail, and take pictures, too?

Friends are important. They matter, even in fictional worlds. So if your MC doesn’t have a friend in his life, consider giving him one. And if he does have friends, makes sure they are doing more than existing on the page. Put them to work and make them pull their weight - for your hero and your story.

Poetry Friday: Commentary on the present from the past

2011-12-09T08:11:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling Ogden Nash-ish this morning:

EVERYBODY TELLS ME EVERYTHING

I find it very difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.
Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow noblacker, it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news,

because there has never been an era when somany things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

This next poem was published in the Saturday Evening Post, in 1935. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose:

BANKERS ARE JUST LIKE ANYBODY ELSE, EXCEPT RICHER

This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all you hear is clinksand clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.

Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discouragewithdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the bankerwho fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it.

I know you, you cautious conservative banks!
If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny
them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving
of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks;

Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay fora baby you must look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the jungle,
And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had better go get themoney from their wife's aunt or ungle.

But suppose people come in and they have amillion and they want another million to pile on top of it,
Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you urge them to accept everydrop of it,
And you lend them the million so then they have two million and this gives themthe idea that they would be better off with four,
So they already have two million as security so you have no hesitation inlending them two more,
And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm,
And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the
money sent or do they want to take it withm.

Because I think they deserve our appreciationand thanks,
the jackasses who go around saying that health and happiness are everything andmoney isn't essential,
Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant money to maintain theirhealth and happiness they starve to death so they can't go around any moresneering at good old money, which is nothing short of providential.

Poetry Friday is being hosted this week by Robyn Hood at Read, Write, Howl.

Women of Wednesday: Women in the U.S. Military

2011-12-07T06:06:00.001-05:00


Molly Pitcher may be legendary, but America's wars have seen many heroic women

Pearl Harbor Day challenges us to think about the sacrificesof those who choose to serve in the armed services. And while the United Stateshas generally had a military draft during times of war, the women who haveserved have always been volunteers. A number of veterans have been included inthe pages of the Notable Women series. Here are a few more.

Most New Englanders are familiar with the story of DeborahSamson, the woman from Massachusetts who dressedas a boy so she could go fight against the British in 1782 (Cornwallis hadsurrendered in October 1781 but the Treaty of Paris wasn’t signed until 1783). Less well known is Margaret Corbin, who became a “camp follower” when her husband joined theContinental Army, cooking and washing and tending the wounded. Margaret alsoworked with the gunnery team, and when both the gunner and John were killed inbattle at Fort Washington, New York, Margaret stepped in, loading and firingthe cannon until British grapeshot found her, as well. Captured along with theother Colonials when the fort fell, she became the first woman included in theactive duty muster lists.

America’s next armed conflict, the War of 1812, perhaps saw Lucy Brewer dress in men’s clothing to join theMarine Corps, fighting on the USS Constitution. The Civil War saw the firstofficial establishment of an Army Nursing Corps, as well as the heroic effortsof a number of women who served as couriers and spies. Dr. Mary Walker andClara Barton are probably the best-known women veterans of the Civil War,although it is estimated at least 80 women (many in disguise) died on battlefieldsduring that conflict.

The Spanish-American brought saw both the first official recruitingof women, as Army Nurses, although they were not considered military personnel.Among the 1500 women who served during that conflict was the first to die in aforeign land, Ellen May Tower. Her 1898 funeral in Michigan was the first militaryfuneral for an American woman.

By the time the War to End All Wars convulsed the openingyears of the 20^th century, the military establishment had begun towarm to the possibility of women serving in non-combat roles. The Armyrepeatedly requested permission from the War Department to enlist women forclerical and support roles but never received an official approval. Women didserve in the Army as Nurses and in the Signal Corps – an elite group of 300women, bilingual (French/English) long-distance telephone operators. The Navyand Marine Corps apparently decided not to wait for permission and enlisted 13,000women with the same ranks and status as male recruits, who took non-combatpositions in order to free up men for combat roles.

December 7, 1941, saw the heroic efforts of women nurses inthe Army and Navy hospitals at Pearl Harbor, including Lt. Anne G. Fox, whoreceived a Purple Heart for her outstanding service (later replaced with abronze star when the Purple Heart was redefined as a medal awarded for combat injuries.The Coast Guard was the first branch of the military to accept women into theregular ranks, establishing the SPARS, both enlisted and commissioned, whofilled the on-shore positions (including critical surveillance roles) while male yeomenwere deployed at sea. Ironically the 1948 act (championed by General Eisenhower)which integrated women into all branches of the military, did not include theCoast Guard, which was not officially integrated until 1973. Army, Navy andMarine Corps nurses served in both the European and Asian theaters in the lateryears of the war, while thousands of military women worked in stateside jobs.Another often overlooked role of women in World War II were the aviators of theWASPs – more than 1000 women pilots who flew military planes to destinationbases and in training missions. They were, however, considered civilianemployees and the 38 who died in the service of their country were deniedmilitary honors. (Today 20% of the United States Air Force are women.)

Korea and Vietnam were, of course, conflicts marked by deepdivisions among Americans over the missions and the ways they were carried out.Without the broad support on the home front, they were wars fought mostly bydraftees, but of course all the women in the field hospitals and MASH units and support outfitswere volunteers. Over 100,000 women served during Korea and more than a quartermillion during Vietnam. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial was finally dedicated in 1993.

Desert Storm saw the largest deployment of women troops inAmerican history to that time, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have seen fourtimes as many women “in harm’s way.” More than 15% of the active duty force oftoday’s American military are women. Women are still, technically, notpermitted to serve in combat units, despite the fact that the reality of thetwo wars we are currently fighting is that members of “support” units arefrequently engaged in volatile locations filled with snipers and IEDs, whilemore and more of the “combat” is being carried out electronically, often fromremote locations like Colorado Springs.

While many of uswould rather look for alternatives to warfare, let us not overlook or ignorethe brave service of so many of our sisters and fore-mothers who were willingto put aside comfort and risk life and limb for the country they loved.

Mentor Monday: Revising, Part 1

2011-12-05T05:51:00.001-05:00

I have a motto I often share with new writers: Real writersare rewriters. Real writers know that first drafts are just that – drafts. Theyare brain dumps, capturing all kinds of ideas, plot devices, images, and lotsand lots and lots of words. They are the lump of clay out of which you willfashion your work of art. There’s still a lot of molding, shaping, smoothingand polishing to be done before your work is ready to be read by an editor –who will then, if she likes it enough to consider buying it, have lots ofadditional work she wants you to do on it!

Over my next few Mentor Monday posts we’ll look at this Revisionprocess, which breaks down into Rewriting, Editing and finally Proofreading orCopy-editing. Although in reality you will automatically do a little bit of thelater steps at the same time as the earlier ones, it is helpful to think abouteach distinct piece of the process.

Of these, rewriting is the most dramatic. Remember that theword “Revision” means “seeing again.” This is when you massage and reshape thelump of clay that is your first draft. Don’t be afraid to consider majorchanges at this point. (If it helps you to be fearless, save a copy of youroriginal in another folder.) If your story is told in the first person, try re-writingpart of it in the third person, or vice versa. What would happen if your maincharacter were a boy instead of a girl? If your story took place in the 1950sinstead of the 1970s? (If your setting doesn’t really matter at all to thestory, this may be a flag indicating a problem!)

Think about your story the way a teacher preparing a lessonplan would. What is the theme? (Please be sure your story has a theme but not a“lesson.”) Who are the main characters and what are their motivations? What isthe conflict, and how is it resolved? (Make sure your protagonist solves theproblem!) What are the relationships between the different characters? A commonproblem is having too many minor characters – considering combining some of theroles.

Keep in mind that although I’m referring to “story,” “plot”and “character,” the techniques of the revising process apply to non-fiction aswell. You won’t be free to manipulate the chronology or the genders of thepeople, but you still shape the narrative, choosing what details to include,and managing the flow of your work.

Map the plot and subplots, and examine them carefully. Isthe story balanced? Does the action rise and fall, gradually reaching a peak,or are there long flat places that need breaking up? Watch out for extendedpassages of narrative without dialogue – or pages of dialogue with no action.If your work is a picture book, be sure you can identify enough different “scenes”for an illustrator, and see how the text breaks out over them: you don’t wantto create a few text-heavy pages while the rest of the book flips past quickly.

Keep an eye out for missing pieces and loose ends. Rememberthe old bit about if there is a gun on the table in the first act, it hadbetter be fired before the play is over? The opposite is also true: if you needa gun in your climactic scene, you have to introduce it early, and make sure weknow that the character who is going to fire it actually knows how. Often wedon’t know in the beginning all the details that are going to develop as thestory progresses, so it is very common in later drafts to go back and insert objects,skill sets and even whole characters into appropriate places (sometimes thismeans writing a new chapter to create the place).

Think about the structure and flow of your story. How muchtime passes between the opening and the conclusion? Are there markers entwinedin the narrative that show this to the reader? These can be as straightforwardas “On Tuesday, Janie overslept” or as subtle as “his boot crunched through theice on the puddle.” Is the length of time covered by the story appropriate andnecessary? Should you start the narrative closer to the climax? Or, if you doneed some bits that occur a long time before the climax should you build insome “jump forward” transitions to get you more quickly toward the point? Don’tforget that it’s important to wrap up and get out quickly after the climax, oryou’ll leave your readers feeling let down.

Consider the possibility of “re-stringing” your story. Thinkof each scene as a bead which you have strung together along your plot. Wouldthings flow better if some of the beads were in a different order? Might youput a “brightly colored” or “loud” scene next to a quieter one, to heighten theeffect of each? Or do you need to move a goofy scene to a different location soit doesn’t alter the somber mood of a particular passage?

Don’t overlook the value of distance in this process. Putthe whole manuscript into a drawer and don’t look at it for a week. When youread it again you’ll notice all kinds of things that you skimmed over before,when it was all so fresh in your mind. Distance also makes it easier toidentify (and eliminate) those precious but unhelpful words, phrases and scenesthat all of us seem to create and cling to in our early drafts. But that’s asubject for another post.

Poetry Friday: Tiny Roads Inside the Cabbage

2011-12-02T00:01:00.003-05:00

I have this book, titled above. I'm not even sure where I got it -- a teacher's conference I suppose. It was published by New Hampshire poets Marie Harris and Deb Alberts; made possible by a grant from the NH Commission on the Arts and National Endowment.

The book celebrates ten years of poets working in the schools, and highlights some of the poems written by students from 1972-1982.

Here are a couple I love from Marie Harris's students:

Great Grandad

He was a strong man,
sitting up in his chair,
his calloused hands
running through his thin gray hair.
He was a funny man
always with a hat upon his head.
When he pinched Great Grandma
her gentle face turned red.
He would reach down to his shoe
and pretend he was tying a knot,
then when she wasn't looking
he would take a shot.
He told us never to tell
about his little bottle.

-- Mike Evenson, Grade 9, Spaulding Jr. High, Rochester (NH)

Shy Soup

What to put in?
Let's try the loneliness of the corner
The pain of downcast eyes
The lone gloom that hangs above
The damp chill of the closed door
Maybe the soreness of quick moving feet
The rapid heartbeat
Or the yellow mist that drowns the soul

We will cook it on the smallest match
A broken spiderweb
A drop of dew.
With luck it will taste like a cleraed throat
or the loss of breath.

We'll stir it with the thinnest icicle
and it eat with a butterfly's wing.
Lastly, it will look like a piece of silk,
alone in a field of cashmere.

-- Carrie Steadman, grade 8, Spaulding Jr. High, Rochester

Carol his hosting Poetry Friday over at her corner. Check it out!

Women of Wednesday: Let’s Hear it For the (Pitch) Ladies

2011-11-30T05:17:00.001-05:00

When you think of women who have been featured in advertisements, you might think of the “Where’s the Beef?” lady or the one who had “…fallen and can’t get up.” But other women successfully have lent their talents to product promotion. Their personalities not only helped to make particular products household names, we often enjoyed their commercial antics.

Josephine the Plumber, (for Comet cleanser) was one, as portrayed by popular comedic actress and former child star Jane Withers. She appeared on the heels of the Women’s movement, (pun intended) wearing a jaunty plumber’s cap, overalls, and just the right amount of makeup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZxc-XvTPl0

Today we have Flo the perky Progressive Insurance clerk portrayed by actress/comedian Stephanie Courtney. Flo is so well-liked she has over 3 million Facebook fans: http://www.facebook.com/#!/flotheprogressivegirl

One of the first of the pitch ladies was Nancy Green, an African American woman who had been born into slavery in 1834.

In the late 1800s, the R.T Davis Milling Company bought a pancake recipe from the Pearl Milling Company. R.T. Davis wanted a warm, friendly-looking woman to represent his new product at the World Columbian Exposition to be held in Chicago in 1893.

Fifty-nine-year-old Nancy Green was just that person. At that time she was living in Chicago. And she was a first-rate cook, too. Nancy was hired to become the face of the new pancake recipe that was called “Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix.” R.T. Davis thought people would be more interested in buying his product if they thought there was a real Aunt Jemima behind the recipe.

Nancy’s debut as the real-life face of Davis’ pancake mix took place at the Columbian Exposition. (That world’s fair would launch the careers of many notable women but those are stories for another Wednesday).

Nancy was a hit! People loved her warmth and charm and also loved “her” pancakes. Thousands came through to meet “Aunt Jemima” and try her new recipe. It was said that police had to be hired to keep the crowds moving through her exhibit.

Over the years, many people felt the Aunt Jemima character was a poor choice because it could also be construed as a glorification of slavery. The term, an “Aunt Jemima” was often used as the female version of the “Uncle Tom” –a black person who remains submissive to any white authority figure. Others believed that Aunt Jemima represented anyone’s friendly, loving relative. In spite of the disagreement, the icon—now modernized—is still in use over 100 years after it was originated.

Nancy Green portrayed Aunt Jemima for over 30 years. As time went on, several other women took over the role of the woman that, like her pancakes, was warm and comforting. But Nancy was the first and today we recall the lady that made one product a success.

Mentor Monday: Who’s Your Audience—In 2011?

2011-11-28T05:46:00.005-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I received a very nice cover letter and manuscript from a stay-at-home mom from the Seattle area. She sent a rhymed picture book story about a stuffed animal that, as you might have guessed, was her baby’s favorite toy.

Lots of writers for kids start out like this mom. We get interested in children’s books because we are in the process of parenting young children. Maybe we fall in love with the picture book genre and dream of seeing our name in print. We want to write books that will appeal to our children or will tell a story of something that happened in our child’s life.

I had no opinion one way or the other about the manuscript I’d received. It’s not the sort of book I’m interested in. But, as a publisher, I spend a lot of time thinking about who reads my books, who needs my books, and who buys my books. I have a definite audience in mind for the work I produce.

Do you ever wonder, as a writer for children, what kind of children make up today’s readership? How many are actually like that Seattle mother’s child, being raised by a stay-at-home mom in a middle-to-upper-class home, where books and favorite toys abound? If you haven’t thought about that question, I challenge you to try. Many successful writers have already done so.

Here’s just one type of statistic about today’s young readers. These numbers are from the Federal Interagency on Child and Family Statistics. The “Leave It to Beaver” family still exists, but there are lots of other family variations:

In 2010, there were about 75 million children in the United States ages 0–17.
69% lived with two parents
23 % lived with only their mothers,
3% lived with only their fathers,
4% lived with neither of their parents. (Harry Potter, anyone?)

About 5 percent of children who lived with two biological or adoptive parents had parents who were not married. (Brad and Angelina’s kids fit here.)

About 70 percent of children in stepparent families lived with their biological mother and stepfather. (Like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson).

The majority of children living with one parent lived with their single mother. (Like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games.)

Among the 3.0 million children 24 percent lived with non-relatives. Of children in non-relatives' homes, 27 percent (200,000) lived with foster parents. (Like Katherine Paterson’s Gilly Hopkins)

I’ve only touched on the one type of statistic describing America’s children, that of the family dynamic. This list doesn’t touch on some of the other factors that might tell us what our readers are like today. Do they live in a house, shelter, or car? Are their parents employed? Do they shop at the mall and grocery store, or Goodwill and the local food bank?

Maybe some of these statistics will inspire you because every one of those children needs their own story to be told.

Poetry Friday: Reluctance

2011-11-25T00:01:00.001-05:00

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the hills I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world, and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone astor is gone;

The flowers of the witch hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feet question"Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

-- Robert Frost

Heidi is hosting Poetry Friday over at My Juicy Little Universe, where she has a fabulous poem by one of my favorites -- Louis Untermeyer. You need some exercise after yesterday's feast, so trot on over.

Before you go, scroll down and read about Sarah Josepha Hale, who -- in a fashion -- brought you yesterday's feast . . .

Photo by Janet Buell

Women of Wednesday: The Lady Behind Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T05:42:00.005-05:00

If you've got time to read this blog, you're probably not hosting Thanksgiving this year. The rest of us are busy putting leaves on tables, getting out the good dishes or at least enough paper plates to feed the troops, and taking stock of the menu. If you’re waitstaff, you probably don’t have the day off. If you’re in retail, you’re stocking shelves before the Black Friday rush.

While we run around either preparing for or participating in the annual feast and everything that goes with it, let’s give a moment to thank the woman who was responsible. I don’t think Sarah Josepha Hale had restaurants and Christmas sales in mind when she devoted part of her life to the establishment of a national day of thanks. Her plans were more idealistic.

Sarah’s father, Gordon Buell, had fought in the American Revolution under George Washington. She grew up not only hearing stories about the famous hero, but admiring anything our first president stood for. He had proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving during his presidency and Sarah decided that his proclamation should one day be the law of the land.

Later, Sarah achieved a measure of fame herself as the first woman magazine editor in the United States, and as a well-known author. She used her fame to reach out to other presidents and urge them to follow Washington’s lead.

It was not until the Civil War, however, that she was successful. Abraham Lincoln agreed with Mrs. Hale and proclaimed a day of thanks in the middle of our national conflict. It would take nearly another century before Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the national holiday into law.

Young Talon Douglas does a fabulous job of summing up the story with the help of his siblings and some friends. Stop mashing the potatoes, make yourself a cup of tea, and take a minute to watch:

What Should I Write About?

2011-11-21T05:17:00.006-05:00

I love magazines and subscribe to several. If you have a subscription that lasts long enough, you can almost predict what topics will be covered at certain times of the year.

October will have “Fun Halloween Recipes” and “How to Stay Sane During the Holidays.”

November will have “Best Gifts for Anyone for Under $25,” and “Don’t Blow Your Diet During the Holidays.”

January’s articles will tell you how to lose the weight you gained during the holidays in time for bathing suit season.

April magazines help you find the right bathing suit for the lumpy body you failed to get under control.

And so it goes.

Even if you favor fiction, writing non-fiction magazine pieces can be a good way to keep up your writing skills. Kids magazines constantly need new material.

Child-readers are a renewable resource. There will always be new six-year-olds learning about the life-cycles of butterflies. New fourth graders will learn about their state symbols. Pre-teens will want to know how to connect with their peers. Magazines geared to particular age groups must provide new ways of repeating information.

So what do you write about? First, head over to your local library or bookstore and check out the magazines that are currently available for kids. Or, check out the Children’s Magazine Guide: http://www.childrensmag.com/MagIndexed.html

Read through issues to get a sense of their style, readability levels, target age group, etc. Pay attention to the types of articles that have appeared before. If a magazine featured a story on the Bengal Tiger, for example, they might be interested in a story about ocelots. If they already did a story about ocelots, maybe they’d like a story on a jungle cat rescue facility, or a particular jungle cat that’s being brought back from extinction because of the work of a particular zoo.

What are kids learning about? You can find out by reading about state-wide or national curriculums such as:

http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands

http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/905B19D5-3408-46F5-A6F6-6CA417697DF4/60816/KitandAlignment2.pdf

Don’t limit yourself to stories about your chosen topics. Think puzzles, games, crafts, recipes, and so on. I sold a puzzle about the skeleton to one of the kid’s health magazines. Write Sister Kathy wrote a fall rebus story for Highlights and has sold a piece on making an easy bird feeder amongst other crafts.

Pay attention to theme lists. Some magazines—such as the Cobblestone Group—feature one theme throughout that month’s issue. A theme does not limit your creativity. Say the theme is women pilots. Amelia Earhart certainly comes to mind but what about a story about the first woman fighter pilot such as Colonel Martha McSally? What about a story that details the parts of a plane? What kind of food could an early pilot take along on a long flight? Can you duplicate a recipe for easy-to-carry food? Create a board game about a certain flight? Make up a puzzle about women pilots? These last few ideas may not seem like writing but they are. You are creating readable sentences, directions that can be followed by your target audience, and more importantly, stretching your own mind.

And, while you’re writing that magazine piece, you just might get an idea for a story about a woman pilot who lands on a desert island and befriends a wild ocelot.

Poetry Friday--"November"

2011-11-18T00:01:00.003-05:00

Here's a little seasonal poem by William Dean Howells:

November
Impression

A weft of leafless spray
Woven fine against the gray
Of the autumnal day,
And blurred along those ghostly garden tops
Clusters of berries crimson as the drops
That my heart bleeds when I remember
How often, in how many a far November,
Of childhood and my children's childhood I was glad,
With the wild rapture of the Fall,
Of all the beauty, and of all
The ruin, now so intolerably sad.

Howells was born in Ohio in 1837, but as a young man he traveled to Massachusetts where he made the acquaintance of many New England writers such as Emerson and Thoreau. He was writer of novels, poetry, literary criticism, essays, and was an editor of The Atlantic Monthly.

Howells had a peripatetic life--traveling from place to place. He lived in England, Italy, New York, Maine, and Massachusetts. His final resting place is in Cambridge, MA, which I guess that makes him a New Englander by default, and, explains the melancholy tone of "November." New Englanders have a penchant for looking back to glad times.

Well, cheer up and head over to the Poetry Friday Round-Up, which is being hosted by Tabatha Yeatts.

--Diane

Photo © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Women of Wednesday--Ida Lupino

2011-11-16T06:00:00.004-05:00

I'm going to tell you about a unnerving dream I had a while back. Appearing in this dream was Ida Lupino. Who? If you're over 50, perhaps the name rings a bell? Ida Lupino was B movie (low-budget) actress back in the 40s and 50s. Why would I have a dream about Ida Lupino? Damned if I know. I hadn't seen any Ida Lupino movies in an eternity. Very strange. But, it made me want to look into who she was. I discovered that not only was she an actress, she was also one of the first women directors in Hollywood films. Who knew? I had heard about Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart," silent film actress and Hollywood business woman also directing early silent films, but I didn't know there were women film directors before, say, Barbra Streisand directed Yentl in 1983.

In the late 1940s Ida and her second husband started a production company so that she could have more control over content. Interestingly, as often happens with women, her rising to the position normally reserved for men was as a result of a man's becoming incapacitated! In 1949 her director became gravely ill and Ida stepped into the role of director. She went on to direct 6 films between 1949 and 1953, and one more in 1966. She also directed television shows!

Without further ado, here's Ida Lupino in a film that she directed and appeared in, The Bigamist, from 1953.

There's information about Ida as actress, producer, and director at the "official" Ida Lupino website. There's lots of video on the site, too, but the gallery of photos is a pain in the derriere to navigate!

Oh, and I still don't understand why I dreamed about Ida, except that I found out her birthday was the day on which I had the dream (cue the theme to The Twilight Zone).

--Diane

Mentor Monday--A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

2011-11-14T05:27:00.005-05:00

I'm going to share several resources I've come across over the past few months. The first one is a newsletter that is issued every other month, The 4:00 Book Hook. It contains information for people who work with children, or who have a love of children's books. The latest issue has several book reviews, activities, and an interview with award-winning children's poet, Joyce Sidman. It can be accessed here in pdf form.

The next is a website that is especially of interest to librarians, but one which any person attempting to keep up with the latest technology should find fascinating: INFOdocket: Information Industry News + New Web Sites and Tools From Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy. On any given day you might come across information about a new search app, e-paper, cloud computing, copyright in the digital age, new archives, etc. Well worth checking out, if only for the wow factor.

While the World Memory Project may not be a resource just yet, with your help, it will become

the largest free online resource for information about victims and survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution during World War II.

Children's writers--this may be an excellent project for you to work on since it is bound to stimulate ideas for future fiction and nonfiction writing projects. Check out the link above for details.

Another example of the great power for good that comes with the internet is Swap.com. This website not only allows for reuse of items rather than filling landfills, it also helps schools to obtain materials that would be relegated to wish-lists with ever-shrinking library budgets.

Finally here's a video that was shown at a recent library conference. The topic of the workshop was social media and the law (as pertains to public libraries). The speaker, a lawyer, wanted to make the point that social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, YouTube, etc.) is more prevalent in the lives of the world's citizens than one may have imagined. These 4 minutes more than make that point:

Those of you whose only participation is as a reader of blogs, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Feel free to share resources that you have discovered, use the comments below.

--Diane

Poetry Friday

2011-11-11T00:15:00.007-05:00

I've always been fascinated by Alice and her trip down the rabbit hole, although I do prefer her travels across the chessboard better. Of all the fantasy worlds I've encountered, Wonderland is the only place where truly anything can happen. In all those other worlds, there is a certain logic that has to be followed. Wonderland, on the other hand, is a dreamworld, and we all know dreams don't necessarily have to make sense, so anything can happen in Wonderland. And if you write fantasy, it opens up a lot of possibilities. I have been dabbling with an Alice on the psychiatrist's couch story for several months. The following poem imagines her being born in China. I'm already thinking what a great story that could be.

If Alice. . .
By Alexandra Seidel

If Alice had been born in China
her feet would have been bound
(so much easier to stumble
down rabbit holes with these.)

The Rabbit (fourth of the zodiac,
followed by Dragon, preceded
by Tiger) in his compassion
and serene sincerity
would have waited for her,
tumbled with her,
chatted all the way.

The Cheshire Cat
of course, would have been a tiger
stripes at least as piercing as the smile
quiet and yet
always ready to leap.
It would have said to Alice
in her blue and gold embroidered silk gown
much the same things--
tigers, after all, are also cats
if less docile, less tame.

The caterpillar might well have been
a dragon
as of yet unhatched
sleeping in a hot fuming egg
but waking often
to speak through the iridescent shell,
speak strangely, but never quite untrue.

The Hatter
mad and drinking tea
would have been a hairdresser
no doubt
with fabulous black tresses
rising like winding towers from his head
scissors poised behind his back.

Then there is the Red Queen who
would have been an empress. She
would still wear red
but also gold and white jade
and with her long pinky fingernails
she would have snatched eyes
before she ever took heads.

Her roses
are peonies in the East
not red but almost so, with their dark pink
that is painted on ink here
because in truth
those oriental peonies bloomed ebony white.

And then
the thing that would pluck
the Chinese Alice from her daydream
would be mahjongg stones
falling heavy
and waking her
to the shadows of living temples
the sound of honking cars
the smell and sound of people all around her
and to a different life
that would be not that different
at all.

Tread carefully through the rabbit hole and, hopefully, you'll find yourself at Teaching Authors where you'll discover a wondrous world of poetry to explore.

I Know It's Only Rock 'n Roll, But I like It, I Like It, Yes I do!

2011-11-09T02:19:00.005-05:00

The other day, I was searching for some allen wrenches and found an old box of records in the closet. Feeling nostalgic, I pulled them out to play on my stereo. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a needle in the arm. Major bummer. (The youngsters are going ‘Huh? What?’) But it did get me thinking about the women of Rock ‘n Roll and who all was around today to carry on the tradition.

Alas and alack, I could think of no one. Avril Lavigne was suggested to me. I did not even try to hide my laughter. It seems the female rocker, not to be confused with the female pop artist, is a dying breed. So I have created a sort of mini-concert in honor of the women who took me through my teens. I couldn’t include them all. This is a blog, after all. So I included my favorites. And hats off to the women I didn’t include - Stevie Nicks, Pat Benetar, Heart, Melissa Etheridge, and the Vixens, to name a few. Rock on!

Joan Jett

Who's tougher than Joan? She recently made a come-back when the movie, The Runaways, came out last year, which followed the rise of her all girl band (pre Blackhearts) to stardom. Now a new generation has ‘discovered’ her.

Grace Slick

Grace is alive and well and making a living as a commercial artist. She paints a lot of rabbits.

Janis Joplin

What can you say about Janis? Nobody does Summertime better than her, IMO.

Tina Turner

Simply the best. The Queen of Rock ‘n Roll. Take a look at that crowd. Thousands and thousands of people paid good money to watch a seventy year-old woman in a mini dress sing and dance and shake her booty on stage. Is there another person in the world, male or female, who could do this? She sings, she dances, she puts on one heck of a show, and she does it without lip-synching or having a recording playing in her ear. And she’s seventy here!

And in case you are shedding a tear at this point, thinking the female rocker will soon become extinct, take heart, and take a listen to six year-old Zoe (at the time the video was made.) She plays a mean Metallica (listen to her Enter Sandman) and her Pirates of the Carribean is pretty good, too. Here, she does Linkin Park, and she is clearly enjoying herself. The ending is priceless.

Zoe

Hey, hey, my, my.
Rock ‘n Roll will never die.

Writing Steampunk

2011-11-06T17:44:00.017-05:00

Steampunk has been around for more than twenty years, but it is just now beginning to make its way into the mainstream. You can now find it in art, music, and fashion, and there's a whole world of steampunk costume play out there. In children’s literature, books like Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld and The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare have helped bring it to the fore. It’s a speculative fiction sub-genre that is gaining ground every day, so if you like writing adventure stories, or historical fiction, or fantasy, or even all three, (which would be ideal) steampunk may be right up your alley.

What, exactly, is steampunk?

Think H. G. Wells’ Time Machine or Jules Verne’s Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Steampunk generally takes place in the Victorian age - the late nineteenth century, before electricity and the internal combustion engine - and on an alternate Earth. Much of the time, the setting is either London or the American west and the technology is based on machines and the steam to power them, thus the steam. The punk is the subversive attitude of the characters who aren’t prepared to sit around and accept the status quo. They have issues and agendas and generally don’t like the establishment very much.

Gadgets and Gizmos

These are a part of every steampunk novel. Your setting may be Victorian, but it will also be a futuristic Victorian - what might have been if we followed the path of steam and clockworks rather than that of electricity. That means your characters will have all sorts of new goodies to play with. Generally, there is a mechanic or a tinkerer on the side of the good guys, and/or an evil scientist on the side of the bad guys who make these cool toys. Anything you can imagine is fair game as long as you can make it believable. It doesn't have to be real science, it just has to sound like it is.

And don't worry about the anachronisms. That's all part of the genre. While some folks in your novel are riding around in horse-drawn carriages, others may be driving steam powered bicycles and cars, or flying around on blimps and airships. You may have a clockwork computer or a robot that is wound with a key and, if some character is unlucky enough to have his arm sliced off with a sword in a duel, it just may be replaced with a brand new mechanical arm that can fire mini balls or mustard gas.

The Plot

Steampunk is also, more often than not, all about the plot. It is fast paced and action packed. Characters often travel the world searching for something or someone, a la Indiana Jones. The baddies tend to be bad, and the good guys are basically good, but not beyond indulging in some mischief and mayhem themselves. If you’re doing YA, you might throw in a romance as a subplot. MG’s often revolve around a mystery of some sort. And if you're into graphic novels, steampunk suits that form nicely. Like any other genre, the problems and plot you create should be appropriate for your audience.

The Rules

Now, having said all that, keep in mind that the rules of writing, no matter what the genre, are pretty much like the rules aboard the Black Pearl. They're more like guidelines. For instance, Leviathan doesn't take place in the Victorian age. It takes place during WW I. You'll find steampunk novels with angels and vampires in them. You'll come across some that are all about the characters rather than the plot. The point is, if you don't want to end up with a very cliche story, you have to find your own, unique twist, even if means breaking the rules.

To give you a taste, here’s a bit about Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan. World War I has just broken out and the sides are not the axis and the allies. It’s the Clankers - those who have spent their time building enormous iron airships loaded with great guns and cannons, against the Darwinists - who have taken survival of the fittest to a point where they create genetically altered animals to serve their purposes. The Leviathan - a whaleship - is their largest air ship. So as you can see, almost anything goes.

If you need help with ideas or in getting started, check out writing.com which will give you a list of all kinds of things you’ll find in a steampunk novel. You can also turn to the The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature by Jeff VanderMeer.

If you've ever wanted to let your imagination run wild, this is the perfect genre to do it in. What could be more fun?

Airship by brownfinger
Gunblades by darzeth