Writing

Angels and Demons

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

AngelsDemonsGet ready, fans. Angels & Demons is opening in the movies this Friday. I decided that I was going to try and reread the book so I could keep track of all the plot and intrigue that will be ricocheting around the theater. I read Angels & Demons awhile back, and after The DaVinci Code. At the time I recall liking The DaVinci Code better, but I must say, as I allowed myself the luxury of a few hours of reading yesterday, that this really is engrossing. Sometimes a book IS better the second time around.

The ancient secret brotherhood of the Illuminati, the battle between science and religion for the meaning of God, the grandeur of Rome, a conclave of cardinals in the Vatican to elect a new Pope, and a device that could destroy them all – what’s not to like? Throw in a  good dose of conspiracy theory, lots of action and intrigue – I’m ready! 

All that’s left for me to figure out is can I carve enough time out of my schedule to finish the book … and still sleep.

Be A Better Writer and Feed the Hungry

/ still a dreamer / 4 Comments

Having a great vocabulary is just one of the hallmarks of a great writer. Whether you write novels or picture books, or just a letter to the editor, a broad vocabulary is a tremendous asset. Good grammatical skills are another plus. So here’s an idea – why not strengthen your vocabulary and sharpen your grammar skills and help feed hungry people around the world? You can do both at FreeRice.

FreeRiceWhen you visit the FreeRice site, you have the opportunity to play a vocabulary game. For each correct answer, FreeRice will donate 10 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program to help end world hunger. It’s multiple choice – if you get the answer correct, you will get another word challenge which will be more difficult. If you get it wrong, you will be offered an easier word challenge. You can even hear a vocabulary word pronounced if you’re unsure about it.

The site opens on the vocabulary section, but you may also choose grammar, famous world paintings, geography, math, chemistry or foreign languages. For every correct answer, FreeRice tallies your grain donation, first by grains, then by bowls. You can indicate on another page if you would like to have your last scores and grain donations remembered for your next visit.

FreeRice has two goals: 1. Provide education to everyone for free.  2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.  How can you go wrong?

So get working on your vocabulary; get feeding some people in need, and get going!

WARNING: This is very addictive!

Alice Hoffman’s Indigo

/ still a dreamer

indigo-alicehoffmanAlthough I’ve said this before, I like Alice Hoffman. I like what she writes about – essentially, magic – and how she writes about it.

Indigo, like Green Angel, is ultimately a story about healing. Written for middle grade readers, Indigo is also a story about friendship, devotion, and love of all kinds. As with Green Angel, my only complaint is that the story is over too soon. More like a novella or short story than a novel,  (how it’s promoted), it’s 84 pages in paperback.

Back to the magic – one of the main characters, Martha Glimmer, is more an ordinary girl, but who was touched by a certain magic in her mother. Her mother has recently passed away, leaving Martha feeling unsure, adrift and missing the spark in her life that was her mom. The two other main characters, Trevor and Eli McGill, nicknamed Trout and Eel for fine webbing between their fingers and toes, long to see the ocean. All three, stuck in a dry, dusty town which has all but banished water due to destructive floods in the past, yearn for something beyond what they know.

Fiercely devoted friends in search of dreams, they set out on a journey. Magic is revealed in more ways than one as Martha, Trout and Eel discover their truths, reclaim their pasts and find richer futures. It’s a lot to accomplish in 84 pages, and I love how Alice Hoffman does it. For a fast but rewarding read, Indigo is a great way to go.

p.s. I feel like I’m cheating on Andrew Weil, the book I’m currently reading, but I hit the Hunterdon County Library’s big annual book sale this past Sunday, made out like a bandit, and couldn’t resist this fast read.

Writing A Synopsis

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

backporchIf you think I am going to be personally giving you tips here on writing  a synopsis, well, hate to disappoint. But I am going to provide a couple links to a site with a particular article that I found quite enlightening.

To date, the stories I have submitted to editors and agents at the NJ SCBWI conferences and workshops have been picture books, as I wish to, (ideally anyway), both write and illustrate. However, one of my PB stories was looked at by an editor awhile back and her comment was that there was too much backstory for a PB, and she felt I would do much better with it as a chapter book. This, of course, sent me into researching what chapter books were all about, reading a bunch, and re-working this particular story. Chapter books also have lots of illustration opportunity, so this is still a good thing.

I am submitting this for the June Conference at NJ SCBWI. If you’re anywhere in the area and able to attend, do go and learn more about this wonderful opportunity to meet editors and agents, and learn a bundle about this field. I am very pleased to be meeting with an editor that had critiqued this story at a first-page session last year, and had some good things to say. Now I shall find out if I’ve gotten 15 pages of it right. 

What needs to accompany these 15 pages is a synopsis, something I’ve not had to be concerned about with a picture book. So after asking fellow writers, reading up on the subject and searching the web for the best way to write a synopsis, I came across a two part article on the blog of Rachelle Gardner, a literary agent for Wordserve Literary. The article is written by one of her clients, Gordon Carroll, who does something no one else has done — he shows us how to write a synopsis on a story we all know, Bambi. Excellent idea.

Carroll’s using a well-known tale in developing the stages of the synopsis has made it so much easier to approach this new challenge. I’m actually now looking forward to it!  Here are Writing A Synopsis, Part 1 and Writing A Synopsis, Part 2.  Hope it may be of help to you.

As for that photo? Where I hope I’ll be doing some of my writing tomorrow … on my back porch!

The Book Thief

/ still a dreamer

thebookthiefHere are two things that are connected – I couldn’t fall asleep last night. I finished reading The Book Thief.  A book that keeps me up at night after I’m done reading, can often be said to be a good book. Or maybe a disturbing book. Or maybe a haunting book. I think it’s safe to say that The Book Thief is easily all three.

I bought this book in a local bookshop in Clinton in December while shopping for Christmas gifts. I’d wandered over to the YA section and was looking for something interesting. I’d already found a few things for others, a couple for me, and was talking with one of their very knowledgeable staff. He recommended The Book Thief to me, saying it was one of the most incredible books he’d read in a long time, and gave me some background. I bought it.

And there it sat. And sat. And sat. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to read a book set in Germany at the time of the rise of Hitler, no matter how well recommended. I started the book in March, just finished last night.

This is a difficult book to read. Zusak is a phenomenal writer; he has a brilliant way with words that you practically have to read to believe. His idea to have Death be the narrator, sometimes writing in first person and sometimes in third was an extraordinary, if not startling, concept. But it was slow reading. I wondered if it was because I was usually reading it at night; were the realities of the economy weighing on my mind, and so on. But in the end, I believe it is simply the subject matter. This was a horrific and shameful chapter in the history of humankind, and you cannot read The Book Thief without your heart being broken a hundred times. Or at least I couldn’t.

The story really does pick up in the last third of the book where the characters’ lives are all moving into more intense situations seeking some hopeful, but never hoped for, resolution. Each character, including Death, is extremely well drawn. Liesel, Rudy, Rosa, Hans, Max, Ilsa Hermann … are, if nothing else, real people in real relationships. But it seemed for me that it took a long time reading before they had become characters that I truly cared about, and I’m not sure why. It may be that the weight of Hitler’s Germany, woven well into the story line, drew me away from feeling more. Or perhaps I was afraid to feel more for them, knowing that Death was always nearby, ready to reach in and carry their souls away. And as he says, it was a very busy time for him.

So while a story dealing with pain and persecution, it is, however, still a story about love, friendship, loyalty, forgiveness, triumph over adversity, hope, and compassion. Markus Zusak is an amazing writer, and he has woven his story and characters together well, even if there is tremendous loss throughout the book. I do recommend The Book Thief … but to whoever reads it, be prepared for being drawn in to the tragic misfortunes of others in a frightening period of history, even while it is oftentimes no more than a backdrop to everyday lives and commonplace circumstances.

What I’m wondering as I write … not even 12 hours from finishing this book … is do I want to pick it up and read it again. And I’m not sure what to make of that.