Craft Talk with Author Lee Gjertsen Malone

I have a confession to make. I am addicted to craft books.

Not the kind with knitting patterns, beading advice, or recipes for adorable cupcakes that look like space aliens (though I do have those).

I'm talking about books about the craft of writing.

These are just a few of my books
about the craft of writing.

Debut middle grade author Lee Gjertsen Malone is stopping by today to give us a pep talk. Sometimes the best advice for authors and NaNovelists is to stop worrying about how to write and just write. That's the moment when our characters, instead of our self-help books, guide us through a draft.

Let's welcome Lee Gjertsen Malone to Author Amok.

Lee Gjertsen Malone is the author of
THE LAST BOY AT ST. EDITH'S
debuting on February 23, 2016.

“I’m bored,” Francesca said, for what seemed like the tenth time today.

I was jogging along side the two of them, barely able to match their steps. “What’s going? I don’t understand any of this!” I squeaked out, struggling to keep up.

“This is all moving so fast,” Bartholomew whispered, his hands in her hair. “We just met yesterday.”

Many authors find themselves writing this kind of dialogue all the time in first drafts. But sometimes writers need to stop and listen to what our characters saying.

Not to each other – but to us.

I’m a firm believer that we all have a subconscious writer, a little muse (or nag, depending on your point of view) helping us as we grapple with the many facets of writing a novel – the characters, the plot, the voice. And sometimes that muse tells us things we need to hear through our own invented people. I was reminded of this recently while mentoring in this fall's Pitch Wars contest, and I think it’s worthwhile for many writers to consider.

Because let’s face it. If your character thinks the story is boring....or confusing...or moving too fast...what will your readers think?

Sometimes, it’s true, characters need to express certain emotions like frustration or confusion as part of the plot. This kind of dialogue can allow a more knowledgeable character explain what’s going on, or provide needed character depth. For example, a character who is easily frustrated by simple situations could be very compelling in the right story.

But all too often, these bits and pieces of dialogue are telling us what we don’t want to hear – that the romance is actually moving too fast. That our story has become confusing, or repetitive. Or, because the plot demands it, some of the characters are behaving in a way counter to their own personalities.

So looking at dialogue this way during the revision process can be a good method for finding some of the flaws in your work -- especially if you are the sort of writer who is reluctant to listen to critique partners who might be saying the same things.

I generally think reading dialogue out loud is a great way to see how it works for your story, and looking for these kinds of problems is another way you can improve both your dialogue and your plot. If you find can places where what your characters are saying feels more like a commentary on the story itself, then you have an opportunity to solve those problems and avoid some of the tropes that so often torpedo our work, like sagging middles, insta-romances, and plot points that get buried in blur of action.

So, what are your characters saying...to you?

Find out more about Lee's debut
novel on Goodreads.

Lee Gjertsen Malone is the author of the upcoming middle grade  novel THE LAST BOY AT ST. EDITH’S. As a journalist she’s written about everything from wedding planning to the banking crisis to how to build your own homemade camera satellite. Her interests include amateur cheesemaking, traveling, associating with animals, shushing people in movie theaters, kickboxing, and blinking very rapidly for no reason. She lives in Cambridge, Mass. with her husband, daughter, and a rotating cast of pets.

Read the Kirkus *starred review* of THE LAST BOY AT ST. EDITH'S.

Poetry Postcard 5

I mailed out the fifth postcard yesterday, January 5. One day to catch up on writing before next week's batch of poetry postcards go in the mail.

Today is busy for a Sunday. We'll finish packing up our holiday decorations because it's the Feast of the Epiphany. Our beloved Ravens face the Indianapolis Colts tomorrow at 1 PM -- Mr. S should be home from his parents' house in time for the game. And, I am reading with some friends at Minas Gallery in Baltimore, 4 PM. (Remember this cartoonification of local poets?)

All this, plus getting the kids ready to return, at long last, to school.

What I need in my life is some balance. That and a notion that one can persevere, but maintain a sense of lightness.

"A collection of original butterfly watercolors by the early
19th century artist Chevalier de Freminville" from
the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center, Callaway Gardens, Georgia.

Symmetry

Trick mirrors reveal

the human face is never folded

in perfect halves. Perhaps

this is true of the butterfly, too.

Pin one up and there’s

a cuffed wing, damaged tail,

scales so thin with wear

sunlight comes through.

After hundreds of miles,
one might call them frail.

Laura Shovan

Speaking of lightness, this poem recently lost a first stanza.

It was about a 10th grade Biology project: trapping and preserving insects, identifying them and displaying them in a shadow box. Whether it was laziness or disgust, I couldn't do it. An 11th grade neighbor let me "borrow" some of the specimens from his project.

Remember when MFA candidate Jennifer Della'Zanna visited and we were talking about on-ramps in writing? That high school memory was a poetic false start. It was a necessary entry into the poem, but only for me as a writer. The butterfly doesn't need to be weighed down by my issues.

 

There is an extensive collection of insects at Nottingham's
Wollaton Hall, which Julia enjoyed photographing.
The most recent Batman movie was shot there. Wayne Manor?

What's this poetry postcard project all about? Read about it here. Want a postcard? Let me know.

Craft Talk: False Starts

Beginnings keep coming up when I’m discussing writing. It doesn’t matter whether the person I’m talking to writes poetry or prose. We all seem to create some kind of way-in to the story or poem, just like a ramp onto the highway, so we can build up speed and get on the route to wherever the piece is taking us.

Look out, writers, for the slow merge.

The problem is, the on-ramp that worked for us, as authors, now feels clumsy or tacked on. It’s hard to see that in your own writing. I had a poem I was struggling with. I knew it was a good piece, but every time I sent it out, it got a rejection. After a year (a *year!*), I realized first stanza was an on-ramp. The lines made sense to me as I was finding a way into the poem. They were an accurate record of my line of thought, but the poem itself was better without them.

Here is my dear friend, historical fantasy author Jennifer Della’Zanna, talking about false starts and on-ramps. Jen is an MFA candidate at Seton Hill University’s popular fiction program.

Writer Jennifer Della'Zanna.

False Starts

Thank you for having me over here at Author Amok, Laura! I’m a big fan, as you know.

One of my favorite posts of yours talked about beginnings of poems, and how sometimes we use those beginnings to get into what you really wanted to write about—kind of like an on-ramp to the actual poem. I thought it was funny, because the same thing happens when writing a novel, although sometimes that on-ramp can last for a chapter or two, adding up to 20 or 30 pages. That’s a long on-ramp!

I wanted to share with you my own experience with this problem. My first novel is my thesis for my Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University, and it had to gain my two mentors’ approval in order for me to graduate.

I was in love with my opening chapter for the longest time. It started in medias res, as we all know these things should. Lots happened—birth of a baby, attempted kidnapping, magic that the main character didn’t know she had. As I wrote, and as more people provided feedback, many readers were confused about the events. My novel is a historical fantasy set in ancient Egypt, so the setting was foreign to most readers. I decided I needed a little bit of a build-up, so I wrote one. I started the story a little before the action—really only a few hours in the time of my story! I took the time to describe the setting and the “normal life” of my character. The only problem was, my mentors now thought it moved too slowly.

So I thought it was time to defend my choices. My story follows the “hero’s journey.”

Jen's "Battle Plan" for her book hero's journey.

In this type of story, it’s important to set up the world of the common day, make the reader identify with the hero and be drawn into the world and the story before fantastic events start to happen. I thought this supported my new chapter; however, I decided it did need more tension. I set up conflicts between the main character and her mother, the main character and other priestesses, and the priestesses and the main character’s mother. There were lots of conflicting feelings going on, and I rubbed my hands in anticipation of success.

Writing a novel can be like doing construction work.

Alas, both mentors still thought the opening was too slow. I was at a loss as to what to do next. Then, a friend confided that he’d submitted his work to a contest and didn’t win. The contest was to send the first 250 words, and the winners would get to send their first three chapters to an agent. His first 250 words didn’t make the cut, and I felt bad because I had critiqued his novel through several rewrites, and I thought it was strong. I suggested that he send me just the first 250 words again, without anything else.

How revealing! His first 250 words were not compelling. I couldn’t believe they were the same words I’d read many, many times.

So, I tried the same thing with my own work, and I got the same result! Standing on their own, my first 250 words don’t work quite as well as I thought they would. Result? It’s time to perform some major surgery on my first chapter. My on-ramp is too long, and it needs to be chopped off. Now, I just have to figure out where to cut it!

From this experience, I think we can agree that any kind of writing—poems, novels, newspaper articles, and research papers—can all benefit from a look or three at where we begin, and, most importantly, what that says about where we end.

Thanks again for letting me stop by your blog, Laura. I had a great time, and I look forward to hearing what your readers have to say about their own experiences with beginnings in their own work.

Thanks for guest blogging, Jen! Congratulations on your upcoming graduation and good luck with the book.

Writers: I think Jen gives great advice here. Take the beginning of your piece – the first stanza, chapter, or 250 words – and put it on a page by itself. Ask someone to read it, or put it away for awhile before you look at it. Is this a piece of good, intriguing writing on its own? If not, it’s probably time to lose your on-ramp.

Jennifer Della’Zanna was very happy making a living as a freelance writer for several years before a story invaded her head and wouldn’t leave her alone. She found National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2006 and thought she’d get the story out of her system. She did, but then another story occurred to her, and another, and another. A couple years ago, she sat her family down and broke the news that she wanted to go back to school to study fiction. She now writes historical fantasy set in ancient worlds, with a strong emphasis on mythology. Although her family remembers fondly the days when she used to cook and do laundry, they have been extremely supportive anyway, and she will graduate from Seton Hill in January with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Writing Popular Fiction. Chaos Rules, a historical fantasy set in ancient Egypt is Jennifer’s first book. She and her family live in Columbia, Maryland.

Seton Hill University is located in Pennsylvania.

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #24: Barbara Westwood Diehl on Googling

Do you have a go-to website that you use when writing poems? Many of the poems in my middle grade novel use rhyme. I have a rhyming dictionary. It is on my bookshelf in the basement, gathering dust. Why? Because www.rhymezone.com is right at my fingertips.

Today's highly effective habit is Googling or, more generally, following the thread of an Internet search. Procrastination technique? Maybe. But the search may lead you to an interesting discovery, a small corner of scientific knowledge or an outdated law that might inspire a poem, according to poet Barbara Westwood Diehl. Barbara is the founding editor of the online journal Baltimore Review.

Here is what Barbara has to say about googling:

Google has been the doorway to a lot of my poems. Sometimes it’s just a tool to find pronunciations and definitions. Sometimes those definitions are breadcrumb trails to other words— better words to slip into my poems. Sometimes, I have no idea what word I’m looking for, so I type something along the line of “kinds of angels” or “what mountains are made of” in the search box.

Most of the time, I’ll find what I’m looking for—or I’ll find something amazing and get seduced to a place far from where I had in mind. And then, although that place may be fascinating, it’s far from where I need to be to write my poem. Sometimes, those breadcrumb trails blow away into the woods, and I’m utterly lost. Sometimes, it’s nice to be lost.

Still, poets should be intensely interested in the world around them, whether they’re out on city streets, hiking in the woods, looking through a microscope—or losing themselves in a maze of Google searches. There is so much to learn, and so much to write about. Maybe too much, at least for me. Sometimes all that information can be overwhelming—I want to use all of it!—and that feeds my natural tendency to procrastinate. I have to remind myself that this poem won’t be my last. All those wonderful words can be slipped into other poems. Later.

Google came in handy for this one:

Canadian Rockies @beautifulsceneries.info

Blue Mountain

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

So mountains were a disappointment,

and not at all what you imagined.

I’m sorry they were not the blue

they seemed from far away,

during the long ride through Utah

toward the Wasatch Range of the Rockies

and Mount Olympus, and all that time

you had to anticipate something mythic—

the Macedonians appeasing their deities,

killing cattle and goats at the feet of Apollo,

or the Arapaho with bow and arrow,

hunting bison and elk in the foothills—

not the temple and saints of Salt Lake City

with its marshlands, mudflats,

and Mormons.

Did we keep the mountains distant for too long,

a blue-white blur of air and ice caps,

letting you believe in clouds as heavenly gates

and not just clouds, as if cirrus and cumulus

were not miracle enough, letting you believe

in mountains made of six-winged seraphim

crying holy, holy, holy, instead of

telling you the whole world is made of faults,

the slow rending and closing of earth

over time, not by divine genesis,

but the brown lip of wounds healing—

instead of telling you there is more wonder

in the guts of a thing, the magma below,

the veins of icemelt, schists

with garnet hearts? 

Montana's Garnet Mountain

It's Tuesday, poetry prompt day. Let's search the internet for ideas. Try one of these:

• Unusual mountain names.
• Strange laws. (Really, Rhode Island? No one can bite off another person's leg?)
• Cloud vocabulary.
• Recipes using breadcrumbs.

Or make up your own search topic. When you find something that interests you, follow the topic through at least three "clicks." Do you have enough information to get started on a poem?
 

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #22: Laura Shovan on Rekeying

Reiki ("ray-key") is an ancient Eastern healing technique where the practitioner shifts the patient's energy, moving blockages or noticing areas of the body that need attention.

Rekey ("re-key") is a revision technique that will have your writer friends calling your sanity into question. Why retype an entire manuscript? The whole point of word processing programs is to avoid rekeying a document. Edits are easy! Embrace technology!

Fellow poets, I say to you that reiki and rekey are not so different. Place the draft of your poem or manuscript gently on the table before you. Lay your hands on the keyboard. You will feel the energy in your work as you retype each and every letter, paying attention to its health and well-being in the context of the larger body of work.

Will you shift energy? By taking the time to rekey, you may spot pacing problems that you have glanced over.

Moving blockages? If you're going to go through the mind-numbing task of retyping a long manuscript, areas that aren't working will have a sleepy, yawn-inducing energy. If you start to ask "Why Am I Doing This?" chances are, you've hit a stanza or paragraph that needs some work.

Today, I started rekeying the middle-grade novel in verse that I've been working on since summer 2008. My husband did, indeed, think I had lost my mind. However, I like the process of asking myself -- once again -- if each word is earning its keep, if each line break makes sense.

Not so long ago, rekeying a manuscript was a necessity.

Less than ten pages into the exercise, I started feeling bored. Uh oh.

Recently, I finished a major revision. After that, I re-ordered all 150+ poems in the book. And I placed a series of several poems introducing characters right at the opening, with nary a plot line to keep you turning pages. If I hadn't been retyping the MS, I don't know that I would have  I started to feel bored and asked myself why.

Retyping helps me see the poem or the book almost like a reader. It's as close to reading the pieces for the first time as I can get.

Below is a poem from the book, before and after I rekeyed it. The novel (anthology? it's kind of a hybrid) is called I ALMOST DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL TODAY: A YEAR IN FIFTH GRADE. This poem is in the voice of one of the students. It is one of the poems I moved up today, in order to place a narrative thread near the start of the novel.

Before rekeying (with some notes):

My Favorite Picture

In my favorite picture, I am a baby.

I am sitting on a couch. I am laughing.

It looks like I am clapping my hands. I was so cute!

My dad is leaning forward, smiling at me.

He is pinching my toes.

Before my mom moved away, she used to tell me

my dad was the first person who could get me to smile.

And the first time I laughed was because

he was making silly faces. “Dad” was my first word. [insert "goofy"]

He taught me how to play piano and sing.

Once a year, he takes me to New York City

and we see a matinee on Broadway.

Afterwards, we always go to the Stage Door deli.

Dad says he won’t eat a bialy from anyplace else.

I order a corned beef sandwich, too huge to finish.

A picture of my family now would be

me and Dad at the Stage Door deli,

a plate of pickles and a Playbill on the table between us.

He’d be leaning forward to tell me a joke,

and I’d look like the happiest kid in the world.

Melodie's favorite, pastrami & rye from the Stage Door Deli.

After rekeying:

My Favorite Picture

In my favorite picture, I am a baby.

I am sitting on a couch. I am laughing.

It looks like I am clapping my hands.

I was cute!

My dad is pinching my toes and smiling.

Before my mom moved away, she used to tell me

my dad was the first person who made me smile.

And the first time I laughed was because

he was making goofy faces.

“Da” was my first word.

My dad taught me how to play piano and sing.

Once a year, he takes me to New York City

and we see a matinee on Broadway.

Afterwards, we always go to the Stage Door deli.

I order a corned beef sandwich, too huge to finish.

A perfect picture of my family now would be

me and Dad at the Stage Door deli,

a plate of pickles and a Playbill

on the table between us.

Just me and my dad.

I think the line breaks are working better now, but boy are my fingers tired.