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PiBoIdMo: A Wrap-up

Posted on by beckylevine

A few days before November, I took the PiBoIdMo pledge, promising that I’d do my best to come up with 30 ideas in 30 days.

How many ideas did I get?

57!!!!

Which means, I get this!

I also treated myself to one of the PiBoIdMo mugs, with Bonnie Adamson’s darling art, from the CafePress store.

Yes, I’m proud of myself. Especially because I definitely got a bit muddled there with the stupid sickness that hit the family in the middle of the month. And, you know, some of those ideas are pretty…meh. But there are a few, maybe a half-dozen, that sparkle. At least for me. One of my critique partners who also did PiBoIdMo, has ranked his ideas, in order of how strongly they call to him. That’s next on my PiBoIdMo to-do list. To identify the ideas that I want to work on, or–I guess–that want me to work on them!

Because it’s not really time for pride yet. Happiness, yes, that I have way more ideas than I would have had if it weren’t for Tara Lazar and her awesome challenge. What really matters, though, is what I do with these ideas. What’s important is that I don’t simply shut them in a drawer, or drop them into that folder on my computer and forget about them.

Ideas aren’t stories. Yet.

One of my critique partners, who also did PiBoIdMo, has gone ahead and ranked his ideas–putting those that really call to him up at the top. I think this is the next task on my PiBoIdMo to-do list. I know I have maybe a half-dozen ideas that are sparkling for me, and the first thing to do is identify them.

The next thing is to grow them. I need to give them characters–characters with problems. I need to find settings and voices. I need to turn those ideas into plots. What I have is just what Laura Purdie Salas talked about in her PiBoIdMo post–I have seeds. I need to tend them–with my imagination, my creativity, and–here’s the most important: my time. This is the kind of gardening I can get behind.

This is the notebook I bought in October.

Pretty, isn’t it. It’s also something else…just the beginning.

Here’s my commitment to my PiBoIdMo idea list. That I will take at least one of the ideas on it and turn it into something more. Into a story that I will pass along to my critique group, a story that I will revise. And revise.

Who’s with me?

Posted in Friday Five

Friday Five: Restart

Posted on by beckylevine

Yesterday was a catch-up day. My to-do list had gotten pretty long while we were out of commission, so I plugged myself in at my desk and slogged through, checking things off and moving on.

Felt good.

I have dipped a toe back into my writing & reading, too. Just a bit. And today felt like clearing the decks on things that were getting in the way of doing more of that.

For this week’s Friday Five, a peek at the baby steps I’m taking back into my word world.

1. Ran through a very rough draft of a kind-of concept picture book. Made a couple of little tweaks, and then sent it out the door to my critique group, with a request that they give me feedback on the overall (if any) viability and any ideas for creating that viability if it doesn’t exist. Yet.

2. Completed PiBoIdMo with more than 30 ideas, took the PiBoIdMo Winner’s Pledge (which means I am officially entered for some awesome prizes!), and ordered my PiBoIdMo 2011 mug, with Bonnie Adamson’s fantastic art, from the CafePress PiBoIdMo shop. The big victory for me here was not just finishing the month with enough ideas, but not letting the last few days of the month slide away without any ideas, after I took a couple of days off for being sick. I wanted to actually, actively complete the challenge, and I did. Yay, me. Yay, anyone who also won or participated. Yay, everyone who spent any time writing speedily for NaNoWriMo, too. November is really about doing more than you would/could have, if you hadn’t tried to take the challenge. So kudos all around!

3. Opened the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook again. Got started on the next exercise. Picked a scene to view from the other way around. And today I’ll dig in and really start looking at the YA historical. Again.

4. Read something other than an Agatha Christie mystery or a Terry Pratchett novel. All of you know with what high esteem I seriously hold both these authors, but they are also restful for me in a way that goes well with being ill, or tending the ill. So I’ve been reading a LOT of both. Yesterday, I started and finished Ruta Sepetys’ Between Shades of Gray. It felt great to pick up something new, something intense and powerful. Okay, probably not the smartest choice for a cold day when the sun set by 5:00, but definitely a read to recommend. And, again, a historical novel with tight, short chapters–something I want for my own YA and something I am really going to have to push myself to get right.

5. Critiqued pieces from two of my critique partners. Lovely to get back into reading good stuff and digging in for helpful feedback. Have I mentioned that my brain was starting to atrophy?

What little pieces of reading and writing did you keep going in your life the last week or so. Did you push through for NaNo, pass the great number THIRTY in PiBoIdMo, or even just get an hour in here or there to move words from your mind to your computer’s? Whatever you managed, you have my admiration and my congratulations!

Posted in Blogs

November…WOOSH!!!! And Links from the Blogosphere

Posted on by beckylevine

What I learned this past month is the futility of predicting what’s coming. Way back here, I talked about everything I was going to blog about in November.

Let’s just say, “Yeah, right,” NOT talk about the flu or pneumonia anymore, and move on. Okay? Okay!

Looking ahead, with zero predictions, I am so looking forward to opening up my writing projects again and seeing who’s doing what and how they’ve been keeping themselves busy without me. Hopefully, at least their creative juices have been flowing, and they’ll all be happy to share some output with me–their friend and author.

Meanwhile, I have at least been checking in at other blogs, and I thought–just to get the posting fingers warmed up again and wave a happy hand at all of you again, I’d post some links to what they’re talking about.

  • I always love Jama Rattigan’s Hawaii posts. Yes, you get some pictures of beautiful beaches and skies, but it’s the family and food that keeps me coming back for more. Okay, and the bears. And moose.
  • Sabrina at YA Bliss shares some great titles from her winter TBR list.
  • Jennifer Laughran addresses yet another writer fear with her usual and always welcome common sense.
  • Jennifer R. Hubbard reviews Colleen Mondor’sThe Map of My Dead Pilots,  a nonfiction book that intrigues me, both for itself and for the feeling that it might be like reading more about characters from one of Dana Stabenow’s Kate Shugak mysteries.
  • Rebecca Schiller talks about using a mind-mapping program, SimpleMind, to work with Scrivener. I have never been able to get those circle-brainstorming map thingies to work for me, but I felt that way about index cards until Scrivener came along. Now I’m wondering if I just need computers to help me along–I’ll be taking a look at SimpleMind myself.
  • Julia Churchill posts at Greenhouse Literary about what happens after you sign with an agent. You know, besides the ultimate happy dance and celebratory dinner at that restaurant you really can’t afford.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and wishing you a peaceful and HEALTHY December! Oh, that for us, too, thanks very much!

Posted in Uncategorized

Blog Silence: Not On Purpose

Posted on by beckylevine

Just a quick note to say I haven’t disappeared from the Internet, I haven’t gone completely invisible, and I haven’t done a Rincewind and fallen off the Disc.

All is good here, now, but I’ve spent the last week with a sick son–first the flu, then pneumonia that took him into the hospital for a couple of days. Everybody–doctors, nurses, techs, family, friends–has been wonderful, so wonderful that I never really got scared. Focus, though? Pretty much on the sick room.

We’re home, we’re happy, and healing is progressing nicely. Family is coming for Thanksgiving, and we’re all going to take it easy–eat, play games, take in a movie–and get totally well! After that…?

After that, I expect you’ll be seeing me around here a whole lot more again!

Posted in Uncategorized

Cabin Fever as the Prelude to Creativity. I Hope.

Posted on by beckylevine

Is it Monday? We stepped into a corner of the Twilight Zone this weekend, with the advent of the season’s first virus bug. My husband and I are happily untouched so far, but it hit my son with a vengeance. I thought only toddlers got high fevers. So far, he seems to be progressing through without any secondary crud, which is great, and I THINK we may be seeing around the corner to the healthy side of things this morning.  But he’s a healthy kid, and it’s been a really long time since he spent a few days on the couch sleeping and playing video games.

And it’s been a long time since I clicked into that sort of nothing-to-do-but-still-not-doing-anything mode. Where you’ve got the meds into the kid, his temp is down, you can hear Mario chirping happily away, and you’ve got hours with  nowhere to go and nothing you have to do.

But you still don’t write.

Maybe it’s just me. (Although I sure hope not.) Granted, the past few weeks have been super busy, and I’d kind of planned to take the weekend off, anyway. But the thing is, I don’t slip easily away from that mental check-in with the sick kid and into that deep focus on what’s going on with my MCs. Really, I kind of wish I could. My son would be just fine without me wandering past, doing a forehead check, asking if he wants some more juice. The doc checked him out yesterday, and there’ s nothing secondary going on. He’s not five; he’s fifteen. Then again, maybe it’s nice having Mom around and present, as long as she doesn’t suggest one more time that you might want to bring your tired brain to focus on a book for a while, instead of how many coins Luigi has. Maybe, when you’re sick at fifteen, it’s just as nice to have that juice catered as it was at five.

I don’ t know.

What I do know is that it’s Day 4. He’s still got a bit of a fever, but it seems to be holding steady at a lower spot. The cough’s still there, and–yeah–it’s a pain, but it’s probably not worse.

And I’m starting to get just a little bit…stir crazy.

We’re going to mix it up a bit today. I printed off yet another copy of basic Mah Jong rules, and we’re getting my set out later to play. I WILL get some laundry folded. I might wave that book at him just one more time. I’ll open up one  of my research books, rather than yet another novel. I’m going to keep my PiBoIdMo notebook open and nearby, to see if I can make up for the dearth of scribbling that’s shown up in it the last few days.

Yeah.

And, let me tell you, when that temperature is back to normal, the cough disappears, and I drop my son at school again, here’s what I WILL be doing.Okay, yeah, with a computer and probably not with an owl on my head. But you get the picture.

Have a happy AND HEALTHY week, everyone!

Posted in PiBoIdMo, Picture Books

PiBoIdMo & My Lightening-Fast Reactions

Posted on by beckylevine

It’s November 10th. Ten days into the month that is PiBoIdMo.  It’s been an interesting week and a half. The guest posts at Tara Lazar’s Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) blog have been great! And it’s as much fun as I thought it would be to just open up my senses and imagination for picture-book ideas.

So far, in terms of numbers, I’m being successful. I’m pretty sure I’ve had more than one idea on every day, and many days in my notebook have three or four ideas jotted down. Are they any good?

Hmm…

What I’ve found is that, apparently, PiBoIdMo turns me into something an awful lot like this:

No, it doesn’t make me eat spiders. Ew.

It does make me quick. Quick to snatch up any idea that comes into my brain–be that an image, a question, a phrase, a character. I don’t know if it’s the anxiety that I won’t get any ideas that day, or the determination NOT to get anxious about that possibility. But I am not spending a lot of time filtering the possibilities through any questions about whether I can actually develop this idea into a story, or whether this idea has already been done.

I think this is okay. I think it’s probably the right way to go. It’s not that different from the idea behind NaNoWriMo–you’re shooting for quality, not necessarily quantity.

With the assumption, the commitment to yourself, that you will take some of that quantity and actually turn it into quality. No matter how hard that transformation is.

Do I have any ideas that actually feel like winners? Winners to me, yes. I do. There are a few that come with a spark, a smile, a thought that this one is going on the post-PiBoIdMo list of things I want to spend time with. That makes me feel a lot better about all the others that don’t—yet—have that pop. Plus, I have a sense of even more as starting points–ideas that need a twist, or a reversal, or a quirky angle that will turn them from unlikely to likely.

If you’re participating in PiBoIdMo, what have the first ten days been like for you? What have you discovered about yourself, about the way you search for ideas and how they feel when they do come into your brain?

Posted in Uncategorized

My Critique Group’s in Cahoots with Donald Maass

Posted on by beckylevine

I had a wonderful time at a brief writing retreat last weekend. One of my critique partners lives a bit further up the mountain from me, and she opened up our house to us starting Saturday afternoon, with a fire in the fireplace and a pot of stew on the stove. I was only able to stay through dinner, but I curled up on her incredibly comfy couch, yes–in front of the fire–and worked through some more exercises in Maass’ Breakout Novel Workbook.

For those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook, where I already posted this photo, here’ s the basic view out the windows.

I know.

Anyway, I made big progress, only coming up stuck at one point–when Maass wanted me to figure out the thing Caro wants and then figure out the opposite of that. (He’s SO demanding!) If you’ve read Maass’ Breakout Novel book & workbook, you know that he thinks big. Or BIG. And he wants us to. He’s not satisfied with events and effects and people who only impact their narrow, personal world–he wants to see how their actions and problems resonate outward and, yeah, create bigger problems, bigger solutions, and bigger heroes.

So I thought I had the basics of that opposite desire, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t enough. Not just because Mr. Maass would tell me it wasn’t, but because I could see that the pull on my hero from this need wasn’t going to counter that original desire–in other words, there wasn’t going to be enough tension. The stakes for Caro, if she gave up that opposite need, just weren’t going to matter a whole lot.

So I sent an email to my critique group and asked for some brainstorming time around this question.

You know what they say: Be careful what you ask for.

Oh, boy. I thought I wanted to make things bigger. I thought I wanted to amp up the problems. Listen, what I wanted was nothing compared to what my critique partners wanted. Yep, they were right there on Donald Maass’ side. Totally.

And…*BIG SIGH*…they were right.

I could see it, right there. As I thought about what they said, my stomach tightened up and my heart clenched, not just for Caro, but for so many other characters in her story. And for me. I swear, I may have broken out in a cold sweat. And as one 0f the women at that table reminded me, that’s when you know you’re on the right track.

Or at least when your critique partners and Donald Maass are.

I have to admit, I was pretty intimidated. But this is why I’m in a critique group. It’s why I’m in THIS critique group. Because you don’t think I let them off the hook, do you? I took a deep breath and asked, “Will you guys help me do this?”

There wasn’t a split second of thought before all the yes’s came back at me.

Thank goodness.

 

Posted in Uncategorized

Breakout Novel Workbook: Getting Back to the Hero I Started With

Posted on by beckylevine

“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

Okay, not THAT long ago. But long-enough ago, I knew who the protagonist of my YA historical was. I had an image of her walking at high-speed down the streets of 1910 Chicago, going fast, because that was what she did, how she moved. She was antsy, energetic, and I loved that about her.

Somewhere in the drafting process of this novel, I lost her. She’s become a worrier, a fretter, someone who–well, you might decide to take the time to get to know her and find out if she was more, deep down, but then again–you might NOT take that time. In other words, not much of a hero at all.

The good news is, I think I’ve found her again. I’ve been working through the exercises in the first two chapters of Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, which focus on–guess who–the hero. Yes, when I first opened the files to answer Maass’ questions, I was drawing a blank. I was staring at the computer screen and back to the workbook, and thinking, “Yeah, if I could answer your questions, I wouldn’t be having these problems.” But I gave myself the chance to let my brain empty out a bit, let some of the frustration I’ve been feeling just drop away, and then I thought about who I feel Caro is, separate from all the confused actions and thoughts I’ve been putting on the page.

And I got it. Somewhere out of the silence, I got an adjective.

Restless.

Oh, yeah. That’s MUCH better than worried or stressed or unhappy. And, guess what? The adjective came with a WHY. I know at least one reason behind Caro’s restlessness. It’s a reason tied to a goal.

If you’ve read my blog for long, you’ll know that I like goals. Big time.

It’s not enough yet, but, hey, I’m only two chapters in. I’ve got some more time this afternoon to spend with Caro and with the workbook, and I’m moving forward. Forward to remember all the other things I already knew.

Posted in Uncategorized

The Blog: What’s Coming in November

Posted on by beckylevine

First, Happy Halloween to everybody!

I’ve been feeling like my blog posts are a little scattered of late–kind of “my life” focused and a little light on craft-talk. Hopefully, this month, I’ll get back on track with talking about fiction and the writing of it. I’m digging into a couple of projects that I think will get me back on track, both with my own writing (the emotional AND time commitment) and with blogging about the process, tools, and ideas that I really love talking about.

First, as you probably already know, I’m participating in PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) over at Tara Lazar’s blog, Writing for Kids (While Raising Them).

I’ll be guest-posting over there next weekend, but I’m guessing I’ll also be talking about it here plenty–what it’s like mining for a new idea every day for 30 days, how those ideas are feeling, if I’m seeing serious potential in any of them for development into actual stories…That kind of thing.

And I’m pulling myself back to the YA historical that has been driving me nutso.

This is my copy of Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. No, you can’t buy it in a three-ring binder, but if you have a bandsaw in your garage, you can either bravely take the book to the blade yourself, or–like me–ask your husband to cut the edge binding off, then three-hole-punch the thing into a binder, thus leaving LOTS of room for all those extra pages of notes and scenes you’re going to create. Yes, it’s book mutilation, but in the best cause ever. Yes? Yes.

I’ve talked about this book before, well–about the prequel to it, Writing the Breakout Novel. And I used the workbook when I first got started on this WIP.  The story has changed so drastically, though, and I find myself struggling so much to understand the characters, that I’m going back to the workbook. Seriously, that’s the biggest compliment I can pay a writing book–that I return to it in times of stress, mind-chaos, or need-for-inspiration. I’m going to work my way through the workbook, and I’m going to do ALL the exercises. In some form or another.  Between Mr. Maass and me, we’re going to figure these people out! And, lucky you, you’ll probably get to hear about the process, and hopefully the discoveries, along the way.

So that’s what’s coming. A little more thinking, a little more writing.

And of course, there’s bound to be at least one post on…

November? Bring it on!