Posted By Vonna on August 29, 2010

Thanks to Elaine Scott for speaking at the August SCBWI meeting. Elaine’s topic was billed as Get an Agent or Not, but her talk was far more fascinating than this title indicated. Elaine shared her experiences with her two very different agents, why she felt compelled to leave her first, well-known, high-profile agent for a new agent with a large agency and how the switch affected her career. It was a good thing for Elaine that the community center had a set closing time or we would have bombarded her with questions all night. Great meeting! Thanks, Elaine!

September is going to be chock-full of writing-related events for me. My bookshelves may collapse from all the extra weight they are about to gain. Take a look:

At our next Houston SCBWI meeting, we will be discussing the amazing line-up of speakers for our regional conference which will be held April 9, 2011. We will have Kate Fletcher, an editor at Candlewick, Laurent Linn, Creative Director with Simon and Schuster, Abby Ranger, an editor with Disney Hyperion, agent Sara Megibow from the Kristin Neslon Agency, Anna Webman, an agent with Curtis Brown LTD, and author of the Ellie McDoodle series Ruth McNally Barshaw.

I signed up in time to get my choice of afternoon intensives for the OKSCBWI conference —a session on fantasy with Joni Sensel, author of The Farwalker’s Quest and The Timekeeper’s Moon. Other speakers include Sonia Gensler whose upcoming YA novel The Revenant, a Victorian ghost story set in a Cherokee girl’s school in the old west, debuts in 2011.  Also speaking is a wonderful lady I met at the Houston conference in February, Anna Meyers. She is the author of numerous YA and MG novels, including her latest, Time of the Witches. There’s a great promotional video of this novel produced by Stages Theatre for Youth of Clarksville, Arkansas. Cool, huh? Tammi Sauer whose newest release is the adorable Mostly Monsterly, will be leading a picture book intensive.

Smart Chicks Kick It comes to Houston September 15, courtesy of Blue Willow Bookshop. Authors appearing at this event are Kelly Armstrong, Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan, Cassandra Clare, Melissa Marr, Alyson Noel and Margie Stohl. I’ll have to get there way early just to find a place to stand!

ll be attending the Southwest Texas SCBWI conference with Sarah Shumway, HarperCollins Editor, Julie Ham, Charlesbridge Associate Editor, award-winning author Carmen Tafolla, award-winning illustrator Heather Powers, and Art Avila, art director from San Antonio’s Raining Popcorn Media.

And last, on Sunday, September 26, from 2-5 p.m., Houston area children’s authors and the Friends of Evelyn Meador Library are having an ice-cream benefit at The Seabrook Community House, located at 1210 Anders St., Seabrook, TX 77586. Proceeds from sales of autographed books and paving stones will be donated to support the construction of the new library to replace the one destroyed by Hurricane Ike. So come enjoy FREE ice cream and family-fun activities with local authors: Mary Dodson Wade, author of I’m Going to Texas/Yo Voy a Tejas; Pam Van Scoyoc, author of Angel Wings; Pat Miller, author of Substitute Groundhog; Deborah K. Frontiera, author of Living on Sisu: The 1913 Union Copper Strike Tragedy; Pam Calvert, author of Princess Peepers; Wendy Lanier, author of A Pebble First Guide to Texas Symbols; Ana Maria Rodriguez, author of the series, Animal Secrets Revealed; Gail Greenberg, author of No Pig’s Brain Soup, Please! Marianne J. Dyson, author of Home on the Moon. Other authors attending will include Carmen Bredeson; Jo Harper; Margaret McManis; Kimberly Morris; Jenny Moss; and Alicia Richardson.

Yep, all this in one month—plus trying to nail down all the plotting and planning on my new WIP. I’m lucky to have such a wonderful, tolerant and supportive family! Due to the SWTX SCBWI conference, I’ll miss the Houston YA/MG Writers meeting, so I hope somebody takes notes. I’ll try to do the same for all of you who can’t make it to these other great September events.

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Category: Authors, Conferences, SCBWI |
Tags: Authors, conference, SCBWI

Posted By Vonna on August 22, 2010

In our August meeting of the Houston YA/MG Writers, Rose Moriarty led the group gathered at La Madeleine in a discussion based on a recent post at Writers Digest—11 Plot Pitfalls and How to Rescue Your Story From Them, by Laura Whitcomb. If you haven’t already read this, take some time to check it out.

This is such a great group! Some of the established authors have dozens of books published and they take their time to mentor those of us who are newer to this business. We went through this list point by point, and the published authors spoke up on the various plot issues to talk about how they have dealt with a particular problem.

As we were discussing each point, related issues sometimes came up. While we were on point six—The Plot Is Too Shallow—someone brought up The Rule of Twenty. This is a brainstorming technique to solve the problem of shallow plots: come up with twenty crazy, impossible things that could happen. Of course they won’t all work, but this is about brainstorming—no self editing allowed! Within these twenty, perhaps something one or two of them will contain the spark needed to liven up the weak plot.

Another person brought up a concept she said she had heard (or read) from Aprilynne Pike, author of Wings and Spells. Before writing a book, she comes up with sixty possible turning points for the story. If she can’t think of at least sixty, she doesn’t write that book.

One of our writers offered another great tip she heard (or read) from romance author Cherry Adair: write bios for each character in a different color ink. Then when you are writing the book, cut (not copy) information and paste it into the scenes. Your color-coded bios will shrink as you write until eventually each character’s bio page is empty. This ensures the characters are fleshed out and nothing gets repeated.

When we were on point nine—The Sequence is Illogical—someone brought up a concept discussed by Dwight Swain in his classic book Techniques Of The Selling Writer. The short story is this: scenes are followed by sequels. The structure of a scene = Goal, conflict, Disaster. The sequel =  Reaction, Dilemma, Decision.

Great meeting, great folks. Special thanks to Rose Moriarty for leading this super discussion!

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Category: Houston YA/MG Writers, Writing |
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Posted By Vonna on July 29, 2010

Wednesday night, Houston fans of YA paranormal romance packed Blue Willow Bookshop to see and hear Maggie Stiefvater present the sequel to her bestseller Shiver. The new book, Linger, continues the saga of The Wolves of Mercy Falls.

Maggie didn’t have to wait for the crowd to warm up. She brought the party mood with her—she arrived early looking happy, relaxed and ready to have a great time. Thanks to all the bloggers who have interviewed her, Maggie said she already knew what The Question about Linger would be. When she went on tour to promote Shiver, the bloggers had already prepared her for the one question that everybody asked:

What inspired you to write Shiver?

Her answer: I’m a terrible person. I like to see people cry. I stay young on the tears of my readers. I’m really eighty.

So, The Question (actually, there are two questions with a capital Q) all the bloggers have for Linger is:

1) Did you do a lot of research like read werewolf books?

2) Why Werewolves?

Answer Q1— I did hours of medical research and spent hours torturing my father (doctor) about viruses and genetics. I spent hours watching wolf documentaries, so many that my dogs started howling in their sleep. I spent hours reading rehab forums and spent more time reading poetry that I spent on personal hygiene. But no, I did not read werewolf books. Everybody knows about werewolves.

Answer Q2— I don’t write about werewolves. I write about wolves and teens. They’re never teens and wolves at the same time.

And of course, everyone wanted to know when the final book in the series, Forever, will be released. Maggie said it is scheduled to come out at this time next summer. She taunted the crowd a bit by giving us two hints about Forever: There will be happier and sadder moments than the other two books. but no, she won’t tell us what color the cover is or what color the ink will be.

She also teased us that while on a recent vacation to Nagshead, while her husband and kids frolicked int the surf, she wrote Forever spoilers in the sand and cackled as the waves washed them away.

Maggie did give us her thoughts on who should play in the movie for Shiver. Click here to see her picks.

And for the fans of her Books of Faerie series, Lament and Ballad, she told us that the name for the third book is Requiem.

Thanks for visiting us, Maggie! And thanks to Blue Willow for hosting this fun event.

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Category: Authors |
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Posted By Vonna on July 18, 2010

We had another great meeting of the Houston YA/MG Writers yesterday morning. Our usual venue had double booked our room, so Mary Lindsey generously hosted us at her home. Thank you Mary! We had a great turnout, but none of my usual buddies showed up today, so when we split into groups I didn’t think to ask anyone to take notes for me on the stuff I was missing.

In the first part of the morning, I participated in the query letter discussion. One of the group’s founders, Jessica Capelle, led this session and handed out several pages of links. (Of course, I lost them. Maybe they are in my car, but it is pouring down rain, so I’ll check later. If I find the pages when the rain stops, I’ll post the links.) It was a good conversation. I brought a copy of the query letter I intend to send out soon and kept it on the table while we talked. During the course of our conversation, I managed to trim my query by thirty-seven words. Nice.

The second session I went to was a discussion about revision. Dottie Enderle led the talk, and Mary brought in a revision letter from her editor. Other authors have shown me their revision letters, but I’ve never seen one like this. It was massive. Actually, I thought it was wonderful—a fantastic, detailed breakdown of work that needed to be done, and Mary did it.

Mary Lindsey’s YA novel, Shattered Souls, will be coming out next fall from Penguin.

So I missed two sessions—one on character development and one on creativity. I’ll have to work on cloning myself for the next meeting.

Okay, here are the links for getting started with query letters and your agent search:

http://querytracker.net

http://writersdigest.com/article/101-websites-2009-publishing

http://ktliterary.com/category/ask-daphne

http://caseylmccormick.blogspot.com/

http://openquery.blogspot.com

http://pred-ed.com

http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/

http://kidlit.com/

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/

http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/

http://theswivet.blogspot.com/

And finally, when you need to laugh,

http://slushpilehell.tumblr.com/page/1

Thanks for this great list, Jessica!

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Category: Houston YA/MG Writers, Writing |
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Posted By Vonna on July 4, 2010

In this blog, I mostly talk about MG and YA writing, but today I want to mention two picture books that I am really looking forward to. Both are by my critique partners and both are due in Spring 2011. One is I Think I See A UFO by Kathy Duval (Disney Hyperion) and the other is T is for Taj Mahal by Varsha Bajaj (Sleeping Bear Press).

There was a time may years ago when I thought I wanted to illustrate picture books. So when I am critiquing a pb, I can’t help imagining the illustrations. I used to envision these in my own style of painting, bright watercolors and organic shapes. But in these two cases, we now know who will be illustrating them, so I have a much better idea of what the style of the illustrations will be, which makes imagining them even more fun. Our critique group has been given sneak peeks at a few sketches for one of the books, but the other is being kept top secret. I won’t be giving anything away here, but I think it’s okay to mention the illustrators’ names and send you to their websites for an eyeful of their beautiful work.

The illustrator for Kathy Duval’s I Think I See a UFO is Adam McCauley. To read an interview with him, check out this wonderful blog, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

Robert Crawford will be illustrating Varsha Bajaj’s T is for Taj Mahal. For a glimpse of some of Sleeping Bear Press’s other titles in this series take a look at their catalogue.

It’s going to be such fun to see these projects come to life!

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Category: Authors, Picture Books |
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Posted By Vonna on June 26, 2010

Something one of my beta readers pointed out was that the sentences in my manuscript were too similar in length. As I read it through, the cadence did indeed seem monotonous. So I took a look at my first long paragraph. Here is the word per sentence pattern of a paragraph from my first page before revision:

13-13-11-1-13-13-17-3-8-12-13-22-21

After revision:

13-11-4-11-1-10-13-17-3-8-10-13-22-6

Quite a difference! I did not lose any information and the paragraph became livelier. This is one of those little things that really get me excited about revising. Such a small thing can make such a big change in voice.

So now that I have finished page 1, I’m off to evaluate the remaining 217.

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Category: Writing |
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Posted By Vonna on June 13, 2010

Comments from my first readers are trickling in and some of their suggestions are so exciting that I can’t wait to jump on them. But I still have three more manuscripts out there, so I don’t want to get too carried away with revisions until I get the whole picture. Some suggestions were so good I know I will use them, so I might sneak in a few hours of revising here and there, but I’ve kept a clean draft of the manuscript as it was when I sent it out, so even if I do make changes, I will have my original as reference.

Meanwhile, though I am still working on my outline, I couldn’t resist writing the first chapter of my new WIP. In fact, I think I’ll write the second and third chapters as well, then get back to serious work on the outline. I’ve written lots of personal stories for my characters, but it’s good to see them in action—it stokes my enthusiasm for the story.

Writing-wise, it has been a busy summer so far, and I hope it will speed up instead of slowing down. Many of my critique friends have irons in the fire now, so it’s fun to watch my in-box for their exciting news. How about you? Any news to share?

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Category: Writing |
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Posted By Vonna on June 3, 2010

Hooray; it’s summer! It’s getting real nice and steamy down here in Houston. Speaking of Houston, those of you from other parts may not know that in January I started a newsletter for the Houston SCBWI chapter. I have added a page here on my blog for anyone who would like to keep up with what’s going on down here. Also, if you are an SCBWI member and will be coming to Houston for a book tour, let me know by the 25^th of the month before your visit and I will put it in our newsletter so we can show up for your event.

Next week I’ll get a chance to critique someone else’s manuscript. I’m really looking forward to it. The writer is someone with talent and education, so I know the manuscript will be clean and well-executed.

As a response to a comment in my last post, I mentioned that after writing an outline for a chapter, I aske myself four questions: 1) What is the MC trying to do? 2) What goes wrong? 3) How does he try to fix it? 4) Why does this matter?

Even though this helps keep me on track and keeps my story moving forward, I sometimes make incorrect assumptions about how readers will interpret my story’s main events and the characters’ feelings about these actions. So to help me critique someone else’s manuscript, I have devised a system. It can come off a bit blunt, so I try to make sure the authors know my intentions before they see the results. As I read each chapter of the ms I am critiquing, I make notes—bullet-point style—about what I see as 1) the main actions that occurred and 2) the important information which was imparted.

If I mention something I thought was important but the author intended as a trivial aside, the author can take another look at it from my (the reader’s) perspective and consider softening the impact. Likewise, if I do not mention something the author intended as a crucial element, she/he can see that it went over my (and possibly other’s) head(s) and can take the opportunity to strengthen that element. The best case scenario is when the author can see from my bullet points that the actions and information were clearly understood. Worse case scenario—neither of these two categories has any bullet points beneath it.

This analysis at the end of each chapter helps the author see where the reader’s view of what is happening in the story may diverge from the author’s intentions. Of course, I do the usual critique stuff, too, but from the comments I’ve gotten from those whose manuscripts I have critiqued, the bullet–point information is really helpful. And smiley-faces, lots of smiley-faces, for all the bits I thought were especially well done.

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Category: SCBWI, Writing, critique |
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Posted By Vonna on May 22, 2010

While my last manuscript is out with my first readers, I’ve been busy at work on my new WIP. My outline, which I want to fill twenty to twenty-four pages, is currently at thirteen pages, so I have work to do this week. The more details I fill in, the easier it is to keep BIC when I’m writing the actual story, plus I get a lot of basic details into my first draft which might otherwise get neglected and cause headaches later on.

I’ve also been writing background stories for certain characters. My story has myths and legends which are referred to, but not necessarily spelled out in the book, but knowing the whole legend and understanding the roots of the myths ahead of time makes it easier for the characters to discuss and fear them. Plus, it really brings the character who is most involved with the tale into focus.

Unlike my real book, my background stories have no outline—just an idea of where I want it to end up. This is fun, free-writing. The background I wrote yesterday ran a little over two-thousand words. I’m pleased with it because a character I had thought of as tired and gloomy unveiled a creative, jokester side to her that I had been unaware of when I originally planned her. Now I’m looking forward to going through my outline and making sure she gets enough page time to do her justice.

I won’t be writing much today, though. Today is all about family—kids, grandparents and birthday cake. I hope y’all have a happy week!

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Category: Writing |
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Posted By Vonna on May 15, 2010

Saturday morning I got to attend my first meeting of the Houston YA/MG Writers. The group had its debut meeting last month, but I was out of town that day. I love my SCBWI chapter, but I was intrigued by the idea of a group dedicated to writers who are working primarily in full-length novels for kids and teens.

The meeting exceeded my expectations. About thirty people showed up, from beginners to long-time pros. The group is organized by Mary Lindsey, Jessica Capelle, Rose Moriarty and Iona McAvoy. Mary led Saturday’s topic, overcoming obstacles in time management, and she did a great job. We took over the back room of a La Madeleine and shut the big double doors, giving the meeting the aura of a workshop. And Mary organized it in a very workshop way. She led a spirited discussion on the topic, and handed out a worksheet. After about an hour, we broke into small groups to brainstorm ways to overcome our time obstacles. This sounds like it would be a quiet endeavor, doesn’t it? Not! The crowd got so excited I could barely hear the people in my little huddle. Mary, whose facebook avatar would lead one to believe she is a sweet, shy young thing, called us to order in a no-microphone-required teacher’s voice. We rejoined as a whole group and went over some of the best suggestions.

We also worked on goal-setting. I committed to several goals, which I’m not going to put here—yet. Let’s see if I get through my first hurdle—finishing the outline for my new WIP before my next critique group meeting—then I might feel more confident in publicly admitting my next goal.

I had hoped to meet several MG writers at this meeting, but at the beginning when we went around and introduced ourselves, almost everyone said they were writing YA paranormal/fantasy except for the organizer and her daughter who are co-writing an MG book. At the end of the meeting I asked for a show of hands of those who also wrote MG and several people said they were interested in MG as well, plus I know at least two MG writers who were unable to make it to today’s meeting. All in all, I think this is going to be a great addition to the Houston writing community. I’m looking forward to our next meeting.

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Category: Writing |
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