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Crossing the finish line March 28, 2008

Posted by Trina in All posts, Creative writing, Developing characters, Fantasy, Fiction, My work, Novels, On writing, Point of view, Short stories, Writing for young people.
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The hardest part about writing a novel is in crossing the finish line. Once the first draft is done, the finish line is in sight, but the final stretch is where the hardest work lies. I blogged that I’d finish my young adult novel, THE MAGIC QUILT, by the end of 2007. I’m not finished. I’ve lost count of the number of revisions I’ve made to the novel, but in reading through some of my older posts, I am reminded of the reasons for those revisions. In each pass through, I’ve improved specific things.

As I previously posted, I had to create a fantasy world that would be logical and real to a twelve year old. This was probably the most difficult and time consuming and yet the most fun. Time travel, morphing into animals, appearing and disappearing and being invisible had to become routine parts of day-to-day life for Katharine.

Beyond the magical elements, the history also had to be accurate. Everything in the room I write in—the electric lights and the computer, the bottled water I drink, and the climate controlled air conditioning —was as imaginary in 1775, as fantastic, as Narnia or Hogwarts are today. So I had to revise with attention to detail that I hope will make Boston of 1775 real to young adults.

I’ve also fixed the POV problems I had with Katharine and her fellow wizards shape shifting into animals.

In the first chapter where the evil wizard Dr. Ziegawart is introduced, my writing critique group found several areas that needed to be reworked for logic and consistency. I was tempted simply to hit the delete key because I didn’t want to put forth the effort and energy needed for the corrections. See Motivating the cognitive miser. But after some elbow grease, I think the chapter is now both stronger and more believable. I often find that the hardest scenes to write are usually the ones that I am most happy with.

Now, I’ve made another change, also as a result of feedback from my writing group–whose input has been invaluable in making the novel better. I reorganized the order of the chapters in THE MAGIC QUILT so that Katharine travels back to the past sooner, which means I’ll have to write some transition scenes and delete others. I don’t want to do it. I keep reconsidering the ordering. But I think the new order is important to remove any parallels with Harry Potter: Katharine is a wizard who is just learning to use her powers and there is an evil wizard trying to kill her. But that is where the similarity stops. I want to make it clear to readers that my novel is an historical fantasy, unlike J. K. Rowling’s novels. So, it is important to bring out the unique aspect of the book earlier, thus the trip to the past must happen sooner. I think it will be more interesting for young people this way and I am reminded that elbow grease usually leads to writing that makes me proud.

Still, I can’t seem to get momentum flowing into finishing THE MAGIC QUIL. I know what the problem is. As I previously posted, my strength seems to be writing for and about children. But I’m discovering I don’t like writing for young people as much as I enjoy writing fiction for adults. I love reading psychological and medical thrillers for adults, which is what I want to write.

Why? In writing from the point of view of a twelve year old, I can’t use the vocabulary I could for adults. The dialogue and plot are much simpler. In other words, it’s harder to write exciting stories for children. It is much more limiting. Yet, I think the story in THE MAGIC QUILT needs to be told. It is a coming of age story full of history and magic, but Katharine’s real accomplishment is not in defeating the evil wizard Dr. Ziegawart, or playing a role in the battle for freedom. Her growth in character comes in finding the strength to take the first steps in ending the neglect and abuse from living in with an alcoholic mother. I wanted to write this story because there is little literature for children and young adults living with neglect and abuse.

It really shouldn’t matter what I want to write. I should just suck it up and finish THE MAGIC QUILT. It is nearly done–and I think it’s pretty good. Yet I can’t focus on finishing. I sit down at the computer and do anything else, including laundry, organizing my e-mail contacts and cleaning my office.

As a result, I spent several months working on short stories and I pretty proud of a couple of them. I have also been reading stories on Critters Workshop and have learned a lot from other Critter’s critiques of my work and others. One thing that I have learned is that there are numerous awesome writers out there who are dedicated to their art. Many resubmit two and three drafts of a story to the workshop. Their patience in perfecting their work is seemingly endless. The secret to success seems to be dedication as well as talent.

Shape shifting: point of view problem November 27, 2007

Posted by Trina in All posts, Creative writing, Developing characters, Fantasy, Fiction, My work, Novels, On writing, Point of view, Writing for young people.
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How do I shape shift humans into animals?

I’m editing two chapters from the middle of THE MAGIC QUILT where Katharine, her grandmother and Sara Revere have shape shifted into animals. I have been struggling with the narrator’s POV. Should I call Katharine “the cat” or “Katharine.” Likewise, should I use “the red bird” or “Grandma.” And should the narrator refer the animals as it or she?

Here is an excerpt where I’m struggling with POV:

“Come. Follow me.” The red bird flew, sun reflecting off its necklace.

Katharine felt herself shrink to an ordinary white housecat and leapt into the trees. She followed her grandma, a flock of blackbirds surrounding her, and her friend Sara running behind her on silent black paws.

At a safe distance, the red bird flew down and sat on the ground.

Katharine sat on her haunches, wrapped her tail around her feet and put her head down. Tears wet the white fur on her face. “I couldn’t save the baby birds, Grandma.”

“You weren’t meant to save them, child. Bad things sometimes happen that even wizards can’t control.”

“But, it’s not fair! I wanted to save them.”

The red bird sighed and said. “I agree. It’s not fair, child.” The bird took a breath. “Along with your magic comes great responsibility. You will have to follow the laws that govern wizards. We can never use our power to change history, no matter how badly we want to.” A tear glinted in the red bird’s eye.

“Why?” Katharine was curious.

The bird’s eye twitched before her grandma said, “If wizards went around changing history for their own purposes, the world would be in constant and utter chaos. Now, we must go back to the school. Follow me.” She flew back to the tree overhanging the schoolyard.
The cat climbed to the top branch and sat next the red bird.

Likewise, when the evil wizard shifts into a cockroach, should the narrator call him “Dr. Ziegawart” or “the cockroach”?

Here is an excerpt that shows the POV problem.

Cafeteria trays clanked, the sound nearly deafening the small creature. Unaccustomed to these eyes, he could see only a kaleidoscope of large shadowy figures. The cockroach turned his head for a better view of the room, his antennae twitching. The corners of nearby tables and chair backs loomed like mountains. And the smashed cookie next to an almost empty potato chip bag on the floor could feed him for over a week. He was delighted that children were so careless and sloppy.

A large roach, as long as a tube of Chap Stick, he clung to a trashcan by the hooks on his six legs, unnoticed by the rowdy students eating lunch in the cafeteria. None of the teachers (who were all imbeciles) or the cafeteria staff (who were about as intelligent as slugs) saw the cockroach clinging to the trashcan, waving its antennae in constant search of a change in air that could mean danger to a small insect.

Four of his legs suddenly slipped from the trashcan. He shuffled all six legs, clinging harder to the slippery plastic. What was happening? He could …not … not … remember … His great mind had became muddled. With that realization, Dr. Ziegawart felt an emotion that was foreign to him, fear. He turned his head slowly … could hardly move his head. It was too heavy. His heart thumped once and slowed. Mustering his strength, the roach crawled up the trashcan to hide in the dim light under the rim.

I posted this POV question on the Writers Net Discussion Forum to get some help.
Here is the advice that I received. Thank you to the writers who took the time to reply to my question.

If Katharine is your main character, then it’s important that the reader never loses her in the text, that’s what having a POV is all about. If it’s strictly Katharine’s POV then you can’t leave that without it feeling awkward (except in certain circumstances).

Remember, even if your character turns into something else, they’re still your character – it’s still Katharine in there, referring to her as the animal all of the time is confusing. It only works when Katharine is observing someone as the animal, such as in the beginning when it says “the red bird flew”. That is an instant where Katharine is observing the red bird, so she might call it that before identifying it as her grandmother. But Katharine still has her mind and her own thoughts as well as the other characters, so it makes sense to just refer to them as their own name for most of the time. This sentence works fine:

“Katharine sat on her haunches, wrapped her tail around her feet and put her head down.”

As long as you remind the reader that Katharine is now a cat – have Katharine explain how it feels to be cat, what new senses she has, how much smaller she is – we won’t forget that she has changed.

I thought you did it well with Katharine in the beginning of the piece by referring to her by name, yet using animal descriptions.

The second part with Dr. Ziegawart is much better. You combine his thoughts and observations with the fact that he is now a cockroach. If you compare the two different passages, you can see how much better the words flow in the second one.

Also, be careful that your characters are doing only what their animals are capable of. Can cats cry? Can a bird sigh?

it’s good that you recognize something is off. That instinct will help you become a better writer.

I am so happy that I asked. I can see that in the section from Dr. Ziegawart’s POV, I was writing as a cockroach. I had researched roaches (gross) and wrote from his POV with roaches in mind, even including that light shuts down the roach metabolism. I knew I liked that section, but hadn’t considered why. I haven’t written Katharine as a cat from a cat’s POV consistently. I need to be more aware of what the animals are capable of.

To plagiarize from a former post, Children’s fantasy demands the strictest logic, consistency, and attention to detail. It’s damn hard to “build the lie” that fantasy demands.

This post comes after I debated about what to submit to my writing group for critique. I wanted to work on a new story that exists currently only in my imagination. It will be titled “Into the third and fourth generations,” about the personality disorders passed down through the generations. I believe the beginning will be a young girl in a psychiatric hospital and the story will follow her family tree to the origin of the personality disorders. Or, I thought about submitting a story that I wrote several years ago around this time, Stand-in Santa. I’ve never submitted it to my writing critique group and it would be fun to hear their feedback. It is almost December, after all.

Then I reminded myself of my goal. Finish THE MAGIC QUILT by December 31st. If I work on anything else, I won’t finish the YA novel. So I reluctantly looked through THE MAGIC QUILT’S table of contents and struggled over which section to submit? I thought about a chapter which I’ve just finished polishing, and am rather proud of. I resisted and submitted the chapters that need the most work. This was a hard choice for me, because I am reluctant to let anyone, even my critique group, read my work before I’m happy with it.

Taking up the gauntlet October 29, 2007

Posted by Trina in All posts, Creative writing, Developing characters, Fantasy, Life, My work, Novels, On writing, Point of view, Writing for young people.
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My young adult work in progress will be finished by December 31, 2007. Period.

From my post on December 22, 2006:
I wrote a sketchy draft of THE MAGIC QUILT when I was in graduate school and then didn’t look at it again during the 14 years that I taught middle school. I never even tried to write fiction when I was teaching. I wasn’t alone in that, Stephen King couldn’t write when he was teaching either. In his book ON WRITING, King said,

“…for the first time in my life, writing was hard. The problem was the teaching… by most Friday afternoons I felt as if I’d spent the week with jumper cables clamped to my brain.”

And so THE MAGIC QUILT waited. My mind was on lesson plans and worrying about whether I had put out all the materials that I would need for the next day’s lab activity. Did I copy the lab handout before I left school, or would I have to go in early and copy it? Then there were the calls to parents about students I was concerned about, and the calls to encourage those who were doing better. And that endless stack of papers to grade that took up all my free time in the evenings.

So it was that after resigning my position as a science teacher, I reread my original draft of THE MAGIC QUILT, rewrote a couple of chapters and brought them to my fiction writing group. With their help, I decided the novel could be good and starting researching the American Revolution, the setting for the book. After finishing the second draft of the book, I took a workshop on writing historical fiction books taught by Philip Gerard, an expert on Paul Revere, and found that I had some historical facts wrong. Fixing the history trickled down through the entire novel and I had to rewrite much of the book. Now, THE MAGIC QUILT is finally so close to being finished that my goal for my holiday vacation is to finish her.

Thank you, Harry, for your support.

Now it is nearly a year later, and my young adult novel in progress is still not finished. Harry reminded me that I’ve been working on the novel for the entire four years that we have been together and I’m still not finished with it. I got mad at him, but I am really angry with myself. I had to ask myself why I am not finished.

I have been making steady progress, but it comes in spurts. I’ll make a writing schedule and stick to it until something happens, or nothing happens. Life gets in the way. We go on vacation, family visits, we adopt a dog, it is too beautiful outside to write, or the day job gets more stressful. Then, I’ll work on shorter pieces trying to get up the energy to work on the novel. And the cycle repeats.

Harry threw down the gauntlet when he asked me how long it would actually take me to finish my WIP. I’m taking up the gauntlet he threw down. With Harry’s somewhat reluctant support, I’ve decided to work part time, cutting my day job to 92% of my current hours. This means that I’ll have two Fridays off per month. Two days that I can write for eight uninterrupted hours. And I am going to finish THE MAGIC QUILT by December 31st using those days off, as well as a early mornings and weekends. Even though the holidays will come and go, I’m still going to finish. I am too close not to.

I have just sent the last three chapters to my writing group for their critique. I am editing the other chapters in the novel for consistency. I am also reading it to make sure Katharine’s voice is right. Her character changes throughout the novel as her control over her magic and her confidence in herself grows. The narrator’s voice must change with her. And, I’m tightening and trying to give the reader credit by not telling them everything.

Wish me luck.