Word Weaves

I breezed through Nikki Grimes’ Coretta Scott King Award winner  “Bronx Masquerade” in two nights. Grimes presents a diverse class of eighteen high-schoolers studying poetry from the Harlem Renaissance. The teens’ assignments lead to poetry jams called Open Mike Fridays. The students’ poems weave through the book followed by their classmates’ reactions. 

Grimes is herself an acclaimed poet. I was moved by her tenderness in presenting the issues and personalities of each teen. The book starts with Wesley “Bad Boy” Boone griping about going to school. Throughout the story, Wesley’s attitude changes as he delivers his verse and gets to know his classmates through their poems.

Two of my favorite passages are: “When that boy dyed his hair, I b’lieve some of that bleach must’ve seeped right into his brain.”

and

“I dare you to peep

                                                          behind these eyes,

                                                          discover the poet

                                                          in tough-guy disguise.

                                                          Don’t call me Jump Shot.

                                                          My name is surprise.”

Since I’m reworking my MG fantasy, I suppose it’s only natural Harry Potter seep into my thoughts. Even if I wasn’t stuck in fantasy mode, it’d be hard to ignore Universal Studio’s Wizarding World attraction that opened last week in Orlando. Local media has covered it for over a month with glowing reports of sneak peaks.

Part of me yearns to experience the man made creation of JK Rowlings’ world and yet … I worry that path leads to disappointment.  Would I be crushed by the theme park version of Hagrid’s hut? Would the shortcomings of the wands sold in Ollivander’s shop tarnish my memory of the story?

In the afterword to his audio book Enders Shadow, Orson Scott Card essentially says he prefers audio versions of books over movies because they leave visualization in the realm of the mind. I read the Harry Potter books after I saw the first five movies. For me, the cinema enhanced the reading, lending me a portfolio of images I wouldn’t have imagined so fully. But it does limit the mind. How would I have seen the boy wizard before Daniel Radcliffe played the part? I’m sure some dedicated readers felt the movies didn’t pay tribute to the books. And those readers might be equally disappointed in Universal’s attraction. Still, it’s difficult to ignore the temptation to walk the magical halls of Hogwarts.

When I announced my Highlights Fiction Contest win last week, someone steered me to the Verla Kay message boards for children’s writers and illustrators. A Highlights’ contest thread started on Verla Kay last year. Writers shared their experiences, from story conception through contest results. Some stories were bought, others returned with editor’s suggestions. I enjoyed reading their posts and was sorry not to have been a part of their journey.

My own path wasn’t without support. My husband is my first reader. I value his insight and I’m always thrilled when he laughs at the right places. My contest entry was also vetted by the talented group on the Yellow Brick Road, an invitation only critique forum for children’s writers. They made excellent suggestions on my first draft and annointed my final version. I sent it off with their blessings. When I heard the good news from the editor, they were the first to hear outside my family.

Before YBR, I joined the Florida Writers Association. Critique leader,  Vicki Taylor, honed my skills, reinforced what I was learning in books, and taught me the fundamentals of critiquing. Then I found Eugene Orlando’s terrific SCBWI (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) group in Brandon, Florida.

Earlier this month, I attended my first Florida SCBWI conference. I can’t explain the feeling of being surrounded by writers who share my passion for children’s stories. It was like smelling bread baking or tasting rich chocolate…a great delight. I listened to their first page critiques and felt honored to be a part of this amazing group. SCBWI provides a wealth of support for children’s writers. And it’s needed. We shut the world out when we’re creating, but writers need society. My Highlights’ win pays respect to all who shaped my writing.

"Run Toto Run" copyright Susan Banghart

At last, I can shout the good news I heard  last month but swore to keep secret. My story “The Fog Lifts” was one of three winners of the 2010 Highlights fiction contest! Highlights announced the winners last week. When I got the call from the associate editor, Joelle Dujardin, I thought she had made a mistake. This was my first children’s story submission. In my dreams, I imagined them liking it enough to buy it. But I never ever envisioned it winning.

Every day after, I waited for the next phone call. The one where the editor said sorry, we mixed your story up with another. Then the contract came and there was my title in print. For real. The last few days, I’ve been floating on a wave of support and encouragement from the writing community, friends, and family. This euphoria is not what compels writers to write. We often write, unrewarded. But when others appreciate our work, it stokes the fire that fuels the creative machine.

This year’s Highlights’ theme was family stories. The 2011 theme is an embarrassing moment. Check out the details here.  Writers, dredge up those red-faced memories and start typing. I enjoyed reviving my twelve-year-old self for “The Fog Lifts”. I’ll chat about its origin after it’s published. Until then, I feel a bit like Toto in the painting above…I’ve run away with the ruby slippers!

If you read Monday’s post, you know I decided to revisit my first book  (a MG fantasy) to submit with my editor’s coupons from the SCBWI conference. Deadline for the Disney-Hyperion editor is July 5.  I’m not likely to make that since I’m doing a pretty extensive rewrite. The deadline for Simon and Schuster and Little, Brown is Sept. 5.

I was so distracted by this project that Monday, my husband’s last day of vacation, we spent a nice drive in the country brainstorming story ideas. The blue skies and bucolic cow pastures buzzed by unnoticed.  Tuesday, I pulled up the manuscript and murdered my protaganist. Actually, I like to think she’s sleeping…like Snow White. Someday her prince will come.

My new MC is not only a different ethnicity, her personality is almost the polar opposite from the old MC, which means ninety percent of the scenes need revision. Along with that, there’s a plot change and I hope to intensify the whole. Will the end result be worth putting my current book aside? Got me. I’m a rookie, learning by doing.

When I started writing two and a half years ago, one of my goals was to attend a Florida SCBWI conference. We have two, a winter event in Miami and a summer workshop in Orlando.  Saturday, I attended my first conference. Whew, what a day!

We left early with my husband at the wheel and Hobbit, the terrier in the front passenger seat. You’re thinking there’s something wrong with that picture, right?  Naw. I wanted to sit in the back. My friend, Leslie Zampetti rode with us and I was looking forward to the chat time.

We arrived at the Coronado Springs resort with plenty of time to check out the digs. Very nice indeed. After the general assembly, we split into focus groups. Leslie headed for the Picture Book room and I settled in the Middle Grade track.  Alvina  Ling, Senior Editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and Kathleen Duey, author of over ninety books for K-YA led my group.

Alvina and Kathleen started with a lively discussion about what distinquishes MG from YA, and moved on to creating memorable characters and realistic dialogue. Florida critique group coordinator, Sue LaNeve brought the word “interiority” to the table. Kathleen adopted it and talked about the importance of interior dialogue. At lunch, the hot topic was . . . groan . . . electronic publishing.  One of these days those words will pass but for now, they continue to agitate.  I headed back to my track, energized by the meal and good vibes from the writers I’d met.

Alvina continued with a session on what editors are looking for, trends and industry focus. I silently cheered when I heard vampires and werewolves have sunk to the bottom of publisher’s  wishlists. Paranormal hasn’t cooled in the YA market, but editors are saturated. The same is true for fantasy. Alvina prefers literary works, in particular, stories about under-represented ethnicities. Many publishing houses lack MG titles. 

Kathleen and Alvina finished the day by reading ALL forty-something of the participants’ first pages.  I was blown away by the talent and proud to be a Florida SCBWI member. The ride home was tinged with sadness. Leslie’s moving to New York this week. We met in a Brandon SCBWI critique group last year, but I feel like I’ve known her longer. 

Today, I’m clutching four editor coupons ( courtesy of the conference ) with my eye on the goal . . . four months to submit. Can I finish and revise my new book in time? Not a chance. Do I revisit my first book which already feels dusty? There’s some consolation in knowing authors around the state face the same deadline and might be asking the same questions. Good luck to all the Florida SCBWIers and best wishes to Leslie. I hope her writing dreams come true in New York!

This is a one-post week for me.  My hub-bub took the week off and that scatters my routine to the four winds. I’d like to say we’re vacationing but most people don’t call cleaning gutters and planting peanut grass recreation.

Saturday, I’m attending my very first SCBWI conference in Orlando. We’re stopping to pick up fellow writer and friend, Leslie Zampetti which gives the two of us one last time to chat in person. Leslie’s moving to the Big Apple later this month. I’m excited for her. Imagine all the opportunities she’ll have to schmooze with publishing powerhouses.

I’ve been following Curtis Brown agent, Nathan Bransford’s blog for  some time. Recently, he started doing first page critiques on Mondays. The contest is so popular, hoards of hopeful fingers hover over keyboards Monday mornings waiting for Nathan to appear in the blogosphere. The first post wins his attention and every week near- losers groan. Last week, I formatted the first page of my new book so I could give Nathan’s contest a shot. He announced Friday he was taking today off. Curses! Not only that, he promised a  contest Tuesday. So many contests, so little time…

I’ll return next Monday with news from SCBWI land.

Whew. I’m an official graduate of Mary Buckham’s Short Synopsis class. My least favorite task as a writer has been distilling my book into two or three pages.  My attempts until now have been pitiful. I wince when I think they were sent to people who would try to make sense of them. 

I signed up for Mary’s class with mixed feelings. I needed to get a handle on this synopsis thing, but so help me I cringed at the thought of  spending two weeks on the process. Mary started the class with character description, and then moved on to internal and external plots, conflict, and resolution. She posted a new assignment every day. I whined and groaned to my husband. “My antagonist outshines my protaganist, my villian (a journal)  doesn’t have anything to say, and I just handed in homework I know will be skewered!”

I wasn’t alone. Twenty-seven others shared my agony. I learned gobs from watching their stories be dissected and sifted. The results were astonishing…rambling homework ground into sparkling clarity. Even my synopsis made sense with Mary’s guidance. I’m sad to say Mary announced she wouldn’t be offering this class again. I’m so glad I jumped, reluctant or not, at the chance to take it. Mary does teach other classes. Check out her website for info. And don’t be defeated by synopses!  Grrr…snap.

Now, who’s teaching a class on pitches and queries? Whimper,whimper.

Since I ended last week with the mention of “Feed” and I’m reviewing that book for this month’s Mind Food, I decided to post the column early. The grueling nightly reports on the Gulf oil spill highlight the message in Anderson’s novel: Beware the future.

 In M.T. Anderson’s futuristic society, internet feeds are implanted in the brain. Genetically engineered children are schooled by corporations to become diligent consumers and have very little reason to think for themselves. They live in domed environments, blissfully ignorant of the  decaying world and rising strife. High-schooler, Titus, loves his feed. He muses: “you can be supersmart without ever working,” and “the braggest thing about the feed, the thing that makes it really big, is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are.”  

Titus and his wealthy friends meet a girl named Violet (who is home-schooled and poor) while visiting the moon on spring break. Their feeds are hacked by an extremist at a nightclub, and they are hospitalized so their feeds can be cleansed by technicians. Violet learns her feed, an inferior model,  is permanently impaired. She keeps this news to herself and the teens return home.

Titus is attracted to Violet’s unique perspective. She actually thinks for herself and fights the feed’s attempt to analyze her consuming habits. He continues seeing Violet, despite his family and friends’s negative reaction to the non conformist. When Violet’s body starts shutting down as a result of the hacking, Titus is faced with ugly truths about a humanity controlled by corporate computers.

Great science fiction can shape the future by sparking the imaginations of budding minds. I hope in the case of Feed, the book will serve as a warning.

Creepy passages:

“It smelled like the country. It was a filet mignon farm, all of it, and the tissue spread for miles around the paths where we were walking. It was like these huge hedges of red all around us, with these beautiful marble patterns running through them.”

and

“We were sitting side by side, with our legs swinging on the wall of the tower, and the Clouds (TM) were all turning pink in front of us. We could see all these miles of filet mignon where we were sitting, and some places where the genetic coding had gone wrong and there, in the middle of the beef, the tissue had formed a horn or an eye or a heart blinking up at the sunset…”

Forgive me for using this space to vent but I GOTTA DO IT! Everything, including my teeth hurts when I read about the huge tendrils of oil snaking through the Gulf Of Mexico, washing to Louisiana’s coast in gunky orbs. It makes me nauseous to imagine the marine life filtering that gunk through their systems. As a fourth generation Floridian, I have enormous respect for the sea. Growing up in St. Petersburg, I spent weekends and vacations enjoying the salt water and white sands. I still remember the briny sea breeze blowing through the open windows of a rustic beach cottage. As a teen and young adult, I  roamed the shoreline while the wind and the waves soothed my angst. Now, I watch the corrupt money machine brutalize our natural resources.

I rode horses through places in Florida that others will never see. For two decades I taught riding in Lutz and its surroundings. I drove from farm to farm with long stretches of cow pastures and wetlands in between. Before we moved to Lutz three years ago, they widened the main strip from two lanes to six, plowed down the quaint wooden buildings that echoed the community’s beginnings, and tossed up shiny shopping centers. There’s still some rural left in Lutz. But yesterday when we walked the dogs, I saw the future. Above the old oaks, just past the stream, rose a giant cell tower.  Am I supposed to be fooled into believing that metal monster is a spruce? I see a day in the future when it will blend in with the other cell towers and the real trees will seem out of place. Will our oceans echo the stagnate dead water M. T. Anderson described in his novel Feed? I hope I’m long gone by then.