Time Flies

I'm sure there are a zillion ways to say, "What happened to the last two-four-eight years?"  But while time was flying by and I was pushing the litany of physics and chemisty, a sheaf of new poems were written and a short story was published in VOICES, the winter 2011 issue. These are my milestones, of a sort.
On the other hand, I am about to see the daughter of my heart embrace her new life as a wife and independent consultant in New Orleans. She and Greg are both so independent, that my own solitary life seems lackluster in comparison.

It's been a busy last year or three, and I hope to be more focused in 2012. Writing is such joy, such challenge, and I refuse to lose as much time during the next eight years.

These are some of my favorite things -- at the moment.

Try Louise Penny for characters you can't believe aren't walking through your own streets. What a combination, reading Louise Penny and watching Paul McCartney and Billy Joel on PBS. Thank God, I'm so far from being single-minded! "Let It Be" sung by the Master, played by the Piano Man. Heaven.

I just bought: 'Still Life: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (Three Pines Mysteries)' by Louise Penny. And all six of the next novels. They leave me breathless with wonder.

As we move closer to the finals of our semester of physics, being filled with wonder during NaNoWriMo is worth every moment of lost sleep. I love this writer and her characters and her plots which are woven like double -layered crocheted afghans. I almost feel as if I could turn the book over and read more of the same story from other points of view or find myself embroiled in one of the twists.

And then there's the occasion of the music in the background. Divine.

You should be so lucky!

Leaves across the road

              Wind

              shepherds

              leaves

              across

              road.

I found this little poem, little string of thoughts, on the blog of my friend, Jo Lightfoot, the Everyday Poet. And instantly, I was reminded of an incident that I experience every year.

Nothing can halt its coming. No one can change the sadness it brings. Sadness that begins with a down-turned lip and prickly tears that are quickly blinked away. Time and repetition does not lessen its impact.

I live with leaves, with brown and black, with rosy, yellow, and white. Occasionally I am pleased to find a red one in the bunch, but they are quiet and sometimes hidden by their subtle coloring. All year long, I search among the leaves to find the secrets they possess. The golden essence of life and knowledge, of love and ambition. By early spring, I am recognizing the layers on layers of their beings.

      As I write, my characters are like leaves. Their colors and   shapes are waiting for me find the painting to which they belong. I suspect it’s going to be one I’ve loved for a lifetime, perhaps, something like Autumn Leaves by Georgia O’Keeffe. But my characters, like ordinary leaves, begin to take on individual personalities, and by midnight, I am typing as fast as I can, like running down hill and you can’t stop.

My daily leaves are my science students with all their disguises, fears, and desires. By this time each year, they are blooming, pulling out of the mass of fallen colors and beginning to march the halls with their own pace and style. They are the finest characters who ever tripped across a page of anything we’ve written.

Then it happens. Like throbbing colors of leaves fade from red and orange and yellow and rust to grey, my carefully trained students begin crumbling. They aren’t actually going to follow every rule, nor are they planning to go in the directions I aim them. Suddenly the day will come and my roomful of leaves, my handful of autumn, will rush through the door, carried by a strong gust of wind, and school will be out for summer. They’ll be gone and the building will fall silent and hollow. With my heart aching, I’ll let the covers of my laptop fall silently together. Being finished, even with a draft in need of more loving care, is a blessing.





The Best Engineers Play with Toys

Electric hugs to Patricia Wiles and the participants at the MidSouth SCBWI conference who contributed hundreds of books for schools in need. The responses were celebrations of reading.
     "I delivered 147 board and picture books, donated by the conference attendees, to the special ed classes at West Broadway Elementary on Friday Oct. 1," wrote Patricia to the MidSouth group. "The teachers were so excited! One wrote this to me in an e-mail: It's Christmas on Broadway!! "
     "It gets better ... after receiving two more boxes of books in the mail, on Wednesday, Oct. 6, I delivered 400 books from our conference attendees and other SCBWI friends to Alternate Day Treatment, AKA the school without a library. Well, it has one now -- thanks to you!!!!! The kids SWARMED the boxes! They picked up books and asked me about them. Some asked me if there were books by specific authors, which authors signed their books, or if there were books in particular genres. One saw books by a certain author in the stack and spoke of how he'd read several in the series, and did we have any more of his books? This was all so sweet ... especially as I thought of the people (none of you, of course) who had said to me, "Those kids probably don't know how to read anyway," and "Those kids have computers. They don't need books."
        Nashville readers will learn about the donations from MidSouth and friends in the newspaper this weekend. Could there be any more delightful celebration for us who love reading to hear?

But sometimes the connecting of child to book hits a snag. Also within the blogging of writers came this week a note concerning parents who push their children to read only at a challenging or "age appropriate" level and are anxious about children who want to go back to picture books. Teachers also fall in this category of reading coach, pushing reading to learn as the goal of class time reading. Many writers sent in tales of their own reading habits as well as those of the children who now occupy the households. Words are words, characters are warm-blooded role models, no matter how they are drawn, and situations that thrill or delight, that invoke giggles or trembles are just life in a teaspoon.

It's like jokes about space travel: objects may be farther away than they seem to be.

Don't we all remember "Don't judge a book by its cover."

As readers and writers, I suspect we all agree, "What you see isn't necessarily what the child is getting."

I fear those parents and teachers who restrict reading to "appropriate age" only have forgotten the delight in conquering. When a hummer has conquered the lyrics, she sings. When a reader has conquered a story, he makes up his own dialogue with the characters. When an older reader returns to picture books, or from "real age appropriate" books to chapter books, it's like re-tasting the icing on the cupcake; all comfortable, reassuring, familiar, and yes, a sweet memory of the other many times the book has shared its magic.

Knowing the outcome means rewriting it in the imagination, perhaps dreaming of different illustrations, even adding or deleting characters. Heaven knows, we see picture books, myths, and fairy tales retold over and over in movies. Of course that goes on in the colorful minds of children "reading down." Where would we be without artists like Disney and all his cartooning loonies who went back to picture books and made us the dreamers we are?

Perhaps parents and others who would restrict book choices don't realize that the best engineers play with toys. Simple things make clear to us the structure, the flow of energy, the dependency of parts, and the grace of design versus function. Reading is just another way to engineer our minds, to be creative, to be emotionally safe or challenged by choice, to control our universe for awhile--before all the rest comes crashing in. How curious I am to see if anyone has ever asked the child to rewrite the ending, to tell what the story means to him, or to pick up crayons or brushes and paint a scene in the story that the illustrator left out. Now wouldn't these activities 'tell a story.'

I hope children whose parents are worried about 'age appropriate' reading keep right on exploring the old and the new. The fact that they are making choices and building their own mental libraries tells me they're growing at a phenomenal rate. For teachers and parents, it's time to reassess the restrictions and remember reading is an adventure that takes us all far far away.

You've got blood on your hands once you kill somebody!

The moment was tense; my peace of mind in a dangerous condition. A Seer would have to be present to detect the evidence. But I knew. I knew I was guilty--a character I really really really wanted to keep was killed off with one tap of my index finger. The highlighted area of the page blinked out, into the ethernet forever. Never to be seen again.

                                   

I stand by my decision...with luck the mystery will be stronger and the plot tighter, but the character was driving the story. My MC was struggling to keep up; his sweet nature, his old-fashioned manners falling to the side of the road whenever this guy came into a scene. He HAD to go. And he was so wicked, so evil, that most of my readers refused to go farther than the first full scene. He frightened adults.........how could I send him out to middle graders? So I done it. He's gone. finis.

Now comes the weird part.  .  .

I went hunting, like a good blogger, for a picture, an image of a typist with bloody fingers. All in good fun.

And Lordy, Lordy! There is a whole genre of sick minds posting bloody hands and fingers on the Images files. They even have t-shirts! There's a dozen re-tellings of the Bloody Fingers camping out in a tent story. There's also an APP for the Iphone with spinning knives and your fingers dodging them in tighter and tighter circles. And amazing enough, a recipe for Bloody Fingers to eat. Who knew?

Bloody Fingers for Kids

1 pack blanched white whole almonds

red food coloring

egg - beaten with a fork

As many as you need: Frozen fully cooked breaded chicken strips

Pre-heat the oven.

Dye the almonds. Glue them to the chicken strips with egg.

Arrange them on a cooking sheet and toast until ready.

Serve with drizzles of very red (Prego) basic pizza sauce, it's thicker than spaghetti sauce.

And last, but not least (as they say)...........you can send your friends and loved ones a Bloody Finger email. Like that's something they'll cherish for a long long time to come?

I'm closing the door on this revelation and getting back to work.

Dorrie and the Magic Elixir

What would I do without Chuck Sambuchino and Nathan Bransford and their digests? Or Deborah Halverson and Darcy Pattison for a tidbit a day? Or wonderful challenges from writers like Ms. Snark whom I adore. They are my writing buddies in absentia. My back-up crew unpaid save by admiration. They cheer us on and redirect us when we ramble,
just like Dorrie kept an eye on her Mother as the battle continued against the machinations of Wink, the rotten lizardly Wizard.

We all begin as little witches with an adoloescent knowledge of writing skills garnered from the books we've read and oh Lordy, we do read. We read everything from memoirs of people we've never heard of to junk mail to dreams of worlds beyound the Van Allen belts to steamy close encounters to blogs. And we leap, schemes and plots in hand, into the writing world like daughters and sons of Calliope, aware of all the baby spells we've learned and intrigued by the adult spells we hunger to perfect.

I look upon the advice so freely offered online from writers, editors, and agents as secrets to the Power. And I am studying the Big Book of Magic Spells as hard as I can.

A Bird's Eye View of your WIP, just what your editor ordered!

One of the latest hints we've heard about analyzing your WIP involves copying your whole book on tiny pages so you could color code where the plot turns occur, the character shifts begin and end, the surprise of complications, and how far along in the manuscript certain facts are revealed, etc.

Check out Tim Koch's personal discovery.
A bit of trivia for you: a 90000-word story fits on 15 11x17 pages at 6 point and 6 columns. LOL

He's using LEGER size paper. It's worth having around if you have kids because it's 'poster' size to a 4-5 year old. One ream lasts forever. Tim Koch is the author of two fierce YA novels about young adults running from mind/body control in a futuristic inner/outer space in the universe and the voodoo that teens hoodoo so well. This is a great way to see the energy flow of a whole book.....and it takes only 15 pages. And a place to hang it on the wall or a bulletin board so you can really see it with a bird's eye view.

Don't try to read the fine print, SEE the transitions and hum the rhythm.
Kate

Catching Up with writers caught in action

I sat tonight for quite awhile and read. Read the blogs I want to follow more closely. Read the 'next' and 'previous' blogs. Read about new contests. Read about personal successes and woes. I took the time to enter lives of other writers to do the pick-me-up injection of perseverance I've been needing.

Try it yourself. When you're down and lonely and it's too hot to go out and there's not enough inspiration to stay in.....try reading 50 blogs of other writers. Blogs of poetry. Blogs of rhyme. Blogs meant to let off steam. Blogs begging for followers and someone to relate to. Blogs of youngsters who write. Blogs of seasoned writers who have had so much success they seem to be untouchables. Just read.

From webpage to webpage, I found desire and desparation. Joy and anticipation. Urgency and patience. All possible antagonists among emotions common to writers, to those who keep trying even when the strokes are few.

Give yourself a pat on the back. Read for an hour uninterrupted. Don't stop to answer, make a note now and then for later. Absorb the fire. Be the fire. Be the change in your own tomorrow.

"In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for contructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone." ~Rollo May

POETS ROUNDTABLE of ARKANSAS Annual Contests

http://www.poetsroundtable.com/brochure_new.html

Thirty some-odd contests for poets from far and wide.
Take the plunge, win some cash, and enjoy writing
in another style.  It's a summer challenge!!

All poems due September 1st and they take the deadline seriously.

KL

REBLOGGING is alive and well

Now, as any ordinary person might admit if pressed, I find TWITTER a pain in the neck! All those urgent announcements, all that egocentric hoopla, is hard to make sense of. BUT retweeting is a fine way to pass on great successes, good contests, congratulations and so forth. I am in favoring of spreading the best of the best whenever possible. Go forth all ye writers and REBLOG! It's bound to create a whole new audience.

REBLOGGING Kristin Gray's "Another Gray Day"
TOP 10 Topics of novels for children
Note the last line MAKE YOURS REALLY DIFFERENT!!!
http://kristinlgray.blogspot.com/2010/06/top-10-topics-for-novels.html

Always yours,

Kate Lacy
Editor for Hire
Reading and critiquing for writers of MG and YA
contact: voicedancer2002 at yahoo dot com.

If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance. ~Bern Williams