My 99th Revision

 "...historical fiction can be a form of resistance to a homogenizing view of our world and our past. There are certainly more immediate and material ways to resist oppression — legislating, organizing, protesting, boycotting, and mobilizing are very powerful ways — but sometimes, just existing and living your life, having your story told, can have an impact." -- Disha Jani (Who Tells Your Story: Historical Fiction as Resistance 

Mary’s spinning plates as she builds a new website. What am I doing? Remember that old marching song:

99 bottles of beer on the wall

99 bottles of beer

Take one down, and pass it around,

98 bottles of beer on the wall.

Its repetitive melody helps you find your rhythm when hiking trails or jumping ropes. It’s an ear worm that keeps you steady when the task at hand seems monumentally tedious. It diverts your attention from the monotony to the goal. That’s what I feel when I revise. When I finish a first draft, breathing a sigh of relief and accomplishment, I move on to the first revision. Only to discover another plot hole. A character acts out of character. First person slips into third person. Or worse, the history is wrong.

I write a blend of historical fiction and American fantasy, blending the folklore that captures the American identity with a unique form of fantasy that – I hope – captures forgotten times and personalities in American history. My first book, Big River’s Daughter, begins in December 1811, when a series of earthquakes shook the Mississippi River basin. It shook so hard, the river ran backwards. It changed the landscape. Language is as important as the history during this time. In true rough and tumble fashion, the heroes of tall tales mocked and defied convention. Annie Christmas and Mike Fink – two important characters in the book – used language as wild and unabashed as the circumstance and landscape that created them and the protagonist, River. If the language isn’t correct, not only to the time and place and character, it’s time for a second revision.

98 bottles of beer on the wall, 98 bottles of beer…

The historical details are particularly important, whether it is the day the river ran backwards or a day during the Civil War. Historians work within a broad spectrum of data-gathering, dairies, journals and other volumes of primary sources. Planning and plotting resemble postnotes arranged in rainbows, Venn diagrams and flowcharts, all in the quest for accuracy. The process of writing historical fiction, like researching history, is neither straightforward nor risk-free. My second novel, Girls of Gettysburg,  focused on Pickett’s Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg. No other time in American history has been so researched, even down to the number of bullets fired during the charge. Historical fiction makes the facts matter to the reader. If you get those details wrong…

97 bottles of beer on the wall, 97 bottles of beer…

Even after a manuscript is done, it's not truly done. My dear agent and I have a process. After so many rejections, we review the story, and look for possible revisions. For all the blood, sweat and tears – no tall tale here! – spilled during the writing of the manuscript, a manuscript is more likely to get rejected than not. Over winter break, I revised one rejected manuscript, taking it from 150 pages to 175 pages, refining character,  language and plot while expanding on the historical context. During these times,  I have to keep reminding myself, revising is when the real writing begins. This is when the real story emerges, the one that needs to be told. I only hope the editor agrees.

Now I’m revising another historical fantasy manuscript. The original was an experiment into the contemporary. After several rejections, it became apparent that the experiment didn’t work. With this book, I venture into the wild, wild west, taking on its fantastical landscapes and lore.

96 bottles of beer on the wall, 96 bottles of beer…

Historical fiction is one of the hardest sells today. Dear agent warned me, western themes are harder still. The original manuscript was 150 pages, and I have to get it to 225 (for many reasons, one of which is the conventions our hoped-for editor prefers)...

95 bottles of beer on the wall, 95 bottles of beer…

You know what? I hate beer. And this morning, I hate revision even more. It’s hard, hard, hard work. And there’s no guarantee that after all that blood spilled, sweat poured, and tears cried, and there’s been plenty of each, I’ll even be offered that coveted contract. So why do it anyway?

Indeed. Instead of spending all those hours writing, typing, outlining, researching, deleting, cutting, pasting, I could bake a pie. I could give my cat a bath. I could learn a new hobby, plant another garden, or two, or three…

Wait. Pause. Take a breath.

True enough, I have enough gardens, stretching almost a full acre around my cabin. And I have enough hobbies, which mostly centers on books and more books. And my cat would not let me live to see another day if I dared give him a bath. And I haven’t had a baking oven for close to a decade.

Besides, this character, for all her flaws, is getting really interesting. If I could just…

Fine. Back to work.

94 bottles of beer on the wall, 94 bottles of beer…

 Bobbi Miller

Spinning Plates and My New Website.

    What am I doing right now...seriously?  You really want to know?  The truth?  Right this minute I'm having a frozen Milky Way bar with my morning coffee, the TV show Hoarding: Buried Alive playing in the background.

     Well, you asked!

     If you are around my age, you remember The Ed Sullivan Show.  At least once a year Ed would have a plate-spinning act...a bunch of guys balancing multiple tall poles with plates twirling at the ends. Every now and then someone would lose a plate, catch it in mid-air, then toss it back to its pole top...and keep on spinning, without missing a beat.

    Every time the spinners came on, my mom would elbow me and say, "Don't even think about trying that." (I already had...just long enough to learn that you can't spin Melamac plates on a yard stick, the closest thing I had to a pole.)

    I've thought about the plate-spinners a lot lately. Those plates whirling high in the air, remind me of my own life. Not to get into my personal melodrama, but just keeping my family going on all cylinders is tough enough. Writing projects are extra poles to juggle, but I've run out of space. Maybe balance the poles on a foot?

   In addition, there is the current national climate. Some people can tune out all the tumult and turmoil.  I can't.  I try to keep it from creeping out of my chest (where it sits like a sullen four-year-old) and into my head (where the four-year-old goes into total tantrum mode.) Doing anything at all these days is like slogging through molasses. Everything.....goes....so....slowly.

    Now that you have all the excuses for my low/slow output, here's what I'm doing.

    I'm building a new website.

    Once upon a time--2009--I took down my old website, intending to have a professional design a new one for me. It's not so easy to design a website when you write in multiple genres for all age groups. I queried a few designers, didn't like their work...and then came the Big Money Crisis of 2009. Suddenly I didn't have the money for a professional designer. At the same time, I had already taken down my old website (what was I thinking?) And so it has been for the last eight years. And some purveyor of questionable material snatched up my domain name.

    A couple of years ago, I started seeing ads for DIY sites. I wasn't at all sure I could handle what ever amount of DIY was involved. (You wouldn't believe how long it has taken me to maneuver around Blogger for TA every two weeks.) I am tech-impaired.

   Then a good friend put up her in new website and I was blown away. Clean, simple, professional looking.  A couple of emails back and forth and I learned that she had used one of the DYI sites.  She alerted me to the quirks and pitfalls of this particular company.   For a business that is supposed to help you build a site, they're own isn't particularly well organized.  With this in mind, I went to work.

      After a week of experimenting with the controls and images, I've finished the first page (ta da!) and  downloaded the images I plan to use on the other page. Right now (like right this minute) I'm working on the pages of text. As you know, it's tough for me to "write short." I'll have to get myself in my old journalistic mode, no more than 150 words per paragraph. (My very first job was working for a local weekly paper when I was 14.)

  I don't know what I expected from a DIY.  A couple of magic right clicks and I'd have a website?
I wish.

     DIY means you have to remember every single thing that goes on a page. If you don't put it in....it isn't there. I could've used one of the ready-to-go templates, but none of them said "children's writer" let alone Mary Ann Rodman, children's author. So, always looking for a way to make a task twice as hard, I started with a blank template and added my own images and design. If nothing else, it will look like ME.  And when I goes up (hopefully next week), you guys will be the first to know. At www.maryannrodman.net

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

Five Fingers/Five Titles for Teaching Young Authors (And Those Young-At-Heart)

So, to answer April’s insightful question posed in her Friday post, you can find my current fingerprint all over today’s post, literally and figuratively.

For a variety of reasons too many to share, it’s the TEACHING part of my TeachingAuthor handle that currently fills my days. I’m a gardener of sorts, seeding and feeding writers, helping others tell their stories to young readers.  I pinch myself daily, honored to be doing so.  I also remain grateful.  Ironically, it is I who likely blooms fuller from helping such singular folks grow their diverse offerings.

As luck would have it, I often have the chance to seed and feed Young Authors. I take joy when sharing writing resources, opportunities, connections and book titles (how-to’s, biographies, autobiographies, related fiction) with teachers, librarians, parents, booksellers – and best of all, the young writers themselves who squeeze me out like a sponge.

Here are five titles I’ve recently added to my Young Authors hand-out, though in truth, all five speak to writers of all ages.

👍WRITING WITH ROSIE by Patricia Reilly Giff (Holiday House, 2016)

Thumbs up for award-winning author Patricia Reilly Giff’s writing how-to book for writers and readers ages 8-12.  The subtitle says it all: You can write a story too.

In conversational chapters that engage, amuse (thanks to her dog Rosie), inform and inspire, Giff introduces the elements of narrative (character, plot, setting, conflict, resolution), shares how she dealt with those elements, offering specific Show, Don’t Tell examples from her published books (CAN YOU SEE HOW I DID IT?), then gives the young writer a chance to try his hand (YOUR TURN). Kirkus called it “the best recent writing guide for young readers and writers.”  Giff knows her audience and how to reach them in age-appropriate meaningful ways.  Holiday House also offers an accompanying Educators Guide with Instructional Standards.  Giff’s spirit abounds.  “Writing is a joyous part of my life. I want that joy for you too, because we all have stories to tell.”

👌 WHERE ARE THE WORDS? by Jodi McKay and Denise Holmes (Albert Whitman, 2016)

 McKay’s introduction to punctuation marks and how they work to tell a story is A-OK!  Thanks to Holmes’ reader-friendly illustrations, the marks come to life, building on each other’s expertise to help Period tell his tale.  The resulting story appears at the end, punctuated correctly.  Young readers ages 4 to 8 come to know each mark in a way that makes their usage unforgettable. 

👏 HOW THIS BOOK WAS MADE by Mac Barnett and Adam Rex (Disney-Hyperion, 2016)

Applause! Applause! There’s finally a fun picture book that SHOWS readers in pictures and in words how a writer’s idea becomes a book they can hold in their own two hands. In between there are “dangerous animals, an angry mob, unreasonable editorial demands, high-seas adventure and traffic.” The Narrator-dash-Writer writes and rewrites and works with his editor so the illustrator can make his art in a timely fashion so the publisher can print the book so it eventually can sit reader-ready on a shelf! There’s just enough absurdity to keep the reader laughing but just enough reality to keep the reader and future writer learning. Barnett and Rex make making a book understandable and fun.

✋ THE UNCORKER OF OCEAN BOTTLES by Michelle Cuevas and Erin E. Stead (Dial, 2016) 

High Fives to Cuevas for her gorgeous writing and Stead for her beautiful illustrations that capture the uncorker’s one-of-a-kind life and heart-stopping situation. This book deservedly sits on numerous Best Books of 2016 lists – SLJ, the Boston Globe, People Magazine and Time. The story is a keeper, like the unaddressed party invitation the nameless character receives.  Bottled messages especially appeal to young writers. Wonder prevails and gets us all “What-if?-ing.” Just think about the author, to launch a story idea.  Or think about the recipient.  Maybe think about the message.  It’s a terrific device when a writer needs to step into another person’s – or character’s – shoes, as both the writer and the reader. A bottled message and its mystery make a swell story hook, too.  

✌ A CHILD OF BOOKS by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston (Candlewick Press, 2016)

V is for victory in Jeffers’ prose poem.  Beautifully illustrated by Winston’s clever typographical images created from text from favorite classics, all the words – both Jeffers’ and Winston’s - sing the praises of the travel opportunities stories bring the reader. Might this be the perfect explanation for how readers become writers?  How might young writers create text images from their favorite stories to create stories of their own? (Oh, to have a classroom of young writers ripe for such an assignment!)

🤞 My fingers are crossed you’ll come to know, explore and use the above five titles, whether sharing them with Young Writers or telling your stories.

Enjoy!

Esther Hershenhorn

3 Things I Am Doing Today...What's YOUR Fingerprint?

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Howdy, Campers, and Happy Poetry Friday! (The link to PF and my poem are below.)

Today's TeachingAuthor topic is "What are you working on now?" An alternate topic I could have chosen was: "Since the ALA awards were announced this week, what is your reaction as a writer to the success/acclaim for other writers. Does it inspire you, or make you envious?

All last year I was thinking about the fact that we are each a fingerprint. We can only help another so much. Ultimately, each person must discover what works in her life; what her fingerprint is.

So...what am I working on now? You mean, what am I doing today?

Well. 

That's a tough one.

To be honest...

I'm not sure.

I'm so tired of the dead bodies of stories that stretch back for decades. It's not that they are unfinished. Most of them are finished. The problem is that they're not quite right. I listen to my critique group or a workshop teacher or a mentor or my best friend but mostly myself...and know that I haven't quite touched the heart of the story; it doesn't yet move the reader. I haven't gone deep enough.

I hear their comments, each given kindly in the belief that I can fix the story and then--TA-DAH! I'll send it off with a note in its lunchbox to an editor and it will roll back to me on a rose covered float with a publishing contract in hand.

I hear them. I understand that I need to jump from this lily pad to that one, by the far edge of the pond... But I can't seem to make the changes. I don't know how.

photo by me

This is hard to admit!

In my over-thirty year career as a children's book author and poet, I've seriously considered leaving the profession once before.

I remember that I was driving two hours home from ALA in San Diego on a rainy night. I had just come from a private party, celebrating an award for the book of a dear friend. And I was sobbing.

I passed a billboard featuring a beautiful baby. Maybe I should quit writing and adopt a baby, I thought.

I didn't know if I could go to one more conference where there seemed to be so much success. It was if I had stepped into Facebook where only fabulous things happen to people. I couldn't stand it anymore.

That's not exactly how I feel now. I can celebrate other people's success today. I wish I were feeling anger or rage or defiance. I'm not. What I'm feeling is heart-sickness.

So, what am I working on now? Figuring it all out: who I want to be. What I want to do. Whether I ever want to write again. (That last sentence is not exactly true. Keep reading.)

Some of this upheaval is due to the current political landscape. Part of me feels I have to stop my life and help save the world. But maybe part of me wants to do this precisely because that would be easier than wading through my confusion and sadness. Hard to know.

So here's what I'm doing:

1) For today, I am writing one poem and also writing beside my sister TeachingAuthors. I love writing a poem a day, which I've done since April 1, 2010. I send them to my friend and he sends me his. I won't stop writing a poem a day, nor will I stop blogging, which has opened a door for me I didn't even know was down the hallway.

2) For today, I have not quit my verse novel...the one I wrote and which was accepted for publication by Dial Books for Young Readers over a decade ago and then cancelled, and which I've been writing and finishing and rewriting and rewriting and not writing and nearly setting fire to since 2002. It's bubbling just under my skin. For today I am letting it bubble.

3) For today, I am listening to my own fingerprint. Just for today I am not listening to mentors or workshop leaders or best-selling writing books or even my beloved fellow writers. Just for today, I am listening to what feels right for me, teaching what feels right for this class, for this poem, for this picture book, for this novel. Maybe what I write doesn't fit into today's publishing world. And I have zero desire to self-publish. But still I think about my verse novel almost every day. Mostly with sadness, but with a touch of desire. And some small hope that maybe I haven't yet lived the part of my life that needs to be added to it to complete this book. And others, too.

"I haven't yet lived the part of my life..." Yet is a powerful word.

A month after the election, I was reading about the eyes of flies, for reasons which escape me now:

"House fly eyes are compound organs that are comprised of thousands of individual lenses. Compound eyes are capable of detecting both the polarization of light and color spectrums unseen by humans.” http://www.orkin.com/flies/house-fly/house-fly-eyes/

Reading that triggered the poem I wrote that day, which even I don't understand:

WHAT KEEPS ME GOING
by April Halprin Wayland

"Why," asked Sir Spider, "are you an optimist, friend Fly?"

"I've iridescent eyes," said the ever watchful fly...

and then she said, "Good-bye!"

poem (c) 2017 by April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.

For today, those are three things I am doing and an odd poem. That's my fingerprint. What's yours?

Thank you, Beyond LiteracyLink for hosting today ~

Posted by April Halprin Wayland with the help of Eli, who slept quietly on his doggy couch while I wrote.