Wednesday Writing Workout--STAND ON YOUR HEAD and revise!

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Howdy Campers!   Welcome to another edition of TeachingAuthors'

TeachingAuthors--and most writing teachers--have taught and discussed versions of this exercise over the years—and it's worth repeating.

Last week I tweaked it just a bit and the raw results in student writing was much more personal than when I've used this exercise before--their stories were notably stronger.

In my UCLA Extension Writers' Program class on Writing the Children's Picture Book, I spend one of the three-hour classes on rewriting.  I tell my students, "the information I'm about to tell you may be a tad depressng."

Then I show them a stack of revisions of my 1087-word picture book. I read an early draft, a middle draft and the final published book.  I show a PowerPoint which details the long journey to publication:

TIMELINE OF ONE OF MY PICTURE BOOKS
•    April 2000: interviewed expert on topic; wrote first version
•    April 2002: additional interviews
•    October 2004: accepted by publisher
•    January 2005: author’s revision sent to Dial
•    July 2005: editorial notes promised
•    December 2005: editorial notes received
•    January 2006: author’s revision sent to editor
•    January 2006: line edit promised “soon”
•    March 2006: line edits promised “May at the earliest”
•    May 2006: no line edits yet
•    May 2006: illustrator accepts offer
•    September 2006: considerable line edits received
•    September 2006 (about 12 days later): edited ms. sent off with new title
•    May 2007 titles still under discussion—August 2008 projected publication date
•    September 2007—book delayed until summer 2009 because illustrator is delayed.
•    April 2008—tiny edit: five small word changes
•    Fall 2008: illustrations arrive—wow, wow, WOW!
•    June 2009: book ship—yippee!
•    Summer 2009 lots of PR
•    September 2009: official launch—bricks-and-mortar and blog tour

      = 38 versions from start to finish.

After depressing them with the timeline, I did something different this time.  I read them the touching picture book, I Remember Miss Perry, written by Pat Brission, illustrated by Stéphane Jorisch (he's also the illustrator of New Year at the Pier).  It's about the death of a beloved elementary school teachers and how her students work through it by sharing happy memories of her.  It's a delicious book about a topic no one wants to talk about--the kind of book that every school needs in its library, because when you need it, you need it immediately.

I want my students to feel they can tackle any topic in a children's picture book as long as it's written honestly.  As long as it rings true.

So, here's the exercise:

1) Have your students brainstorm for five minutes, writing a list of experiences from their childhood that rocked their world. 

Tell them to jot down whatever comes to mind, writing quickly. They don't need to worry about neatness or spelling or complete sentences--they're making notes for themselves.

Here are some possible topics:

When did you do something that made you feel grown-up?
Maybe you helped paint the kitchen.
Maybe you did something that helped someone older than you solve a problem.

When did something scary happen to you?
Maybe your dog ran away.
Maybe your parents separated.

When did something joyous happen to you?
Maybe your family moved into a nice home for the first time.
Maybe you learned how to skateboard or read.

2) Give them just five minutes to circle one of the things on their list that they want to write about and then write a brief outline of the whole story. 

3) Tell them to change one thing about this story.
Tell them: BE WILD!  
Tell them: STAND ON YOUR HEADS AND BALANCE SAUSAGES ON YOUR TOES! 
They might change:
~ Point of view.  Instead of first person, try third person.  Or perhaps the family dog tells the story.
~ Time period.    Instead of the present, try setting it in ancient times, in the 1920s, in the future.
~ Place:              Instead of on a farm, try setting it underwater, in a volcano, on an island, in New York.
~ Characters:      Instead of people, try ground hogs, lightning bugs, elevators, a jar of pickles or cows.
~ Plot:                Instead of the cricket finding his home at the end, perhaps he gets even more lost.  Or instead of the bully getting her comeuppance, throw a party for her and see what happens.

As I said, this is the first year I've read my students that book before we launched into this exercise; the stories were more heartfelt than in the past.

They tried riskier subjects, subjects that were closer to their skin--and every idea was worth pursuing.

I hope you try it--either in your own writing or with students.  Then let me know what happens!

And, hey--thanks for reading this!
April Halprin Wayland

P.S. : Don't forget to enter our current book giveaway for our own Jill Esbaum's Angry Birds Playground:  Dinosaurs. See Jill's post for details.   Entry deadline is TODAY!

So Many Books, So Little Time

  This will be a shorter post than usual, guys. I had emergency eye surgery the day after I wrote my last post, and I am still essentially working with one and a half functioning eyes.

   We've been talking about what the blogosphere holds for the writer. You already know the answer to that....a lot. You can spend all time trolling the Internet just reading writer's blogs, advice columns or sites that will help you do this, that or the other better. Unless I have a specific problem, I don't spend a lot of time cruising the virtual highway. I just don't have time.

     If I am online, it is to find out what is being published and what is worth reading. There was a time when I read everything that came out, good, bad or indifferent...but again...I don't have the time any more. (I should also add that as a librarian, reading everything that came in was part of my job.) Another part of the job was reading the review sources....Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Horn Book, etc.  All of these are available online for free, in condensed forms.

    However, I have been relying on these sources since my library school days, and I have learned that not every book makes it to the "the Bigs" of the review world. That's when I discovered bloggers-who-review.  Some bloggers drop a review or two into their posts from time to time.  I like lots of reviews, all in one place. (Again...that time-saving thing.)

    Once a month I check my two favorite sources, Richie's Picks and  Goodreads. Goodreads has recently become affiliated with Amazon in some fashion which seems to annoy my fellow readers. I am not going to get into a political debate over book reviewing. I scan through Goodreads not so much for the quality of the reviews, but mainly to see what people are reading. If there are a thousand plus reviews or likes of a book I've never even heard of, I check Amazon for the review.  That is, I check Amazon if it is an adult book.  If it is a children's book, I click on over to Richie's Picks. 

    Richie Partington doesn't so much review books as to write short essays about them.  He includes lengthy passages from the book (so you can get a taste of the writer's style) , compares them to other books (not necessarily books of the same genre or author...just books that ring a bell in Richie's head.) He keeps a year's worth of "recent" reviews online, but has an archive of his "Richie's Best of the Year" going all the way back to 2005. Richie's selections are eclectic. He reviews whatever floats his boat (I am still waiting to have one of my books in Richie's Picks). What I like about this blog is that Richie gives you more than enough information for you to decide whether this book is worth your time or not. Like I say, so many books, so little time. That's why Richie is my reading guru.

    Don't forget to enter our latest book giveaway for our own Jill Esbaum's book. See Jill's post for information.   This is one of your last chances, since the deadline is June 19th.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

Apps and Resources for Writers and POETRY FRIDAY!

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Howdy, Campers and Happy Poetry Friday!

Thank you, Margaret, for hosting today
at Reflections on the Teche! 

I stress when I have a blog post to write on a favorite online writing resource and no time to write it.  Can you relate?  In that case, it's nice to have a caring blog-buddy name Carmela who has extra resources in her big floppy bag and tosses me one as I frantically run by.

 This is not Carmela Martino.

In the spirit of generous blogging, Carmela has handed me
20 Inspirational Apps and Online Resources for Writers.  How cool is that for a hot summer writing resource?

Yep, there are lots of great resources on that link.  However, may I express a nagging uneasiness about certain apps?  Based on several friends' recommendations, I downloaded Evernote, which is included in this list.  I was looking for a useful To Do List app and this apparently fits the bill.

What creeps me out was that in order to access this marvelous and free app, you have to allow it to access all of your contacts. 

ALL OF MY CONTACTS?  Evernote wants the phone number of my vet?  Of my dead podiatrist who I loved so much I cannot bring myself to delete from my phone?  Of Uncle Davie? 

 Uncle Davie and Eli.

Evernote wants/GETS all these precious people?

I couldn't do it.  I couldn't surrender my peeps for a free app.

PRIVATE
by April Halprin Wayland
I'm not openin'

my phone book 

to apps.

And I'm hopin'

your phone book
is snapped.

poem © 2013 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved


Now I'm off to my critique group.  Wish me luck!  And if you find that one of these resources is particularly wonderful, please let us know...and remember to enter our contest to win a copy of our very own Jill Esbaum's newest book!  Click for all the dino details: Angry Birds Playground: Dinosaurs. You still have time--the contest ends June 18th!

Dive into your summer writing!

drawing © 2013 April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved

April Halprin Wayland

Wednesday Writing Workout

When my kids were young, they'd often find nests on the ground after violent spring storms. Sadly, doomed baby birds were sometimes lying in the grass nearby . . . vulnerable to hungry barn cats.

Once, we tried to save a little robin that was hopping around, only a week or so from being ready to fly. I put a ladder against the tree and climbed up, holding the little guy gingerly in one hand, and returned it to its (too low) nest. Trouble was, he jumped right out again. One of the kids ran inside for an Easter basket. We tossed in a few handfuls of grass, tied the handle to the branch near the nest, and, once again, I took the little bird up and placed him inside. Ploop! He was back on the ground before I was.

                                                                             Photo by Sande LaFaut (used with permission)

Four or five cats were closing in fast, and one snatched the little guy before we could retrieve him, then streaked away. Nature can be cruel, or at least it would seem so to us humans.

But it always bugged me that that little bird, so close to independence, met such a tragic end. Which is why I wrote Tom's Tweet, a story in which a curmudgeonly cat's impulsive good deed goes wildly haywire when he ends up having to babysit a demanding little nestling all day. This time, I made sure the story had a happy ending, the one I wished had happened in real life:  the two become friends.

So for today's writing workout:

Think back to a real-life situation, one in which you made the wrong decision or that you simply wish had ended differently, then create a story around the incident – not the way it really happened, but with a happier or more satisfying ending.

Meanwhile, remember to enter our contest to win a copy of Angry Birds Playground:  Dinosaurs. Contest ends June 18th.

Jill Esbaum

Links for Easy Summertime Living and Learning

Why not make the living – AND – the learning easy this Summertime by signing up to receive daily and/or weekly emails from three of my very favorite all-year-long online services?

(1)   A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

The New York Times called A.Word.A.Day “The most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass e-mail in cyberspace.”

Monday through Friday, subscribers receive a new word, one of five purposefully grouped words that underscore a particular teaching point.

This past week?
Selected words were those that appeared to be misspellings:

calyculus
swoopstake
theocrasy
agrement
jargoon

How fun to learn why and how they weren’t!

Take a look at Friday’s post for jargoon to see all that each post offers:

jargoon

PRONUNCIATION:
(jahr-GOON)
MEANING:
noun: A colorless, pale yellow, or smoky variety of zircon.
ETYMOLOGY:
From French jargon, from Italian giargone, from Persian zargun (golden). Earliest documented use: 1769.
USAGE:
"The genial jeweler then suggested white jargoon."
P.G. Wodehouse; The Intrusion of Jimmy; W.J. Watt and Co.; 1910.
Explore "jargoon" in the Visual Thesaurus.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. -Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, professor, attorney, and writer (1914-2004)

I especially enjoy the Visual Thesaurus.

I especially appreciate the added inclusion of previous days’ words, just in case the definitions and pronunciations had somehow lost their place on my brain’s Hard Drive.

Click here to increase your vocabulary on a daily basis.  

You can send a Gift Subscription too!

(2)  TransparentLanguage – Learn a New Word a Day in a Foreign Language!

Thanks to my bi-lingual Brazilian-born grandson, Brazilian Portuguese is my Transparent language of choice.

Truthfully, I still don’t speak this language well – and my sweet, sweet lindo namerado (handsome boyfriend) recently turned three.
BUT, I do understand his words and conversation.

I especially love the ability to hear a native speak the word, not only by itself but in a sentence.
And like A.Word.A.Day, I can always return to previous words that – somehow – refused to stick.

Today’s entry?

Portuguese word:          Amanhã
English translation:      Tomorrow
Part of speech:              Adverb
Portuguese examples:  Meu filho chega amanhã de sua viagem.
English examples:         My son arrives tomorrow from his trip.

(3) Booklist Online 

I have always relied on Booklist, the bi-monthly review journal of the American Library Association, available at most libraries, to keep me sharp and smart when it comes to the best of children’s books being published. I’m happy to report that many free Booklist offerings are now available online. For example, the Great Reads page, with terrific book recommendations for both kids and adults, Booklist’s Common Core resources homepage, the Bookends blog by Cindy and Lynn, the monthly youth e-newsletters Quick Tips, aimed at connecting books to the classroom, and the new e-newsletter focused on YA Books, Booklandia, and the free Webinars.  Maybe amanhã you'll check out the above, then sign up to subscribe, thus making your summer's living and learning link-easy?! Esther Hershenhorn P.S. Don't forget to enter our current giveaway for a chance to win a copy of Jill Esbaum's brand new nonfiction book, Angry Birds Playground: Dinosaurs (National Geographic). See Jill's post for details.

New Book Giveaway! What I Knew About Dinosaurs...

...would've fit on the head of a pin. Or maybe a thumbtack. One of my sons was dino-crazed, back in the day, and I stepped on my share of spiny plastic stegosaurs. But it's been awhile.

So when my National Geographic Kids editor asked me to author Angry Birds Playground:  Dinosaurs, I hesitated for a second before jumping in. But only a second.

(Re)learning all things dinosaur was a blast. New species are being discovered all the time, often by everyday folks. I had no idea how far we'd come in our dino knowledge. A tiny sampling:

-Scientists know what certain dinos ate because they sometimes find bones from smaller animals lying   in the stomach area of a dino skeleton.

-Slower-moving dinos often had deadly, whip-like tails to fight off predators.

-Dino bones have been discovered on every continent – including Antarctica.

-Scientists used to believe a Stegosaurus could flap the plates on its back to keep itself cool.

So where do the Angry Birds come in? Here's the copy from the back cover:

"It's an extraordinary day on Piggy Island because the Angry Birds haven't lost their eggs, they've FOUND something amazing:  a bone! Not a plain old bone – a HUGE and very old bone. What kind of giant creature could this bone have come from? That's a question for Mighty Eagle – the wisest bird they know. Join the Angry Birds on their imaginary trip through time to discover the most awesome animals ever to roam this planet:  the dinosaurs!"

As Mighty Eagle helps the Birds imagine prehistoric times, they all wear tiny animals skins and bones in their head feathers, ala Bamm-Bamm Rubble. Very cute.

The book also answers these questions . . . 

-What was Earth like in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous time periods? 

-How are fossils created? 

-How do scientists determine a fossil's age? 

-How are dinosaurs related to modern birds?

-How are all those dino names pronounced?  

Throughout the book, Franco Tempesta's spectacular paintings give kids an idea of how dinosaurs might have looked (click on his name to see for yourself!). His colorful and realistic dinos (48 of them!) all but leap off the pages.

Back matter includes a world map showing where various dinosaur bones have been found, a fun-filled quiz, a glossary, and dino-related activities for kids.

If you know a dinosaur-loving kid, or one who is nuts about the Angry Birds, enter below to win a copy of Angry Birds Playground:  Dinosaurs (National Geographic). In your comment, please let us know who you'd be sharing the book with.

Entry deadline:  June 19th

Jill Esbaum

If you've never entered a Rafflecopter giveaway, you may want to first read their info on how to enter a Rafflecopter giveaway and/or the difference between signing in with Facebook vs. with an email address. Email subscribers: if you received this post via email, you can click on the Rafflecopter link at the end of this message to access the entry form.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Wednesday Writing Workout: Your 30-Minute Novel

Returning to my recent obsession with outlining, I would like to offer a cool exercise from author Alicia Rasley that allows you to lay out the key points of your novel in a mere thirty minutes.  It covers many basics that I typically consider for months and collects disparate pieces of information in one place. [I suspect that this would be a great exercise to complete in preparation for NaNoWriMo.]  The timer aspect is also compelling in that it requires you to figure out all of the broad strokes in short order before you are tempted to sit down and try to fill in the details.

I particularly appreciate the fact that this exercise focuses on making the main character likeable and helps you figure out where to begin telling your story.  While I have not yet tried this particular approach to the outline, it also seems that it would be extremely helpful in determining how external and internal conflict intersect (a particular difficulty of mine). 

If you try this technique, please let me know how it works out for you. Look for me to do the same.  Happy outlining! --Jeanne Marie      

Plotting My Summer

Happy summer vacation to those of you who have already begun!  My college students have finished their semester, but my husband and kids have two weeks to slog through. We are currently in major countdown mode, and my little bookworm has piles of library books all over the house in earnest preparation for lots of reading time. 

I tried to sucker Kate into writing a "guest post" today to give some insight into the mind of an 8-year-old who loves to read (and write), but she was not so inclined. She did tell me, after much consideration, that she reads to "find out what happens next."  While she talks to us primarily about snippets of scenes or dialogue or characters (Allie Finkle's BFF has come up often recently in real-life analogy), it's the plot that gets her to turn the pages.  She added that the chapter titles often entice her to keep reading.  I was somewhat surprised to hear this tidbit, but then I remembered her methodology for writing stories of her own.  She scrawls out chapter titles and then writes content to bear them out in fulfillment of a nebulous plan that she somehow manages to bring to fruition. I suppose this is her personal method of outlining.  [Kate also says that she likes to write stories because "you can write whatever you want instead of having to write what your teacher tells you."]

The topic of outlining reminds me of a graphic I've seen floating around on facebook recently, showing handwritten outlines of famous authors' works:
http://imgur.com/a/cqWsJ

(I'm sure many of you have seen this, yes?)

I outline in narrative form (akin to a screenplay treatment), so I was intrigued by the depth and complexity of this spreadsheet format.  I was particularly interested in JK Rowling's outline, and google helped me find this analysis:

http://www.slashfilm.com/potd-jk-rowlings-plot-spreadsheet-for-harry-potter-and-the-order-of-the-phoenix/

Wow!  She not only relates each main even to each subplot, but she knows the day on the week that it happened.  As well she should.  As well I should!  It seems I have a lot of work cut out for me and, thank goodness, finally some time to do it.

Wishing a happy, relaxing, and productive summer to all!  I am about to dive into a friend's WIP and give myself a major dose of inspiration.  And, in the spirit of "reading is writing," don't forget to enter our latest giveaway contest to win a copy of This Journal Belongs to Ratchet by Nancy J. Cavanaugh. I can't wait to read this one, myself. :)  -- Jeanne Marie