WHO IS YOUR MUSE?

Howdy, Campers ~ Happy Poetry Friday AND Last Day of Poetry Month! My poem and the link to today's PF host are below.

In honor of TeachingAuthors' 12th year on earth (is the internet technically earth?), we are each choosing one post from the past 12 years (just one?!?!) to share.  Esther shares a poem I wrote (!) and a photo of us surprising Carmela at TeachingAuthors' birthday celebration, Mary Ann shares JoAnn's 2011 inspiring review of Paul Janeczko's Seeing the Blue Between, Advice and Inspiration for Young Poets, and Carmela shares Esther's 2011 post about a specific kind of haiku which Esther called Thankus, while adding her own thanku and a #HaikuFromTwo.

The truth is, I love the writing of every TA, but I knew from the start that I would be rifling through Mary Ann's posts. I love her storytelling, I love her show-us-her-scars honesty. Her authenticity, forces me (maybe inspires me is better) to be more honest, too.

So today, enjoy Mary Ann's 2010 post about Charles Schulz' s PEANUTS gang...aka her muses.

from Apollo Magazine; no copyright infringement is intended 

I wrote about my own muse in 2013:

WHEN I MET MY MUSE
inspired by a poem with the same title by William Stafford
by April Halprin Wayland

 

I was lounging against the back of a napping kangaroo

when this little boy with a large crayon drew near.

Said his name was Harold.

 

I sat up to study the scruffy kid—

a baby, really, in p.j.s that must have been

as suffocating as meat in a sausage skin.

 

His wide eyes disarmed me,

as if he were that butterfly in the antidepressant commercial,

flying around a garden party and leaving everyone feeling better.

 

Harold stepped around the kangaroo to draw a big house

with a wide porch

and shutters on every window.

 

There were a boatload of windows.

He added two rocking chairs and three hanging baskets of geraniums.

When he framed the front doorway, we went in.

 

The floors were oak; the house felt comfortable, like a favorite old sofa.

He drew stairs; we walked up to four bedrooms

and a greenhouse room with walls of glass.

 

"I'll be living up here," he said, pulling down steps from the ceiling.

He climbed into the attic and peeked out.

"I'll hand you down stuff I find here," he said.

 

I supposed I'd be responsible for feeding him. 

I wondered if he ate real grilled cheese sandwiches

or if I had to draw them with his crayon.

 

The kangaroo

was still sleeping in the front yard,

which was probably for the best.

From Wikipedia; no copyright infringement is intended

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Before I say g'bye, I have Poetry Month news! 

My next 3-hour, one day Writing Poetry for Children class through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program will be on July 17, 2021. Registration is now open, but hurry, enrollment is limited to 25 students.

I'm thrilled that three of my poems are on the Poetry Foundation site. 

I'm happy to be among nine poets who are on a fascinating education website in England called TWINKL (no E at the end). The poets are: Jaclyn Desforges, Miriam Sagan, Liz Garton Scanlon, Irina Moga, Lauren Camp, D. S. Martin, Allan Wolf, Charles Ghigna and me.

And I'm honored to have been included in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators' video of 13 poets, each reading a poem. (Note: the video lasts 17:30 minutes; my poem is at the 11 minute mark).

The poets are: Nikki Grimes, Lesléa Newman, Joseph Bruchac, Jane Yolen, Tami Charles, Lin Oliver, Hope Anita Smith, Sonya Sones, Carole Boston Weatherford, April Halprin Wayland, Margarita Engle, Ellen Hopkins, and Linda Sue Park.

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Who is your  muse? Please tell us in the comments--we want to know...we really do!

Thank you, Matt, for hosting Poetry Friday

this last day of Poetry Month, 2021 

on Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme !

posted by April Halprin Wayland, with the help of Eli, Kitty, and Monkey, who were sure THEY were my muses before I broke the news...

Wednesday Writing Workout: Your Character's Internal and External Quest

Last Friday, I blogged about the revision retreat I recently attended led by award-winning authors Julia Durango and Linda Sue Park. Today's Wednesday Writing Workout is a follow-up to that post. So if you haven't read it yet, please do so now. I also recommend you read this blog post by teacher Keely Hutton at Writer's Dojo, in which she has her students identify the main character's internal and external quests in a recent Disney movie.

Welcome back! Now you're ready for Step 1 of today's Wednesday Writing Workout:
---Take one of your own works-in-progress and document your main character's: 

• External Quest: what he wants to accomplish (the plot objective) and
• Internal Quest: what he needs emotionally (this drives the character's emotional growth/change) 

Is this harder than you expected? Here's one more example, shared by Linda Sue Park at the Revision Retreat and in The Craft & Business of Writing: Essential Tools for Writing Success (Writer's Digest Books). Speaking of Tree-Ear, the main character of her Newbery-winning novel, A Single Shard, Linda Sue says: "Tree-ear's external quest is to find a way to make celadon pottery. His internal quest is to find a place where he truly belongs."

Okay, now for Step 2:
---Look at the first ten pages of your work-in-progress (or the entire manuscript if you're working on a picture book). Divide the pages into scenes. For each scene, ask yourself:

Does my main character make progress toward and/or face impediments to one or both of the quests?

If the answer is "no," you need to either revise the scene or re-examine your character's quests.

Repeat this step for the next ten pages and continue working your way through until you've analyzed the entire manuscript.

Optional Step 3:
---Remember the one-sentence synopsis Jill blogged about 2 weeks ago? Well, one way to come up with yours is to look at your main character's internal and external quests. Here, for example, is the summary of A Single Shard that appears on the book's copyright page: 

"Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters' village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself."

This synopsis explicitly states Tree-ear's external quest while hinting at his internal quest by mentioning he's a homeless orphan. See if you can do the same for your WIP: craft a one-sentence summary that incorporates your character's external quest and, if possible, hints at his internal quest.

By the way, a book's one-sentence synopsis is very much like a "logline" used to describe a movie. For some helpful tips on writing loglines (including examples from well-known films), see How to Write a Logline at Cracking Yarns, and the follow-up post, How to Write Better Loglines.  

In case you're wondering, I found the following logline at Write2Reel for the movie Keely Hutton discussed with her students:

A video game villain wants to be a hero and sets out to fulfill his dream, but his quest brings havoc to the whole arcade where he lives. 

This incorporates the very external quest Kelly's students identified! 

Don't forget--today is the last day to enter our Book Giveaway! You could win an autographed copy of Michelle Markel’s and Melissa Sweet’s Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 (Balzer and Bray).

Happy writing!
Carmela

A Revision "Aha!" Moment

Happy Poetry Friday! I'm not sharing a poem today, but I have included links to where you can get your Friday poetry fix at the end of this post.

Instead of poetry, I'm discussing revision today. I'm currently in the throes of revising not one, but two, manuscripts, so Jeanne Marie's recent post on revision was timely. However, unlike Jeanne Marie's students, I am not a "reluctant reviser." I know all to well the value of revision from my experience working on my novel Rosa, Sola (Candlewick Press). (For more about that experience, read my blog post on "The 'R' Word".)  That's not to say revision is easy for me. So I jumped at the chance to attend a Revision Retreat led by award-winning authors Julia Durango and Linda Sue Park here in Illinois last month. (Hint: If you don't know their books, especially Linda Sue's Newbery winner, then you're not reading enough. The importance of reading was one of the topics Linda Sue touched on at the Retreat. For more on what she said, read the blog post "Do You Read Enough" by Jennifer Kay, a fellow retreat attendee.)

At the retreat, I was especially inspired by Linda Sue's description of how she writes and revises her work. Before even beginning a novel, Linda Sue defines two crucial story aspects:

• External Quest: what the protagonist wants to accomplish (the plot objective) and
• Internal Quest: what the protagonist needs (this drives the character's emotional growth/change) 

Linda Sue shares examples of defining these for her first novel, Seasaw Girl (Clarion), on her website. There, you can also read a bit more about her pre-writing work.

At the retreat, Linda Sue explained that the quests are not cast in concrete--they can change and evolve as she works on a manuscript, and she talked a bit about how that happened with A Single Shard (Clarion). However, after she's defined the two quests, one step in her revision process includes analyzing every scene to make sure the protagonist makes progress toward and/or faces impediments to one or both of the quests.

Prior to the weekend, attendees had been instructed to bring the first and last ten pages of a work-in-progress. Then, during the retreat, we were given time to practice the techniques the speakers shared. For example, after Linda Sue discussed internal and external quests, we had to define them for our own WIP. In my case, that was a very enlightening exercise. But my greatest "Aha!" moment came when I had to break my manuscript into scenes and then determine whether my protagonist made progress toward and/or faced impediments to at least one of his quests. IN EVERY SCENE! It became obvious to me that, as interesting as some of my scenes were (at least to me), they really had nothing to do with either quest. I saw for myself how much better the manuscript was when I cut those scenes. I left the retreat excited to go home and apply this new tool to the rest of the novel! (Fortunately, I have no qualms cutting when needed. But if you do, you may appreciate the following comic.)

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com.

Speaking of tools, I've been reading up on using Scrivener for my writing. It does appear to have lots of neat features. I've downloaded the free trial and worked through the text tutorial. I'll let you know if I decide to try it out on a manuscript. Meanwhile, if any of you use it, I'd love to know what aspects you especially like.

Also, I want to add that much of what Linda Sue shared at the Revision Retreat ties in nicely with the concepts presented in Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence (Ten Speed Press), which Esther reviewed here last fall. I finally picked up Wired for Story last month, and I have to say it definitely hooked me. The combination of the Revision Retreat and Cron's book is inspiring me to take a fresh look at two manuscripts I thought were "done."

On a different topic: don't forget to enter our latest Book Giveaway! You could win an autographed copy of Michelle Markel’s and Melissa Sweet’s Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 (Balzer and Bray).

Also, I'm sorry to report that wonderful TeachingAuthor April Halprin Wayland did not advance to the third round of the March Madness Poetry Tournament. :-(  However, the competition continues, so do visit the live scoreboard to cast your votes before the tournament ends.

And for more poetry, check out the Poetry Friday round up over at Gottabook.

Happy writing (and revising)!
Carmela