We're Too Pleased to Pout

We're delighted to announce that our own Debbie Diesen and The Pout Pout Fish are on the New York Times Bestseller List!

Congratulations, Debbie, from all of us.

So here's something. . . .

With Labor Day ahead of us, do you want to celebrate with a nice, old-fashioned circle story? (I can see your heads nodding eagerly) Here's a set-up:


The school bus heaved itself to the front doors of George Washington High School. Inside was Lindsay, a Freshman. Not only was she fresh to High School, she arrived having been freshly humiliated en route. She was fresh out of cash which meant she'd be starving come fifth hour. Then there was the fact that her fresh, new notebooks were now ruined.
The doors of the bus opened and Lindsay stepped out.

"Hey Lindsay!" Pam called from the sidewalk. "How come you--"

"--Let's just go inside."


If you want to play, go ahead and post some more story. :o) No minimum word counts or rules to speak of except maybe, you know, don't kill the main character. Just have fun and be creative!

I Win!
By Tim

MMYay for me! (Or not, we'll see.) I whupped you all, and you didn't even know I was in the race, did you? The stealth racer, hee hee. I wrote every day of the week in our "Olympics" (and before, and after). I never wrote less than an hour and 39 minutes (1:39). My best showing was 2:55. Not all my totals were earned in one sitting. My average daily total was 2:10:25.71 (if we're going to get all Michael Phelpsy about it).
MM But. Even when you're running a marathon or ultramarathon, you do have to finish sometime. So maybe y'all still came in ahead of me. Draft 6, Ann! Maximum respect. I can only stand at the bottom of the mountain.
MM BTW, Lori, did you revert to default settings or something? It's easier to change the type and format now, and one other thing. Know how I finally got it to indent? I put a couple of M's there and changed their color to white. Me so smart (finally).

Writing Olympics

by Kay

My Olympic discipline has been rather like a series of quarter finals with a little each day, and then a big finish. I missed on Monday and Tuesday, but wrote the remaining days for a total of 11 hrs. I just need to even things out a little better.

Not counted was the time I spent reading “Specials” by Westerfield and another novel in the Dresden Files series. I’ve also been outlining novels, to look more closely at technique. “Breaking Dawn” by Stephanie Meyer is reserved as a reward for hard work.

Soon school will force me into the 6-9 am slot, and we’ll see how many mornings I can make it to McDonalds. I’m training a whole new group of counter staff on “50-50 caff-decaff, 3 cream, 3 sugar” so you know they are expecting me.

I Broke the Tape

by Ann

The Olympic Challenge was suppose to last 7 days, but I'm calling a temporary (personal) timeout. By writing for at least 2 hours/day Monday-Friday, I crossed the finish line on draft #6. Two days remain in The Challenge, but I’m blowing the whistle and taking a breather.

This weekend will be devoted to the triathlon of housecleaning, weeding and paperwork.

Don’t worry, I’m not sidelining my WIP. Next Monday, I’ll dive in again and plead for potential judges and scorekeepers to read it.

A Quick Retreat Thank You by April

I want to send a big thank you to my writing group, my friends, for our weekend retreat. They are seven of the best people you could ever find, each of whom holds a wonderful piece of our collective puzzle.
Thank you for the conversations and camaraderie, the writing time and filling my empty creative reserves back up.
I love that we moved the furniture to be as close physically as we were feeling emotionally. It's funny, the way people's body language gives you an insight into their mood. I know in some social situations, I'm arms-crossed-and-quiet. Drawn within, which isn't my nature--it t'ain't natural to not want to share. But my weekend was all big laughs and scooting furniture close together. Very nice.
Thanks for the reminder of my sillier self, with laughter that didn't stop until at the end, a teary goodbye, a little nose-blowy...But what's a little phlegm among friends?
I'm sending you each an Iowan Hug ('scuse the corn hairs),
April

The Writer's Olympics

Now, I'd like to pose an Olympic Writing Challenge for Writebrainers (and Writebrainers Readers for that matter). For the next week, until next Monday, I challenge us to write at least one hour every day. If you already possess this discipline, I challenge you to spend this hour working on some completely new idea that you haven't deemed worthy of such attention--until now. If you are already working on four books at once, (Ruth) then God help you.

Will you go ahead and post your progress on Writebrainers? It doesn't need to be a contiguous hour, but we do have to write every day--no putting in seven hours next Sunday and calling it good (though that would be sort of impressive on its own). . . .BUT, if you miss a day, don't fall off the wagon. Even four or five or six hours in the next week would be great progress.

Pencils ready then? GO. :o)

We were in full retreat --
but that's good!
By Tim Bogar
Our first retreat was a rip-roaring success. Proof? We’re already trying to work out dates to return to the Hankerd Inn next summer. It was just what the writing doctor ordered. It’s a lovely facility with LOTS OF LIGHT. I feel like I live in a cave after staying there.

Such a simpatico group! I laugh more with this group than with anyone. I probably added 23.7 days to my life. Not that the "goal" is quantity; it certainly improved my quality.

Oh, and hey, I wrote most of the day on Saturday! Occasionally I would be ready to stop for the day. Then I’d think about all the writers throughout the Barn, and I’d keep working. Good progress, and I think I’m on the verge of breaking a logjam.

Shoot-out at the Hankerd Inn
What sparkly evenings: the earth shooting fireflies at the sky, and the sky responding with shooting stars. (Must have been early Perseids.) I saw two and a half. But the first, and biggest, sneaked behind my back, doggone it.

You all are my favorite group ever! I looked forward to our retreat all summer, and now it's in the rearview mirror. But the rosy glow will last a long time.

QOTW: Most Memorable Roadtrip

This is Ruth typing. Lori asks about memorable roadtrips.

In 1971 I was 12. Dad and Mom piled all 7 of us kids into the station wagon and hauled us and a Scamper Camper (popup) from Detroit to Washington DC, our first big trip as a family.
Mom gave each of us a notepad to draw/write things in, about the trip-- this is the first sketchjournal I remember getting.
I didn't take it seriously. I wrote a few sentences, drew a couple things, and fought with my siblings instead of concentrating on the notepad.
We saw wondrous things.
I loved the Smithsonian, especially the amazing dollhouses and jewelry.
Loved the wax museum, the various monuments and memorials. We took side trips to Pennsylvania -- Hershey (loved the chocolate kiss streetlights), Amish country (Bird-In-Hand -- I loved the apparent peace and history) and Philadelphia (loved-loved-loved seeing the house where Lincoln was treated before he died, Independence Hall,
the Liberty Bell,The Betsy Ross house, Christ Church, and the burial sites of many early patriots including our great-great-many-greats uncle, Robert Morris, who signed the Declaration of Independence and helped finance the Revolutionary War).
Lovely trip, loved it all, the history and culture.
Lots of photos which Mom snapped. Very sparse art/journaling from me.

Later that year Dad died suddenly.
I deeply regretted not having more of a record of what he meant to me, personally. Mom remarried and life changed. Two years later my art teacher pulled me out of class one day to give me a blank book to record my perceptions of life in. Somehow she recognized I was a very troubled 15-year-old, though I sure didn't tell anyone what was going on at our house.
Ever since then I have sketch-journaled, not every day, but most of the important stuff, and certainly all of our roadtrips.
I believe it saved my life.

I want to go back to Washington DC, introducing my own family to its wonders. Maybe next summer. Of course I will sketchjournal it.

When I Grow Up, I Want To Be....

Oh, the shame of it. I couldn't possibly say it out loud. Could I? The dreams of a little girl....

So very different than the Mature, Mild-Mannered adult I've become. Surely it couldn't reflect badly on me now?

Still. There's that part of me, that eensy-weensy part of me that thinks it would be a hoot. If only '70's TV shows were still a part of all our lives...

I'd be a Solid Gold Dancer.

It was around this time of life, my Solid Gold Dancer years, that another career line hit me. I was reading a newspaper story. (Here's a visual for your laughing pleasure: I was sitting there on a faux-leather couch in our dark-paneled living room with orange shag carpet and ten-pound dial telephone next to me. My hair was down to the backs of my knees, parted down the middle Marsha Brady-style, and wearing those little socks with the fuzzy balls at the ankles.)
The article was about income levels and it listed all sorts of careers. Near the top was one that sounded easy enough to do, and boy oh boy, did it bring in lots of money! So I called to my Mom, "I've changed my mind for my future goals. When I grow up, I want to be... a Call Girl!"

My Mom sprang through the strands of beads separating every room of the house, and, still half-wound up in them, asked, "WHAT?!?"

I knew something was amiss because her mood ring went black.

"Er...nothing," I managed, the light from the lava lamp churning like my stomach.

That night we gathered around our big 24 inch TV that was thicker than it was wide and as I watched those beautiful, swishing-at-their-butts dancers in their fringed gold outfits, I thought, Heck, I don't want to make phone calls for a living, anyway.

Question of the Week

If you've followed the comments section of my Mystery Trip post of a few days ago, it appears that at least a few of us Write-Brainers had some, er, odd dreams and aspirations as children. (Lori and I are now contemplating a Mack truck road trip up to Boni's folks' place, for an afternoon of bagging and a return trip through as many weigh stations as will take us. If we're wearing Laura Ingalls Wilder sunbonnets at the time, it will constitute my Complete Childhood Fantasies Fulfillment Trip. Though presumably we might get some odd looks at the truck stops.)

Anyway, this week's question: What were some of your slightly odd childhood fantasies?

Write Brainers, go ahead and chime in with your posts. Readers, feel free to pipe up in the comments sections. This is a bit of a silly topic, to be sure; but getting back into your childhood head can help you in your writing for children.

So go ahead and trip down memory lane, and see what jumps out at you. Just watch out for the Mack trucks!

Debbie's Mysterious Roadtrip

Writer Brainers' current Question of the Week is about memorable roadtrips, so I thought I'd weigh in on the topic. But rather than offering up one from my distant past, here's a trip of more recent vintage, fresh from the mental scrapbook of my family's vacation last week in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

We stayed in the Manistique area at an extraordinarily lovely cabin, and over the course of a week spent plenty of time on the beach. We also took some fun if slightly de rigueur sidetrips to Big Springs, Seul Choix Lighthouse, and Fayette Ghost Town. Many pictures were taken. Much fun was had. Good memories, all of them.

But we also made one sidetrip of a very different nature. We went to.... The Mystery Spot.

Why, you may ask? Why would a family with common sense coursing through its collective veins voluntarily pay an expensive visit to a known tourist trap that is based on nothing more than optical illusions and vestibular disorientation? What an odd thing for her to say! It's downright... mysterious!

To understand the rationale behind our irrationality, let me take you back in time for a moment, to my and my husband's childhoods. (Bring your duster -- you'll need it for the cobwebs.) Though he and I didn't know one another then, we likely passed one another on the highway, as both of us made regular trips with our families to the U.P.

Those trips exposed us to those intriguing Mystery Spot road signs: those bright black, red, yellow and white signs dominated by a Giant Question Mark. Oh, those billboards were irresistible! I longed to go to the Mystery Spot. As I've written about previously (in my 9/16/7 entry on my News page) this desire ranked right up there with my fantasy of driving in to a truck weigh station. (Bear in mind when considering these somewhat odd childhood dreams that I spent most of my long car trips of yore stuck in the middle of the back seat, doped up on Dramamine....)

My parents were (and still are) good and smart people who knew full well that (if I can say this without being sued by the Mystery Spot people) a visit to the Mystery Spot would be a waste of time and money. I, and the world at large, know this to be the case. But knowledge was no match for my and my husband's combined 87 years of Mystery Spot curiosity. So when our children expressed their own strong interest in going (OK, well, it was really just a case of "Mom, what's the Mystery Spot?" -- but add thirty or forty years, I'm sure they'd be hankering to go), we figured it was time to pay a visit.

Needless to say, we were underwhelmed. Admission was even more than we suspected it might be, and we had to wait a while for our "tour" to begin, not an easy task with two trip-weary kids. Once "in" the Mystery Spot, our younger son found the tilt and slant of the Mystery Spot building to be so disturbing that he could barely stand to be in it (to an extent that I had to chase him down and demand that he Get Back In Here and Enjoy The Mystery Spot, Now!). Our elder son, an engineer in the making, held up his hand at nearly every opportunity to point out how the principles of physics were being utilized. Still, by the end, we all got into the spirit of doing such a ridiculous thing, and we were laughing happily -- if only at ourselves.

And thus are roadtrip memories made.

But one mystery remains. The brochure for the Mystery Spot invites visitors to "See for yourself why most of our one million visitors return year after year." Say it ain't so. People go back???????

Question of The Week

This week's question comes to me as I pack to leave for a vacation to Pennsylvania. Have you had a memorable roadtrip experience? It doesn't have to be a vacation roadtrip. Doesn't even have to be in a car if you want to get technical about it. Let's talk about what happens in transit. I mean it's all about the journey, right? :o)

Even Then You Were Gone

A Response to Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why
By Amy Huntley

Jay Asher’s first novel has been successful in reaching The New York Times Best Seller List. It’s also been successful in reaching a part of me that I haven’t thought about in a long time—the twenty-two year old young woman whose cousin hanged herself.

This novel centers around high school junior Clay Jensen, who receives a set of tapes following the suicide of Hannah, a girl he had a crush on for years. The tapes were recorded by Hannah just before her suicide. The story seeks to help teen readers understand the complicated dynamics of Hannah’s decision to take her own life. The tapes explore thirteen experiences that come together to explain why she has decided to kill herself.

The reader journeys back and forth between the thoughts of Hannah as recorded on tape, and those of Clay as he listens to them. He struggles to understand Hannah’s experiences and choices. He also battles complicated feelings about his peers as he learns new things about their involvement in Hannah’s life.

This all makes for compelling reading. I found myself wanting to read the next chapter, “just until I find out what person Hannah will talk about in it.” The problem was, as soon as I discovered who that person was, I wanted to know more about how that person’s story intersected with Hannah’s decision to kill herself. Of course, as soon as I knew that, I needed to read the next chapter…

This is a fascinating story concept. It allows readers to see how complicated interactions of things that are seemingly small, even if mildly cruel (like a list rating which freshmen are hot and which are not) can have devastating consequences when paired with other circumstances in a person’s life. This is a lesson I believe we all need to keep relearning, and Asher provides it in a unique way.

But none of this is really what I reacted to in the novel. As someone who was left behind when a person I loved chose to commit suicide, I appreciate the way Asher examines the thought process of the person making such a far ranging and permanent choice. Clay’s own interpretations and observations of that thought process help readers see them even more clearly.

I was twenty-two when my cousin killed herself. At twenty-two I had a lot more in common with the teenagers that Asher is trying to reach than I do with the forty-one year-old I have become. Two months after Kristen’s death, I was still struggling to name my frustration with her choices. I wrote a rather lengthy letter to her—which Asher’s book prompted me to pull out. One of the things I wrote in that letter was, “And I tell myself one hundred times a day you’re gone. But I still don’t know that because it’s the same—it’s the same as when you were alive. Even then you were gone.” Asher captures this exact feeling beautifully when his narrator says, “I would have helped her [Hannah] if she’d only let me. I would have helped her because I want her to be alive." These words are an echo of my own feelings reaching out to me across 19 years.

This is an engaging and highly charged reading experience. I recommend it not only to teens, but to their parents as well.

The hardest part - pinning things down

I think the hardest part of a novel for me is pinning things down, and keeping them pinned down. I watched my cat Emer the other day. She pounced on the feather toy, but a little wriggle from me made the string look more enticing, so out went her paws in rapid succession. The string was tired down, leaving the feather free to be whipped away. What she thought was solid (her hold on the prize) was an illusion, and it was wasn't hard to totally exhaust her, especially by letting her capture the fleeting sense that she has accomplished something.

This is how the writing process goes for me. It isn't really a question of beginnings, middles and ends, although I do think the middles are the hardest for me. It's more like seeing shadows of the project come and go through the mist of other choices, other possibilities, consequences, and scenes played out by the actors in my head, with camera angles and directorial instructions shouted out in a whisper. At times, I am surrounded by characters, each arguing or begging for a part in the opus. It is hard to tell who to listen to, and when. An "excess of imagination" seems such a neutral term for it. I'm still getting used to the problem that each choice narrows some paths and widens others, and you don't have a breadcrumb path to help in choosing which way to go. Many paths work, but they lead to different stories.

So, like a channel surfer with cable, I get flashes of beginnings, scenes, cliffhangers, "feel good endings" and deep conversations, often from several projects simultaneously, while I try to figure out what to wrestle into the current novel.

Sound familiar, or am I the only one?

Summer Goals from the Desert

I would like to get the following underway:
1. return from the desert,
2. move my office and lab,
3. make duty visits to relatives,
4. jump start my current writing project,
5. have something surprising and wonderful for the retreat.

It seems so simple, really, even benign. Post a list, how hard can that be? Not hard until I start thinking of the ten-minute tasks that need to back these goals up, and the fact that the summer feels more than half over, and, and, and - Well, I'll do my best!

The Hardest Part

by Ann - answering my own question

For me, the hardest part of writing a manuscript is the beginning. I rewrite my first chapter a dozen times, then throw it away and start someplace else. I rewrite that a dozen times, and start again. I know a novel is supposed to start as close to beginning of action as possible. Easier said than done. Richard Peck says, “The first chapter is the last chapter in disguise.” I try.

For my work-in-progress, though, the beginning practically wrote itself. The middle sailed along, until I started removing a character and his subplot. (Now I feel like I’m trying to wrestle a Bengal tiger back into its cage.) The ending I initially planned was unsatisfactory because it cheated my protagonist. She deserved better. Then as I was playing with alternate endings, a wonderful line from Walt Kelly popped into my head, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” I knew what to do.

Question of the Week: In a novel, what's hardest to write?

This is Ruth writing.

Ann asks: What's hardest to write, the beginning, middle, or end, and why?

For me it's the ending.

When I start the novel I already have the middle.

The beginning is fun to write because it's a challenge to come up with a hook.

The end is tough because when I start writing I don't know what the ending is.

Or if I do know, it seems too pat and I need to bump up the challenge and make it tougher.

Which, incidentally, just about sums up how I handle my life, as well.

"This hike isn't hard enough. How can I make it more of a challenge?"

Ellie McDoodle Book Launch-easy reader edition

See Ruth speak.

See Ruth DRAW.

See Ruth take lots of time with fans.

See Ruth's book. See Ruth's tired signing hand. See Ruth being adorable.

See yourself buying Ruth's books!

Ellie McDoodle: New Kid in School is the sequel to Ellie McDoodle: Have Pen, Will Travel

Get them at your local independent bookstore. Our own Schuler Books hosted Ruth's book party and did such a nice job.

*Next month Borders Book Stores will be featuring Ellie McDoodle. Ruth has no idea what this means, but we agree it sounds like a good thing.

*Pics taken by Tim Bogar, who had lighting and Keeping-Ruth-Still issues but managed to get very nice shots anyway. :o)

*It's so nice to see someone who has worked so hard, for so long, get much deserved recognition. Congratulations Ruth!

QOTW: Novels are Hard.

In response to Ann's question: All of the above.

But to be more specific, of the choices given, I pick middle. The middle is hard because usually when you begin a novel you have an idea about the premise, which gives you a clue how to start the thing. Like a lot of people I tend to start too soon, but it isn't hard--wrong? Yes. Hard? Not so much. Same for the ending. If you tend to write mostly chronologically (as I tend to so far), by the time you've muddled through the middle, the ending is less difficult, at least, in terms of HOW it happens.

But the middle. It's the bridge. It's the juicy filling. It's the part between slices of bread. And it's hard because this is where I tend to wander off into the desert and take detours and forget that I'm supposed to be going THERE. So the middle ends up being a huge mess, mostly, for many drafts. At it's best, it is an exploration of themes with some good stuff to keep for the later drafts (only to throw it out later because you realize it really really really doesn't belong after all, but I digress--see? I'm bad at this). At its worst, the middle is a convoluted, disorganized, wretched annihilation of things like character development, through lines, and yes, the English language itself. Me no like middle. Me afraid of middle.

My solution is to write a novel with no middle. Yep, just a really long beginning attached to an equally long ending. Now that was easy. Endings I can do.