Author: beckylevine

Becky Levine is a children's book writer, working hard to strengthen her picture-books skills. She is the author of The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide, a book to help you get started with a critique group, learn to revise from a critique, and strengthen your own critiquing powers. She has also published two nonfiction children's books with Capstone Press. She is currently seeking representation. Becky lives in California's Santa Cruz mountains, where she spends a lot of time sitting on the couch, knitting needles in hand, thinking through the next revision. At her day job, she writes grants for a nonprofit healthcare organization.
Posted in Friday Five

Friday Five: Five Things Son is Taking to Camp

Posted on by beckylevine

This Sunday, we drop my son in San Francisco, where he gets on a bus and heads to…somewhere, for two weeks. He’s heading out into the Sierras (we think) with a friend, whose done this camp before, and 8 other kids…okay, and a couple of adults. (Who I’m sure are going to look really, really young to me when I see them!) Where is this somewhere? We don’t know–apparently, we’ll get some info at the drop-off point. You know, when we sign all worries away.

It’s a scavenger-hunt camp. The kids don’t get to know where they’re going, but they have to figure it out along the way. We know, from the packing list, that they’re going to be doing some backpacking, some kind of water sport-thingy, and I hear they do most of the food shopping and cooking. We know (because I asked!) that the camp people didn’t decide to make this an Urban-Adventure thing, and they won’t be spending the whole two weeks in Fresno. 🙂

You can bet if my son’s friend (and his family) hadn’t camped with these folks before, I’d be a lot more nervous. As it is, I’m in my if-they’d-lost-a-kid-before-they-wouldn’t-still-be-in-existence mode, and I’m just concentrating on the fact that my son is going to have a whole lot of fun. And I’m getting ready to clean off my futon so we can pile every item he has to take on top of it. From where my husband and he will pack it tomorrow, while I escape to give my talk to the Fremont Area Writers. How smart is that schedule?

Here are five things that are going into the duffel:

1. A raincoat. According to my husband, and to some of my own experiences, it pretty much rains at 4:00 every day in the Sierras. This year, I’m wondering about snow! (No, but I bet there is some still on the ground.)

2. Water shoes–in this case, those old beat-up sneakers that stay on your feet & keep them away from rocks, but will be SO ready to end up in the trash when they come home. Are these for canoeing? Kayaking? We’ll find out!

3. A small notebook and pen. No, this wasn’t on the packing list, but my son doesn’t go anywhere without a set of these. Unlined paper is the best for either drawing OR writing. And, yes, he cut the pen with the hacksaw, so that it fits into the spiral thing at the top of the notebook. It’s now about 1.5″ long.

4.  One of the two Discworld books that he hasn’t yet read. The other will go in the totebag that we’re grabbing as we go out the door to my parents’ house, the morning after my son comes home. I’m heading down to my…gulp! 30th high school reunion, and son will crash (probably literally) with his grandparents that night. I’m pretty sure they’ll supply pizza.

5. A sleeping bag. I think they’ll be sleeping on the ground, with nothing but a lot of pine trees and the open sky above them. He’ll need to leave his glasses on for a while, to make sure he gets the most of all those stars in that clear sky, with no urban lighting to mess them up. I’m not much of a camper, honestly, but the first time I lay outside somewhere far away from anything else and looked straight up (yes, with my glasses on, too!) I was blown away. I am so glad he wants to do this trip.

And what will I be doing while he’s away? Writing, writing, and writing. Reading and hiking. Eating out with my husband and seeing a movie or two. And, yes, for sure by the end of those two weeks, missing my son and being ready for him to come home.

Here’s to stretching ourselves!

Posted in Reading

The Sneakiness of Book Sharing

Posted on by beckylevine

One of the happiest things in my life is having a son who is a big reader. If you’d asked me for a list of dream goals for my child, when I was pregnant, this would have been right up there at the top–along with a sense of humor (check) and enough height to get down the dishes on the next shelf, that one that I just can’t reach (check, check). Partially, I’m  happy for him, but honestly–there’s an element of selfishness in this, too. Finally, I have someone around all the time to talk about kids and YA books with! My husband reads, too, and we’re bringing him along on the you’re-not-too-old-for-this ride with authors like Eoin Colfer and JK Rowling, but he also spends a lot of time sharing gory, lost-on-the-mountaintop books with me, as well as those science articles about what my brain’s doing right now, thank you very much.  He also does read a lot of sci-fi and dystopian, which is probably my son’s favorite genre right now.

Anyway, my son is a big reader, but he doesn’t always jump right onto a new bandwagon–he does a lot of rereading, and he looks first for authors he knows and loves (Thank you, Sir Terry Pratchett, for being brilliant and prolific). He definitely responds to covers and to jacket blurbs. Or he doesn’t respond.

The bottom line is that, when I want him to try something new (one of those books that I’ve fallen in love with and want someone else to join me in fandom), I have to be a bit sneaky. I can’t just paraphrase the story as I see it, because we don’t latch onto the same things in that kind of a description. So I just share a few passages out loud, here and there, as I read the book–pieces I know he won’t be able to resist.

Here’s the one that caught him in Frances O’Roark Dowell’s Falling In:

     So, should you stop reading this book? I mean, you thought you were getting a witch, and so far all you’ve gotten is two girls and an old woman herb doctor. I don’t blame you for wanting your money back. Let’s march right back to the bookstore and demand–
     Wait a minute.
     I thought I saw something.
     Yes, I’m pretty sure I saw something over–over–over–
     There.
     It’s a piece of paper falling out of a book.
     I wonder what it says.

That’s it. Chapter end. Seriously, who could resist?

Not my son. He’s about halfway through the book and loving it–loving the language, loving Isabelle Bean, loving the way she spirals thoughts into imagery.

Personally, I think publishers should hire me to pick that line–that paragraph–the one that shows the story’s absolute irresistability, and they can print it right on the back cover. Okay, they can keep their paraphrase, too, but we know what will grab those readers. 🙂

Posted in The Writing Path

More Thoughts on Juggling and Balance

Posted on by beckylevine

The Writing Path. That’s part of my blog title, but I haven’t mused out loud about it here for a while. There’s a thought, or a few semi-connected thoughts, that have been simmering in my mind for a while. I’ve put off blogging, because I don’t want it to sound like whining, but what the heck. I’ll just try and edit out the whine!

For many years, I thought my dream was to have nothing to do with my life but write fiction. Note, this was probably because what I was doing full-time was writing computer manuals! 🙂 I thought that, if we never needed me to work for another penny for the rest of my life, I’d be just fine with working on my fiction–and, of course, getting published–but that whatever they paid me would be enough.

Part of me still feels that way, but it’s tinged with some more realism. Fiction-writing doesn’t pay enough and never will. I’m ready to deal with that, as long as I don’t spend too much time figuring out what that means for my hourly rate! And, yes, if we won the lottery, it would make those numbers a lot easier to face. And, obviously, the day that someone comes to me and says, yes, we love, love, and want your stories…sign here, I’ll be whipping out my pen and coming back to this same topic, from a very different angle.

Today, though, the bottom line is that I want to write fiction, and I want to earn some money. Right now, our family is still at the point where it makes sense for me to be writing and editing from home, and sort of seeing where I can grow skills and connections to bring in more than I did the year before. In four years, my son will be going to college, and my goal for that time is that I can feel like I’m contributing enough from this desk that I don’t have to move my stuff into some other desk in a cubicle somewhere. I don’t know, right now, if that will be possible. And, if not, I’ll take the other step and keep the juggling going.

This goal, however, sometimes makes me feel like pulling out the magic telescope to look into my future, and see if I’m doing that juggling “correctly” right now.  (I know, not a question that can be answered.) Between my fiction, some nonfiction articles I’ve got going, prepping for conferences and workshops, and keeping on top of a bit of marketing, I feel as though I’m working full-time for the first time in years. (Hugs and kisses to my husband who made sure to tell me that I am.) I have to tell you, overall, it feels fantastic. Yes, stressful; yes, scary; yes, tiring, but…wow. I love being a mom, and I love my son, but short-term-goal-responses and rewards? Not a lot of that in parenting. Taking on a proposal, getting it accepted, and carrying it through to it’s end product? I always loved that feeling, even with those computer manuals, and it’s great to be getting back to experiencing it again.

And then you flip the coin and look at the money. Last year, I reached a point where the numbers got bigger than zero, and it seems like I may be on that stage of the writing path where I can see this continuing…even if, from day to day, I can’t see how or in what direction. Enough to feel like, in four years, this would be enough to really help with college and life? Um…no…Enough to feel like maybe, maybe, I’m taking the steps to get there? A bit.

Basically, I like ths part of the path. I’m busy and happy, and I have a family who’s totally working with me on going through the changes. The trade-off? Well, you can probably guess. I’m not writing fiction full-time. In fact, some weeks, I’m finding it hard put to do the juggling that will get me that first hour-a-day-for-fiction I’m trying to commit to. I’m learning that I can get through pieces of a couple of projects in a day–with some time for checking off phone calls and appointments, runs to the grocery store, TIME WITH MY FAMILY, and maybe even some exercise. And when I look at it like that, I think I’m doing pretty well and it’s a sane way to be living. Last week and today, those two projects for the day were getting out some conference proposals and an outline for a magazine article (one they ARE paying me for!). For the rest of the week, I’m going to try and slide back in that hour-of-fiction first and do some more work on my WIP. And I think that’s good and okay and, again…sane.

I have a few role models out there, from people I meet on blogs and other social-networking sites. People who are juggling all this and more (usually with full-time jobs or part-time-out-of-the-house jobs or younger children). People who still manage to make forward progress on their ficton and do it beautifully. People like Jo Knowles whose books, if you haven’t read them, are testimonials to the idea of staying true and focused with your fiction in the midst of many, many other commitments. And Beth Revis who has written a book I haven’t read, but which I am impatiently waiting for, all while she was a full-time (and I’m guessing brilliant) high-school teacher. If I could even manage to teach high school, you can bet I wouldn’t have much time, energy, or imagination left.

And the lesson I take from these people, and many others like them, is that you just have to keep stepping forward. In some sense, it doesn’t matter how big or small those steps are, or if you know which way they’re taking you, as long as they’re heading out from where you are at the moment. As long as you aren’t standing still. I picture my writing path a lot like the picture at the top of this blog–a gentle path through soft green and brown woods. Except that along that path are doors–maybe instead of forks. I can’t see what doors are coming, or which ones will feel like the right ones–at any given time–to open and walk through. But I know they’re there, and I’ll get to them and be able to make some kind of choice…as long as I keep traveling.

There. Not too much whining, I hope. I’d love to hear from all of you how you feel about your path right now and the steps you’re taking.

Posted in Uncategorized

The Taste of a Story

Posted on by beckylevine

Okay, this one may get a bit weird, because it’s so tricky to describe the way our brains react to things, including words. I may be getting a bit into synesthesia here, or some third cousin of it, or I may just be failing to explain quite how stories resonate in my mind. Maybe none of you will have a clue what I’m talking about; on the other hand, maybe I’m writing about something common to many writers.

Read on to find out!

I started reading early, and when I add things up, I have now been reading for close to 4.5 decades. That’s a lot of books. I started writing probably less than ten years after the reading and, with a few years of gap that I wish weren’t there, have been writing since. That’s a lot of words, even if so very many of them never ended up a complete book or story. When I look back at the things I’ve read and the things I’ve written, they all have a taste.

Not a taste with actual flavors, but a distinct feel–like walking down the street and seeing someone at a distance and just knowing–from the rhythm of their walk or the way they carry their shoulders–who it is. The young mysteries of Phyllis Whitney, the ones I fell in love with at about 12, have a lightness, because–I think–that’s what I felt every time I opened one…the lightness of recognition, of finding myself in her characters. Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazon books have a speed to them, a rushing of wind and salt air, that came with following adventures like none I’d ever taken and none I could ever imagine myself being brave enough, independent enough to take. (That “taste” came back the day I found myself in England, alone, hiking over the same hills Ransome had written about.) Wuthering Heights is dense layers of chocolate–some mellow, some incredibly dark–and a few threads of intense cherry brandy running through it all.

The taste thing goes for my own writing. My MG mystery has a flavor of fun, at least for me–cartwheels and unicycles and cotton candy. The picture book I’m working on feels just a little like a jig, or a game of hopscotch, with a plate of peanut-butter-and-jelly crackers. And my YA is darkening shadows, twisting alleys, and the bitter dregs of a nearly empty, too-cold cup of tea.

At least, these are what I’m trying to cook up. The taste of the books I’ve read stay the same for me, with slight variations as I reread them again at different ages. The flavor of the books I’m writing is part of my vision–a taste that came to me with the original idea, and the thing  I want readers to walk away with, to carry with them when they close the cover and put the book back on the shelf.

There is no cotton candy in my mystery, no peanut-butter in my picture book, and I don’t really even know if the characters in my YA drink tea or coffee. When I close my eyes, though, and think–not of the actual words and sentences, not of the plot or the character development, but maybe, yes, a little bit about the voice–these are the flavors I look for again. I use them as a touchstone, a reminder of the feelings I want people to experience when they read my stories, to carry with them when they’ve finished the books. These are the “tastes” toward which I write.

What about you? Anyone out there have a better label than taste for that feeling each book carries, even before you can find it in the written words?

Posted in Uncategorized

Friday Five: How I Know Summer Vacation is Here

Posted on by beckylevine

Okay, we’re a week into summer, and our vacation pattern is settling in. Much faster this year than others–maybe because my son’s older, maybe because I have deadline work to do–which does keep me much more focused, maybe because son leaves in another week for sleep-away camp in the sierras–and the shopping/prep is giving a bit of structure to our days. Not sure, but enjoying it. I may actually be relaxing into this mom/writer thing, after only 14 years!

Here are five ways I know it’s summer vacation, 2010:

1. We ended up at Target yesterday, at the only rack of long-sleeved shirts in the men’s department, and were seriously grateful that a) son liked them, b) they are light & comfortable for taking to camp, c)they don’t have any obnoxious or supposedly-cool logos on the front, and 3) they had two colors available in his size. What are you supposed to do–shop for summer camp in January? 🙂

2. I don’t see my son until, oh…9 or 10 in the morning. I think he’s actually waking up earlier than that–thanks to Mom and Dad not being too quiet as they get started and thanks to Bard the cockatiel for whistling excitedly on his swing after we uncover him. (You just cannot make a bird keep to a teenager’s summer schedule.) And when he does get up, there’s no schedule to get moving or get out the door–he pretty much does his own thing. What this means for me is that I can have a leisurely cup of tea and get caught up online before breakfast, then settle in to work for a serious few hours. Lovely. I do not miss getting in the car and heading down the hill to school.

3. I’m shutting down out of work-mode earlier. During the school year, I always feel like there’s something more I need to be doing at the end of the day. I actually don’t think that’s because I have more to get done, or because I accomplish less during the day. I think it’s that chopped up feeling of interrupting work, coming and going, shifting focus between too many things. Somehow, this summer is feeling more about stages of completion and knowing that, when I’ve reached certain milestones, it’s okay (even good) for me to just stop and wait for the next day to get going again. Boy, if I could bottle this feeling and use it all year…

4. The doors and windows of the house are open. Yes, sometimes, we get there in May, but not this year. And even with summer officially almost here, I’m still wearing socks on  my feet and even a sweater some mornings. But it’s warm enough that we’ve got the doors to the back porch open many hours of the day, and the window in my office, and I can hear the birds and smell the trees.

5. Iced tea. I’m taking some of my tea doses cold these days, thank you very much. Iced tea in California is not nearly the big deal it is in the south–there is NOTHING better than a glass of strong, “sweet tea.” Unless it’s a glass of that alongside a huge plate of fried chicken. Anyway…we can’t really get that out here, but I am simulating it as well as I can after in the afternoon, often after I get my exercise in and just want something half-bitter, half-sweet poured over a PILE of ice cubes.

What rituals, patterns mean summer vacation to you? What are you enjoying about June right now?

Posted in Uncategorized

Geekdom: My Love of the “One-Page”

Posted on by beckylevine

I know, I know, we all hate it. A one-page query. (And what does that even mean in an email?) A one-page synopsis. (Killer!)

And yet…

One-pages have been around for a while. Remember, just out of college, trying to figure out how to fill that one-page resume they wanted? And one-page cover letters, where you tried to make yourself sound better than the resume did? And let’s not even forget making the typo in the last sentence, the big one that the white-out made such a mess of you knew you had to retype the whole thing.

This week, I’ve been working on conference proposals. Nobody has said a thing about one-page, but you know…it just seems about right. I’m coming close every time, and it seems wrong to make conference organizers turn a page just to read a last sentence or two.  Besides, here’s the thing: I really like the rightness of a single page you can hand over to someone, or send off in an email–that one-page perfectness that says it all.

Yes, I know. Geeky. Also fun.

My first job out of college was closed-captioning for television. I have no idea if any of this was scientifically tested or proven, but the premise behind our jobs was that we had to hit a reading rate with our captions–a certain number of words would show up on the screen per minute. And they had to be synched up, in terms of timing, with the speed of the spoken dialogue. Which meant editing.

Cutting  a word here and there, while keeping the humor (or what passed for it) of a joke was a blast. A challenge, yes, but a fun one. Honestly, it was the one thing that made it possible to bear sitting in a freezing cold computer booth, at three in the morning, on a Hollywood studio lot from which anyone exciting had gone home hours before. One more word…one more word. I’ll just say it here…I was good.

That job took me into management (for the brief time it took me to learn that was not my world), got me motivated to move out of Los Angeles to the Bay Area, sent me to Great Britain for a wonderful five weeks (there went that pension), and taught me to trim. It also taught me how many extra words we do use, and the beauty of tight writing that has dispensed with those extras.

I’m not captioning anymore. I am, however, getting ready to send out a few proposals. And they will all, I can tell you, be a “one-page.” Just because. 🙂

Posted in Uncategorized

Around the Blogosphere

Posted on by beckylevine

It’s pretty much the same-old, same-old around here–writing, writing, keeping house, writing, losing to son at Trivial Pursuit, writing… Anyway, I haven’t done a check-in for you lately with what other bloggers are talking about, so here are a few of the posts that hit me this week.

Laura Purdie Salas‘ blog posts are some of the most honest I read, especially about the writing process, the career of writing, and how that all can feel at any given time. Here she is talking about one of the hardest decisions a writer can make…and why.

http://laurasalas.livejournal.com/223188.html

Using Walmart to decide what’s a good book to read? Eeep! Nice discussion-starter post by Jim McCarthy.

http://dglm.blogspot.com/2010/06/big-boxes-and-buzz.html

Christie Craig, guest-posting at the Bookends Literary blog, debunks a few myths about writing and publishing. She’s picked a few myths I’m not crazy about & does a good job at that debunking, I think.

http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2010/06/christie-craig-on-writing-advice.html

As I write my first draft, my mind jumps back & forth a bit thinking about where this story truly needs to start. I love Jordan Rosenfeld’s thoughts on what that opening needs to be doing.

http://jordanrosenfeld.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/where-the-story-starts/

Times are a-changing. Everybody (okay, not everybody, but you know…) is talking about this FREE ONLINE CONFERENCE for kidlit writers. Yes, free. Run over and take a look.

http://writeoncon.com/

And, finally, this video has been going around for a while, but if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a can’t-miss. At least for me, who did my Masters orals on the Brontë sisters and my thesis on Wuthering Heights. Thanks to Suzie Townsend for posting it at her blog.

http://confessionsofawanderingheart.blogspot.com/2010/06/happy-monday.html

Posted in Uncategorized

Fast Friday Five: What I’m Doing Today Instead of Writing

Posted on by beckylevine

Today starts one of those weekends that will be lots of fun and just a bit–okay, what’s NEXT on the calendar. My son’s graduating 8th grade and, on the other side of our hill, friends are getting married. My husband is best man, so he’ll be racing back and forth a bit over that hill between rehearsal and graduation and rehearsal dinner, and I’ll be playing chauffeur to my son as needed, with a little bit of hill-racing myself.

Do I have a morning free, in which I could write? Sure. Will I have the clear head and focus to figure out what’s happening in the next scene, step off our hill and back into 1913 Chicago? Uh…no. So, instead, here’s some of what I’ll be doing today.

1. Stopping at the grocery store to pick up snacks for son’s Saturday night sleepover after the graduation and after the wedding.

2. Getting on the treadmill with a good book. For as long as I need.

3. Cleaning my office, the mess in which is threatening to spill into the rest of the house and possibly….THE WORLD!!!!!

4. Picking son up early from school so he can change into those nicer graduation clothes, including quite the spiffy tie.

5. Standing in the quad back at his middle-school, watching  in amazed awe at the young man he has become in the past three years.

Happy weekend, everybody!

Posted in Research, Writing

Write What You Know? Ahem…

Posted on by beckylevine

I don’t think so.

If I only wrote what I knew, I would never have:

  • Created a 1st-person, 12-year-old boy protagonist
  • Written a scene at a skate-board park that ends in a get-away race to safety
  • Listened to many explanations of DNA-matching and written about it for 7-year-olds (Hi, Lee!)
  • Taken a trip to Chicago to visit Hull-House
  • Collected two shelves of research books that have me wanting to read (and write) down many, many new paths
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we do and can stretch our brains. My husband just finished reading Barbara Strauch’s The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain (now so overdue at the library, I have to take it back and THEN check it out again for myself to read (Hi, Amytha!)), and he’s been reading me bits and pieces–mostly focused on the fact that, as we get older, our brain does not shrivel up, atrophy, and basically die.
 
Despite what our teenage children may be telling us.
 
 
I think I knew this–I am in many ways much more open to new experiences, new knowledge. Okay, maybe not so much to new opinions, but I just think of that as continuing to grow my stubbornness synapses. (Hi, Mom!) But working on a historical novel has got me thinking about it more, really recognizing what we can do if we try. There is so much I’m putting into my book that I cannot know, not in the sense people talk about for writers. I can’t march through DC with the other suffragists; I can’t sit down and listen to Ida B. Wells anger at being asked to walk at the back of that march. I can’t walk through all the buildings in the Hull-House complex in 1913; I can’t share a room with Jane Addams and experience the warmth and power so many people have written about. And, honestly, I don’t really want to go to Chicago in the middle of a blizzard and stand around for an hour or three to see how it feels.
 
But I can learn. I can push myself not only to read the research, but to imagine the feelings, to close my eyes–and stretch my brain–while I take what I do know and extrapolate outward to a much bigger world of understanding.
 
Write what I know? Only that? No, thanks!
Posted in Uncategorized

Monday Musings: Remembering What the “Race” is About

Posted on by beckylevine

I am not an early riser. What’s the thing I’m probably looking forward to most about summer? No alarm clock. I no longer sleep till noon, like I did when I was a teenager, but I wouldn’t really have a problem with it if I did. Every now and then.

But every now and then I do manage to roll out of bed early, either with or without the help of that clock, and every now and then I manage to be awake when I do it. And those are the mornings I look around, listen to the quiet inside and the noisy birds outside, and I remember the value of going a bit more slowly. Of not being so much at the beck-and-call of the to-do list, of giving myself the time to use all my senses–including the smell of the morning air on our little mountain and the touch of my fingers on the keyboard.

A few years ago, my son made me this turtle.

It was one of those times when I was trying to hurry, hurry, hurry through a revision, when the target I had at the end of my scope was labeled “Finish.”  When I had schedules and deadlines (all my own) on my mind, even as I was doing the best job I could of reaching deep into my story and figuring out how to make it better. When I was telling myself (and trying to believe) that rushing was not the way to go.

Can you see the turtle’s “#1” medal around his neck? Yes, it’s that turtle–the one for whom slow and steady won the race. And, yes, you can take that medal two ways. Or I can. That slow and steady will get me my dream–which, yes, does include more books on bookstore shelves and e-readers, kids who read those books and love them, the time and freedom to keep writing that kind of book. Or you can read that slow and steady is the way to go even if the dream is only about the writing, about making the time to write, even if those other dreams don’t yet have a solid, visible date-stamp on them.

These days, I’m working at reading the medal as meaning both things. That the writing is what matters–that the best thing I can do for myself is to write, to remember how much I love the flow of words, and to keep learning ways to make it better. AND that doing this, keeping at it, is the best way I have of making the other dream come true.

This weekend was a lot of reading time. This morning, back to my WIP, to an argument between my MC and her (currently) THIRD love-interest. Am I looking forward to it? You bet I am.

Happy Monday dreams to everyone.