My Biggest, Best Critic

My work always lands in her lap last, when other eyes have already seen it, when I think I've made all the changes, when I think the story is good to go.

But it's never done after it gets to her.

She tells me, "The character's hair would not be wet. It's been 4 hours." "He wouldn't know her name yet." "He'd never know how much the other guy's boots cost."

She tells me the conflict might not resolve that fast, that the MC wouldn't say "Epic", that the love scene needs some work. She crosses out telling, pushes me to show.

She explains that the intro needs tightening, less repetition. The middle moves fast, except Chapter Ten. The end works: the whole thing makes sense now. I'm thrilled when I find a "Good!" or a star.

She reads the whole thing in a day, maybe two, working hours at a time, marking up almost every page with her purple pen.

"It's so good, Mom," she writes on the last page, my 12 year-old daughter, Daney.

"It Was A Long Dream"

Happy Book Birthday, Prophecy of Days II: The Serpent's Coil -- and double Happy Birthday to author Christy Raedeke!

Our lovely friend Julie gave a very fine (and impromptu) intro: "It takes a village to raise a writer," she said.

And here are the writing group babies, to prove it!


All best for your readers' delight and PoD II's success, Christy!

This Is How Much I Love My Writing Group

On Wednesday night, I brought the worst piece of writing to Starbucks.

While I sipped my salted caramel hot chocolate, Christy, Anjie, and Julie's pens went to work, crossing out circling and adding arrows and inserts.

It was an essay I've had in my head for four months, an application for a National Endowment of the Humanities fellowship.

The thing was, my creative juices just weren't flowing. At all. I ended up pretty much writing two opposite things and trying to mash them together.

Nope.

And then, there were the beginnings, all twelve of them:anecdotes, imagery, question, setting, thesis.

It. Was. A. Mess.

But after a few minutes, er, an hour, thanks to my WG, I had ideas!!! And since Wednesday, I've let them sit and stew and get all juicy and yummy.

Today is the day I will take Christy's suggestion to really plug the need for diversity in Southern Oregon. I'll add Julie's argument that our current composition topic, "Terrorism," only fuels the fear our students already have. And I'll answer Anjie's questions about how my past experience will enrich the program.

And that will make a way better four pages than I've got right now.

And I promise. Next week, I'll bring my A game to edit for them.

Go Get Yourself a Writing Group!

I will spare you a post on how I hurt myself terribly watching a "Stellaluna" puppet show yesterday at the Craterian Theater.

I will spare you from knowing how I added insult to injury by dumping curry powder all over my stiff, 40 year-old self this morning.

Instead, I will plug Christy, who has to set aside writing this week to attend the Gun & Knife Trade Show in Las Vegas.

Christy met me yesterday morning (pre-puppet show accident) in pouring rain at the bottom of Lithia Park. We walked ourselves to the top, mulling over the very last part of my Drain revision.

The thing is, I was rehashing all the edits Christy had given me (that I didn't take) a while back when we'd met for tacos. Like a good writing partner, she asked me first what I was thinking, and somehow held back uproarious laughter as I spit out everything about making the conclusion exactly the way she'd suggested.

We walked and talked, then after I hurt myself at the puppet show, I came back and re-wrote the last two pages of my story.

A good writing partner is hard to find. I know it. And I have four of them.

Thank you, Christy. Bring me back a bayonet!

How The Story Changed

So I was sitting there at the SCBWI Western Washington Conference, scribbling out a query, when author Suzanne Young plopped beside me and said, "Let me see that." I didn't know Suzanne at all (everyone else at the conference did), but she had sparkly eyes and a ginormous smile, so I slid her the scribble.

It was magic, what happened next. Suzanne whipped out her Jedi Query-Sabers and slashed through my little paragraph: whoosh, wham, zoom. In five seconds flat, Suzanne passed the paper back to me.

And there it was: a much tighter, cleaner query that was way more reflective of my story's voice, character, and plot!

I had called my husband from the conference, lamenting that I didn't know the genre to query Drain as. I had already sent out a couple of letters: YA Paranormal, YA Paranormal Romance, YA Thriller, YA Suspense...

A few weeks later, Holly led me through an exciting revision. There were three big things that took two months. Although Holly didn't ask me to rewrite the end, it happened anyway.

After I signed with her, one more little revision added clarity, richness, and depth. There was more magic, more character motivation, more plot (thanks to my incredible writing group, which has NO SHORTAGE of plot ideas).

If that query were to be rewritten now, it would be entirely different. Instead of YA Paranormal, Drain is more literary, more superhero story than anything else. I still wouldn't know what to call it. Mmmm... How about "published???"

Writing Group Theme Song

This is it.

The theme song of my writing group.

This is really it., no joke.

Not so much the words...but maybe the melody?

I promise, you'll be humming it all day.

Click here to sing along.

Cerebral Week

By Thursday night when my writing group resumed after our summer break, my head was seriously swirling.

In four days, I had drafted a new curriculum for the community college writing classes I start teaching on Monday. I began writing a new novel with my husband. I critiqued a fabulous manuscript, went to an inservice day at school, and penned an 8-page essay about my dad. (A couple of these were done simultaneously. Guess which?)

Plus, there was the middle school math homework: Dominic's statistics and Daney's factoring.

Thank goodness for the season premier of "Glee."

Nothing soothes me like some Sue Sylvester.

Writing Group Water Babies!

Okay, so we "forgot" to take a picture of ourselves last night at a very wet writing group. But we had a (beach) ball splashing and noodling around. There's was even a bit of writing talk, but mostly giggles and gossip and Jolly Rancher Popsicles.

Writing Group Goes to the River!

From A Place Of...

...Suffering.

That's where Drain began last winter.

My daughter Daney, almost ten years old, was stuck in a cluster of grand mal seizures. She was tired. She was sore. She missed a lot of school.

It was terrible, watching this kind, bright, lovely girl suffer.

I worried how she'd get through it. I worried how I'd get through it.

Of course, I had stopped going to writing group. I had stopped writing.

Until Christy (who knows I'll try anything she tells me) challenged me to come up with a few new pages. Which, somehow, I did: a story I thought had nothing to do with anything. A story that ended up having everything to do with something--of seeing suffering, without being able to stop it.

That first draft, it was rough. I was writing it on two hours of sleep, between ambulance rides and hospital visits and EEGs. I was was writing it with Daney tucked into bed beside me.

The voice came out hollow, realistic but cautious, sad, and slow.

Exactly the way I felt during those dark winter months.

Book Birthday!

Last night at the charming Bloomsbury Books, my writing partner, Christy Raedeke, debuted Prophecy of Days--Book One: The Daykeeper's Grimoire!

Here's the group:








And the very intellectual husbands:








And of course the offspring, brand-new Baby PoD included:

Home Improvement

So the other day, I offered my husband some tips on how to be a better dad (like taking the kids hiking on their day off instead of watching two movies in a row). Needless to say, this advice--or much other--was not well-received.

Without sounding sexist, I'm wondering if perhaps one gender is more open to "suggestions" than the other? Does one gender have more of a desire to evolve?

There's that, and this: I am critiqued, criticized, and even rejected daily. Writing group, query letters, submissions...my "art" is constantly being hammered.

In the beginning, of course, it hurt. I didn't know how to receive or even really give constructive feedback.

Two years later, though, I see how critical it is to making my writing stronger. With more developed characters, tighter plot, twists, fluid sentence structure. Especially that last one never would've happened without the influence of my talented writing partners.

I had to learn to put aside my ego, and try their suggestions. To think critically, which is to consider plural perspectives--the perspectives of Anjie, Christy, and Julie.

Last Wednesday night when we met at Starbucks, my new first chapters garnered lots of praise. There are hearts and stars and happy words all over my sample.

I have a long way to go, but I am growing.

I want to.

Now about that obstinate but completely adorable husband of mine...

Where Would I Be Without My Writing Group?

Not sitting on the pavement outside a closed Starbucks, that's for sure.

When the coffee shop shut down in the middle of my new novel's conclusion, these girls took it outside.

While Christy and Marcia crammed together on a cold metal bench, Julie sat frozen in a parking space. Under the light of the moon, they went over and over and over my pages, offering incredible insight.

I'm telling you, that's devotion.