Category: Books

Blueberry Girl, by Neil Gaiman

Blueberry Girl was a gift to my daughter by a friend of mine. It was written by Neil Gaiman, and illustrated by Charles Vess.

It’s a beautiful book with full-color illustrations. A little repetition keeps her attention and large words (I hope) spark her vocabulary.

I know she’s only one, but she listens to everything. She says more words every day, and though they’re not completely clear, she’s getting more expressive.

I haven’t let her pick this one up and carry it around the house yet. It’s not a favorite of hers, but I like reading it to her. The words are calm and the pictures don’t excite her, which makes Blueberry Girl a great choice for bedtime.

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The Little Engine That Could

My mother brought a copy of this book for my daughter. I’m glad to share with her books I loved as a child.

The Little Engine That Could, by Watty Piper, is a great book to help anyone know that they can do something only if they try. The mantra of the Little Blue Engine is “I think I can – I think I can!” all the way up to the top of the mountain.

Do you ever wonder what you can do, if you just think that you can?

A lot of people tell me I do a lot of things. Okay, I do. Is it because I have superhuman abilities? Haha, I wish. Sometimes I wonder if I get things done because I think I can squeeze them in.

Somehow, I think I can squeeze in some time to learn Mandarin, and the time is there. I think I can squeeze in time to write a novel, even after having a child, and I managed a rough draft in about seven months. I think I can scale buildings in a single bound!

… Wait, I still haven’t managed that one.

I enjoy reading the book to my daughter, though. One day she may attempt things just because she thinks she can. It might even be because of this book we are reading together. Then again, it might also be due to me not letting little things like time crunches get in my way.

What obstacles threaten what you want to do? Can you get rid of them?

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Series Incongruities

I’ve been reading books by Scott Westerfeld: Uglies, Pretties, and now halfway through Specials. I like the world he’s created for Tally Youngblood and her friends, and it shows her character changing throughout the three books.

But I also noticed the little bit about SpagBol, his word for Spaghetti Bolognaise dehydrated, then re-created with a purifier.

In Uglies, Tally runs out into the wild with a bag created by [evil] Dr. Cable, and every single packet of food in her bag was SpagBol. After that, she’s had trouble looking at it. Can’t blame her, since that’s all she ate for three meals a day for a few weeks.

In Specials, Tally reacts to another character eating SpagBol with some revulsion. Months have passed since Uglies, but this is still a strong reaction.

So why does Tally have SpagBol in her own hand-packed bag when she escapes to the wild in Pretties? And why doesn’t she react when, admittedly another character, eats it?

Those kinds of questions sometimes keep me up at night. I found the little inconsistencies even toward the end of editing The Art of Science, and I hope to find them all with my current projects.

I’m only human, though. I must take into account that I will not fix everything, even if I have help.

Scott Westerfeld couldn’t find all the tiny details with all of Simon Pulse behind him. It wasn’t a pivotal point. It was just part of the minutiae.

I’m sure a series bible would help, but it’s also difficult to accept that as a writer I might not be able to create a perfect story. I suppose I’ll just hope enough people read it to discern the things I missed.

We all do the best we can. I’m loving the books in spite of that – extremely small – detail.

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James Stevenson

I’ve been reading Corn-Fed and Cornflakes.

These books are both written and illustrated by James Stevenson, and both are full of fun poetry. My daughter only kind of looks at the pictures at this point – they’re not the full-page illustrations in the books she carries around with her – but she listens when I read them to her.

All right, she listens when I read just about anything. She is quieter when someone else is holding her when I’m reading, though.

I really enjoy his short poetry, though. They’re small things about garbage bags or snow-covered cars shown through a different perspective with a humorous effect. I see a ton of them on the Amazon page, and now I’m wondering if I can find a few others to read to her.

It makes me want to write poetry. I just finished a poetry challenge and I’ll not brag about it because I know I’m not that good. It’s fun, and that’s the important part to me. I think I’m better with prose. It might be because I’ve had more practice.

Children’s picture books often seem closer to poetry than books aimed at older audiences. I think it’s because the economy of words forces the authors to say so much more. It’s a good exercise for any writer to try to say more with fewer words.

I do have one poem from the challenge I really like and will be attempting to send it to magazines once I smooth out one last line. Wish me luck.

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Digging Into Plot

Yesterday I pulled out my synopsis and I started making notes. Finally!

I’m really glad I wrote the synopsis now. It makes it easier to figure out where to change things. My notes are in dark blue, littering the typed pages.

Today I think I’ll add green or purple, whichever I can find first. I like adding a different color to show different kinds of work, and today I’ll be making a new line for the plot. It might take two or three times to get where I need to go and changing colors in the notes helps me see which direction I’m going.

As opposed to all black and white- then I’ll forever be scratching things out that don’t work.

Makes me think I should’ve done all this work before I wrote the book, but I didn’t develop the synopsis first.

Why oh why didn’t I do the synopsis first?

Well, I suppose I haven’t yet outlined a book before I’ve written it. The Art of Science might have been the exception because I had a chapter guide before I wrote it – but that one changed away from the outline version completely, too.

Do any of those writing books out there mention the people who have to write the rough draft before being able to look at the plot structure and make it better? I wonder if I might be one of those people.

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The Market Says

Discussing the magazine market with my friend, she said there was a bigger market for ‘how to write’ especially in the speculative fiction field than there was for the fiction. She’s been researching for her own magazine, and I don’t doubt it.

But it’s a little funny, since in order to write for any genre you need to be familiar with the genre. Of course, they’re probably buying books instead of magazines, but why?

If we’re out for the short story market, it’s best to get our hands on the actual publication we want to have purchase our work. (I’m sure that’s best in every market.) Wouldn’t that make the demand equal for both products?

Are we trying to write in a vacuum?

Maybe we’re listening to the characters in our head. What’s to stop them from taking over the story? Not that it’s bad for them to take over the story, that’s part of what happens when they become real to the author. I guess I’m asking: How do we know they have the best plot possible, if we have nothing to compare to?

Not that we want to redo a plot. I know I’ve heard Twilight has a lot of similarities to Wuthering Heights (can’t be bad to be compared with a classic), but I wonder sometimes where the line can be drawn between using an old plot with newish characters, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and the arguable every plot can be traced back to one of [insert number of plots below 50 you think there are].

Have you ever wondered what the true fascination with Zombies really is? I think if I get around to reading those re-makes, I’ll choose Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters instead…

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Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing

All right, I’ll admit it: I browse writing books like kids browse candy aisles. I read a bunch of rules from well-known writers prompted from Elmore Leonard’s book and found interesting things, so when I ran into it at the library (a place I am found frequently) I popped it into my check-out bag.

What surprised me most about this book is that it’s heavily illustrated. Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing took me about half an hour to read. A lot of that time was spent absorbing the words and the pictures. The reviews on Amazon are extremely mixed, and I can understand why.

While there is good advice in here, most of it could be found other places. If a writer is looking for a how-to book, only a few things are going to be stated and none of this is in the detail required for a beginner to grasp the nuances of the craft. There are other books for that.

What I liked about this was the feeling of a picture book aimed at adults about a subject I love. I agree with many of Leonard’s Rules, and it’s nice to have them put in front of my face here and there: “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” I’ve been writing some poetry lately for a challenge put on by an acquaintance, and I struggle to configure the words properly for the forms. On the other hand, it might mean I’m just so accustomed to writing with the clarity of prose that it’s a struggle to pull out the poetic license.

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Tuesday

Okay, today isn’t Tuesday… But the book is. I checked it out of the library, doing a random run-through with my daughter looking for more books to read to her.

David Weisner wrote this 1992 Caldecott Medal Winner. It has 32 pages and very few words. Amazon says Tuesday‘s aimed at children 4 to 8. In this book, it catalogs many terrific happenings beginning on Tuesday around 8 pm.

In my opinion, picture books are to help parents talk to children and show them stories. It doesn’t matter how many words are on the page – I can describe the pictures to begin a conversation with my daughter. (Okay, it’s a one-sided conversation since she doesn’t have enough words to chatter back in a way I understand.)

I am excited to share it with her again as she gets older.

In other news, I entered two contests that ended at midnight last night. Cross your fingers for me.

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Reading to Baby

I try to do this every day. Sometimes it’s difficult to choose the right books to read.

Writing and reading are related activities. I think about everyone agrees that reading to your children is a great activity to involve the family, but what do you read to your kids?

I vaguely remember the scene from Three Men and a Baby where Tom Selleck is reading to the baby from a sports magazine and telling one of the other guys, “It doesn’t matter what you read, what matters is the tone you use.”

Finding books on the subject isn’t too difficult. I’ve been reading Baby Read-Aloud Basics and I have another book on the subject that I haven’t perused yet. (love the library- they feed my brain!) They had it partly right. The tone does matter.

But it also matters what you read. Reading is giving your child a solid foundation of language. It’s also why you’re supposed to talk to the baby all the time. (even though it’s really hard when you never get coherent answers.) This is how the baby learns to speak, and the more you can do it, the better off the baby will be.

I know, that’s speaking. Reading is just as important though. Those books that you cart around have words you don’t always hear in regular conversations. It’s a wonderful way to boost the vocabulary. Yes, I mean baby books. No, I don’t mean Dr. Seuss.

Don’t think I’m knocking Dr. Seuss, though. He wrote wonderful books, but they’re for the beginning reader. (Proudly marked on their covers that way.) The beginning reader isn’t looking for tough things to say or read, just to gain familiarity. If we only read beginning reader books to our children, we aren’t giving them as many different, complex, learning tools for their vocabulary as we could be.

So one question is, when looking for a book for your baby: Will you be reading it, or will the child? Don’t shy away from books with larger words in them. What’s wrong with fuchsia for a color or exhilarating for a description when the adult is reading it to the baby? Absolutely nothing! If you never introduce your little one to those words, they’ll never know them.

It almost makes me want to read my dictionary to her, but not quite. Now if it had some pretty pictures…

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Meeting the Readers

Okay, not all of them. But I went to a local mother-daughter book club and I had a wonderful time tonight. They read my book!

I think I had as good of a time as they did. They had so many questions about the writing and rewriting and publishing and even the naming of the characters. I loved listening to their discussion of the book and I could even ask my own questions of them. (And did, once or twice.)

I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of their discussion. They were great girls and their moms seemed awesome. The girls yelled ‘Thank you!’ as I left. And I smiled. Very big!

Thank you to Amber, Dahlia, Izzy, Gracie, Kylie, McKenna, and Sophie and to their mothers for letting me join them at their meeting.

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