Making It Up

The children are back to school tomorrow, something I approach with very mixed feelings. They’re around almost all the time during the summer, which means I get almost no work done — and anything I do get done is in the cracks. On the other hand, I get to see them lots and lots. On the other hand, I see them lots and lots and get very little time alone. On the other hand, I’m never bored. On the other hand, I have to hear about how they’re bored. On the other hand, I get to do fun stuff with them. On the other hand, I feel bad when I’m not doing fun stuff with them.

You get the picture.

But there is something invigorating about this time of year. Something renewing. This is where it all begins. This is the fresh start that makes everything feel possible. I wish I had new shoes to wear tomorrow. Or a haircut. Or a pencil case with all fresh pencils lined up.

What I do have is a slightly updated website. I decided to put up the first chapters of four of my books. One is polished. One is fully written but being revised. One is three-quarters written and one, well, I have a first chapter. Maybe a bit more. Feel free to read them! They’re here, or you can click the child’s large eye above and get to the same place.

And if you have something great I should read, leave me a comment and let me know what it is. I’m likely to have a bit of free time soon!

We have no internet at home, and have not had internet for almost two days (thank you Comcast), so finally I took myself off to our town library to work.

I love our library. It’s pretty small, but it’s friendly and you can request books from throughout the county system and they come really quickly. Also, they don’t yell at me, no matter how big our late fines are, which I really really appreciate.

Normally, I’m here with the children and we head straight upstairs to the children’s section. When I walked into the beautifully cool library today, however, I was not with the children. I didn’t even have my card with me. I was here entirely to work, to use their fully functional wi-fi. So there was no reason to go upstairs. Why would I? I’m a middle-aged woman, without children in tow. Surely I should sit downstairs with the rest of the grown-ups.

I couldn’t. I stood there awkwardly. Wandered around for a moment. Tried to imagine myself sitting among the biographies or the gardening books. Then I fled upstairs with a huge sense of relief.

So now I’m sitting at the single table in the YA section, happily writing away and I feel at home. Every so often a teen slinks in apologetically, like they’re disturbing me, and I grin at them. They get a book or two and slink away again. I hope they don’t think I’m usurping their space. I want to leap up and say — oh, have you read this one? This one? Try this one! I’ve read them ALL!

That’s a minor exaggeration, just so you know.

This is my library home. I imagine some people just adore sitting among the periodicals or mystery novels. I want to sit next to the picture books and the middle-grade fairy stories, even if the table is a bit low for me.

And it really isn’t too low. Funnily enough, it fits me perfectly.

Oh hi! Sorry, I’ve been a bit distracted — in part with some real life stuff, like being sick (cough cough), trying to have fun (Jet Li!) and fixing the showerheads in the house we’re trying to sell. Also, I won’t tell you the waste-pipe story, but there is one, and it’s a stinker.

In between, I’ve been reading, trying to catch up on all the things lined up for me to read and then review. You can see a review I posted over at YABC (Young Adult Books Central) on a really neat book that just came out today called The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black by Eden Unger Bowditch. Here’s the link to the review and here’s the book on Amazon. It was jolly good, especially if you liked The Mysterious Benedict Society, which I did.

I’ve also just finished rereading all the Percy Jackson books there are in the house and realized that we don’t OWN book five of the first series, which is about to be a problem as Thing 2 draws ever nearer to finishing the fourth. These books are not just compelling chapter to chapter… but book to book. I’m rather glad I waited to read them until four of the five were published.

It was illuminating to be reading one book to review — while on the other hand reading Rick Riordan’s work. There was nothing at all wrong with The Atomic Weight of Secrets. I liked it — it was inventive, well-written, quirky, had a complex plot and distinct characters. Yet, in the end, it didn’t have that certain something that keeps you reading even while you’re walking, even while you’re trying to cook supper, even while you’re in the car, knowing that you’re about to get car sick. I am still trying to figure out what that something is. It’s like the IT quality an actor has — or doesn’t have. What is it that makes one person impossible to turn away from, and another attractive, competent, but in the end, not magnetic.

What is it? Because I’d like to have it, that IT something that makes your writing all Ian McKellan. If you have ideas, please tell me. In the meantime, I’m going back to my books.

Kristina Fugate, over at KayKay’s Corner, is hosting a blogfest today and tomorrow about openings — specifically, how the first 500 or so words of your book (or manuscript) have to grab readers, because if you haven’t grabbed them by then, it’s too late.

So here are the first 500 words (approximately) of my current WIP, a MG mystery.

*******************

Andy hauled himself up the last flight of stairs. He was so hot his glasses had fogged up. Stupid, medieval, Cairo elevators were always breaking down. It was his one beef with living in Egypt. He staggered, panting and sweaty, to 10C and almost fell inside when his mother opened the door before he could get his key into the lock.

He saluted limply. “Ahlan, ya Momma!”

She glared at him. “Try English this time.”

“Don’t you want me to practice my Arabic? Okay, okay.” He opened his eyes really wide and smiled with all his teeth. “Hiya Mom!” He said it like he was as all-American as apple pie and Indiana cornfields, instead of a diplomat’s kid who spoke three languages and who had lived in six different countries before he was eleven. Did they even have cornfields in Indiana? Andy couldn’t remember. Then he decided he didn’t care.

His mom rolled her eyes, but her mouth twitched. “Well, I guess that’s a bit better. I have to go back to the embassy for a few hours. Will you be all right here by yourself?” She let him push past her into the cool apartment. He dropped his bag in the corner and stood directly under the air-conditioning vent, letting cold air wash over him like a shower. He took his glasses off and wiped them on his shirt.

“I’m going out with Ahmed, remember? To his Uncle Karim’s shop.”

“Oh, right. Well, call me when you’re ready to come home and I’ll swing by and get you.” She picked up her briefcase. “Do you need something to eat? If you leave now, I can give you a lift to Ahmed’s place.”

Andy shook his head.  “He’s waiting for me at school. I’m just going to change and then I’m going back.”

“All right. Dad has rehearsal tonight so he won’t be home until late.”

“Bye Mom,” said Andy.

“Yes, all right, all right. I’m going.”

“Elevator’s broken again!” he yelled after her cheerfully, and heard her groan before the heavy door slammed shut. Served her right for insisting they rent an apartment on the top floor. “Less dusty,” she said. “Less noisy.” Hah.

Andy stood for another minute in the fall of cool air, letting the sweat on his face and neck evaporate. Then he quickly changed out of his school uniform, grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and left.

Andy crashed through the front door of his building and waved to Abu Mohammed, who was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the building next to his. He ran through the streets of the tiny island neighborhood of Zamalek, dodging the donkey carts and koshari sellers, leaping curbs and broken chunks of concrete. He dashed across 26th of July Street, not looking where he was going, paying no attention to the cars honking at him. If he waited for a gap in the traffic, he’d be waiting all day.

*****

So, did it grab you? Would you read on? Feel free to offer comments, critiques, coffee, support, chocolate, insights, questions and whatnot in the comments. If you prefer, you can email me your thoughts: fmamendolia AT gmail DOT com.

I have a theory about why writers write in the POV they do. But before I tell you what it is, I should define my terms (and heighten the tension and thus the apparent importance of my theory) (not really), even though I’m pretty sure you already know.

POV stands for Point of View, that is, the narrative framework through which a story is told.

Thus, first-person point of view is told in (wow!) first person:

I went to the supermarket. I bought a large knife, a box of Oreos and some cheddar. I thought I saw Elvis in the cereal aisle, but then I realized it was my old tennis coach. “Nice sequins, Mr. D,” I muttered, not quite loud enough for him to hear. I am such a chicken. Even with a knife.

Limited third-person is told in third person, but completely limited to the experience of the main character. Thus, we never actually KNOW what another character thinks, feels or sees, except through what they tell the main character, or what the main character guesses, which could be wrong.

Roland sighed, his heart thrumming. Delilah was more beautiful than frost. She looked up at him and he could not tell if her eyes held love — or a warning.

Second-person (not much used):

You stood waiting for the school bus, wishing you’d remembered to wear a hat, wishing you’d remembered to do your homework, wishing you could remember your best friend’s name. You stole a look at her. She grinned back. She looked really nice. She was probably a great best friend. Probably.

Third person omniscient. Author Knows All, can be in any character’s head, know any character’s motivation, secrets, shoe-size.

“I do not much feel,” she said, stealing a comforting and steadying glance at her new shoes, “like smiling today.” Gerard snorted. He doubted she felt like it any day. He had not known her to smile more than twice in all the years they had been acquainted.

There are others, or possibly refinements of these categories, but already this is (much) more than sufficient background to what I actually wanted to blather on about this evening: my truly unscientific theory about what POV a writer feels most comfortable using.

I tend to write in limited third-person. This is the POV I feel most at home in. If I write in first-person, my voice changes so dramatically, it almost feels like I’m writing farce. But, I think to myself, so many books right now are in first-person. You should really do that. And then I don’t. So I have given some thought to why I write in the voice I do, why limited third-person feels so natural to me.

And I realized that the voice in my head that narrates my own life (and has done ever since I was small) is a limited third-person narrator. So when I do something like, oh I don’t know, like when I write a blog post, the narrator drones on something like this:

She sat in bed, way too tired to blog and doing it anyway. She was much happier now that her pinky was functional again, but she wished Ed would bring her a cup of tea. Not that she had told him she wanted one. She just hoped he would KNOW and bring one up anyway.

I bet that other, perhaps more mentally stable people, have first-person internal narrators: I’m sitting in bed, I’m blogging, I’d really like a cup of tea. Or whatever. It seems like that would be more logical, more normal. But that’s not how my narrator developed. I remember walking to school, reluctant step after reluctant step, and listening to my narrator telling the story of a lonely girl, her heart heavy, already imagining what new tortures the bullies would have for her that day. “She didn’t look up, didn’t want to see the school getting closer. She tried to imagine that the sidewalk was endless, that all she would have to do that day was walk, one foot in front of the other, never arriving. She couldn’t quite make herself believe it.”

And that’s my theory, that we gravitate towards writing our books in the same voice that we experience our lives. Alas, I suspect that the comments will prove me wrong, but until they do, I’m going to bask in a glow of understanding and discovery.

And maybe go get a cup of tea.

I confess. I am a rereader. I reread books. And I’m not talking about rereading them once. There are books I have probably read a dozen times. Or a hundred. I’m currently rereading the first five Percy Jackson books (second time round, I think), and I have Anne of Avonlea sitting around the kitchen (possibly about the twentieth reading) and The Little White Horse (getting up towards the hundred mark, I reckon) somewhere in the living room. I know some people don’t ever reread books, but the thought of putting a book I love aside for all time makes me shudder. How could I ever not visit again? It would be like emigrating, watching the shores of a beloved home recede in the distance, knowing all the time that these are the last few glimpses of something that will never come again. My heart would break to think I might never come back.

I accept that it takes time I possibly don’t have. I also know that there are many wonderful new books to read. I read those too, but they’re in a different category, and I think they use a slightly different part of my brain. They certainly live in a different part of my psyche. They’re more like first dates. Something wonderful might happen, but there’s an element of the unknown. Will we like each other? Will we possibly even love one another? But there is a time and a place for adventure. Like the morning. I particularly hate starting a new book just on my way to sleep. Those few gentle moments are not a time for a journey into the unknown. I want the embrace of the beloved familiar. I want to feel safe, loved and lulled. What if the book turned out to be especially dreadful? What if I were plunged into a knife-lined pit of bad writing? Or just a scratchy grey wool suit of dull, worthy writing? Ugh.

I have been known to part ways with books I merely like. Sometimes once is enough. The book gave me whatever it had to offer and I go forward, enriched but not attached. That’s fine. No hard feelings. Then there are others which demand to be read a second time, but then I’m done. Then there are those which I will reread and reread. And reread.

I’d do it, even if there weren’t a writerly justification, but there is. Rereading good books unveils their structure. The first time round it’s all magic, all the breathless rush of story. Later readings allow you to look for craft. Not that I’m always doing that, but let’s say I am. You can examine plot arcs, character development, description, tension, dialogue — so many things. Every beloved book is a course in good writing, if we’re willing to go back and read it again.

And again.

So my son is turning eleven tomorrow – and today we had eight 11ish year old boys in the house for movies and unplanned mayhem.

“Hey, GUYS!” shouted Daniel, after they finished pushing entire cupcakes into their mouths. “Wanna go up to my room, turn the lights out and pretend the room is consuming us?”

There was a stampede. And to think we thought they’d want to have popcorn and watch a film. Ah ha ha ha. I did make them clean up the room after it had spat them back out, which I was rather proud of as it was not a popular-mom moment.

But now I’m as wiped out as a beginner surfer, and will be asleep three minutes after I post this, but I couldn’t let the weekend end without drawing some names from a very scientific hat.

Thus, without further ado, we have the winner of a lightly used arc of the tremendous Kneebone Boy!

Caroline Starr Rose

who has her OWN amazing-sounding middle-grade book coming out in 2012. I can’t wait to read it! Congratulations, Caroline!

But wait! There’s more! After reading the comments, I decided to give away something else today, this time in the name of birthday solidarity. As you have gathered from the above, my son is an almost-leap-year baby so when…

Genna Sarnak

said that her little sister was turning eleven on Monday too, I decided we could not let that piece of serendipity go uncelebrated. So Genna, I’d like to send something out to you and your sister too! Almost leap-yearers, unite!

Last but not least, a prize from WAAAAAY back when, is

Tabitha

who probably doesn’t even remember entering, but is having knee-surgery next week and so I’ll send along something fun to read while you recover.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE WINNERS!

I also accidentally snipped a rather large chunk off my left pinky trying to prune a half-dead houseplant. So typing is odd. Hadn’t realized quite how useful pinkies were in the whole typing thing. Actually, as I watch myself type I realize that I’m not using my right pinky for anything, but my left pinky does the letter A. And the shift. Both of these are very useful in the typing world. Now a big bandaged digit keeps whamming down on the keyboard and I have to delete and rewrite whole chunks of deformed text. Boo hiss.

So that’s all for tonight! Winners, be in touch or I’ll be in touch, and tune in tomorrow, true believers, for the continuing crunch!

Darling, does this blog make my manuscript look phat?

I recently read two great blog posts about aspiring authors and blogging, both of which made me feel like I just had a V-8. Or like I should have had a V-8. Anyway, there was a bit of virtual head-slapping.

DON’T DO THIS

The first was by the inimitible Ms. Reid, aka The Shark. In this post, she was very firm about what aspiring writers ought NOT be blogging about. Do not, she writes, blog, tweet or FB update about the query process.

There is a place for writerly angst. It’s NOT ever a public place.  Disagree with me if you care to about whether that’s fair, but this blog post isn’t about fair.  It’s about how to not shoot yourself in the foot.

Her full post is here.

It’s like this. If you asked someone to the prom and he said no, would you write a note that said “I asked George out and he said no. In fact, he told me I was slime to my face” and stick it on your back? Well, duh. It would make it pretty unlikely that you’d ever get a date to the darn prom. In fact, you might not get another date ever.

You’d cry about it with your girlfriends while hugging pillows and they would tell you to get your game face on and go to school the next day and ask Fred if HE wanted to go. Without mentioning how many  boys have said no to date. Because he might be the one, and you’ll never want him to know that in fact he was actually 43rd.

This is hard, because for many of us, our pillow-hugging girlz are right here online and we WANT to share. We want to sob on their bloggy shoulders. “But I lurrrrve him!” and we can’t. We must not. We must resist the urge to design wallpaper based on our rejections. We must always present our game face.

The game face doesn’t always have to be super-de-booper chirpy-cheery positive, but it has to be thoughtful. Even edging towards the professional. We are in public. Worse. We’re on stage. Make sure your underwear isn’t showing.

DO THIS

So if we’re not going to share war stories on our blogs, what are we blogging for? For each other. The second great post I read this week was from Jill Kremerer who mused on whether aspiring authors have anything to offer the blogsphere?

Duh, she wrote. Okay, no, she didn’t write ‘duh.’ She wrote a beautiful post about solidarity, company and hope.

Connection. We blog for the connection to our tribe. Few of us are writing full time. Many of us have lives so stuffed with other things that we write in the cracks, along the edges. We might not be lucky enough to have a writing-friend next door to get excited about EM dashes with. Yet here, in the virtual neighborhood of writers, there are a hundred people ready to have a grammar party. We share snippets of manuscripts, muse about point of view, about world-building. People interview agents and authors, review books and have giveaways (ahem, like THIS ONE). We ask for and receive support. We forge a bond. Our horizons expand. Our bedrock strengthens.

So blog on, Crusaders! Blog on, writers repped and not, writers finished and not, writers published and not, writers writing and not. We are all stronger for the bonds that we share.

The Kneebone Boy, a wonderful, darkly funny and well-written middle-grade novel by Ellen Potter, came out in September and was a Cybils finalist. Also, it’s meta-fiction (which means it knows it’s a book, something I really like); also, it’s original and I’m reading SO MUCH at the moment that it’s getting easier and easier to see when something truly is its own, unique, one-of-a-kind beast. You want to understand what voice is? Read a dozen books and see which ones linger on your mental palate. They have voice. (That’s my very precise, scientific explanation of something unquantifiable. I might have another go at the whole idea of ‘voice’ another time.)

Back in the autumn, I wrote a review of it over at Young Adult Books Central which you can read here. Here’s an excerpt:

The Kneebone Boy, by Ellen Potter, lets you in on a secret too—on many secrets, really. Along the way, there are mechanical rats, hidden passages, a mighty dragon-slayer, Fluffernutter sandwiches, a deposed Sultan, missing relatives, a local legend and three resourceful, intelligent children—and all around and through the story, like a wisp of fog, slinks the sense that the world is a stranger, more mysterious place than the grown-ups would have us believe.

However, The Kneebone Boy also suggests that the world is far more normal than we might hope. No matter how strange or unbelievable an event, story or person seems to be (a five-legged cat, an imprisoned child-monster, a stuffed miniature zebra), sooner or later there is a logical(ish) explanation.

The book tells the story of the three Hardscrabble children who, having been sent to stay with an aunt by their distracted, artist father, instead find themselves lost and alone in London. They flee the city, landing at the miniature castle their American great-aunt is currently renting. Adventures ensue, much to their delight, because it is important, as Lucia points out, to have at least one big adventure before you turn fourteen and start to become dull and grown-up. Fourteen, as JM Barrie didn’t quite say, is the beginning of the end.

Also, check out the gorgeous cover. Look at that cat. Look at the number of toes on that cat. At the expression on the cat’s face. Tell me you don’t love that cat:

AAAAAAAND I have a lightly-used ARC to give away to one lucky commenter.

To enter:

1. Be a follower. (Or pretend to be. I’m not going to check. Honor system!) Then leave me a comment so I know you’re interested!
2. For a second entry, tweet or blog the contest.
3. Contest entries close at 12 midnight on Friday, 25 February

I’ll draw names in a highly scientific process on the weekend and post the results.

EDITED TO ADD: A long while ago (actually, almost exactly a year ago, eek! where does the time go?), I tried to run a little contest and then I lost track of it completely, so I’m going to pull that name at the same time as this one and so I’ll have two prizes to send off.

A cheery hello to all you new and sparkly followers! You have inspired me to do with my blog what having people over inspires me to do with my house.

Clean it.

It never gets done otherwise, or not really. A bit of reshelving here. A smidgen of smelly sock disposal there. A few bits of dust busted. But not the full monty. That only truly happens under the threat of visitors. So since you’re all going to be coming by on a regular basis (she wrote hopefully), I’d better get things in order.

Thus, instead of random swipes with the dustrag of inspiration, I am going to hold myself to a tidy schedule. Although honestly, if my repeated — and failing — efforts to make myself serenely wash one load of laundry every day instead of washing eight on one panicked, overcome-by-socks day is anything to go by, this schedule will be as reliable as a medicine man with a bottle of wonder pills.

Still, hope triumphs, eh?

Monday: Reading, that is, what I’m reading, what you should be reading, something interesting I read, odes to the reading life, maps of Reading, book reviews and so on.

Wednesday: Writing, so what I’m writing, what you’re writing, thoughts about writing, grammar, spelling, inspiration, groovy pens and whatever else I can think of.

Friday, Saturday or Sunday: (Oh I so want to write ‘Rithmatic’ but that would just be silly since I am almost never going to post about math.) Crunchy Bits, a bottom-of-the-cereal-box mix of personal stuff, including the continuation of my delayed series, TTTDBD (Twenty Things To Do Before Death) because I know my brother in law is dying to hear what I have to say about dancing the tango with a stranger.

So. That’s a plan then. I already feel more serene and as if I’m wearing white linen and sipping Pinot Grigio, instead of mainlining coffee in worn-out jeans. The coffee is not in the jeans. I’m in the jeans. Ingesting the coffee. Just to be clear.

Anyway. I’ve noticed that many other bloggers have evolved lists of how to organize their blogging. The wonderful writer and blogger who tipped me over the edge into trying this approach is Beth Hautala and if you don’t know her blog, you should, so click over and check it out. I especially like her alliterative Friday Five. 

My question is – if this is how you blog (that is either on a schedule or according to planned themes or both), do you like it? Have you found it helpful? And if you don’t work this way, what do you think of the idea of organized posting themes and/or scheduled posting?