Category: Creativity (Page 8 of 19)

What Does A Writer Do When Not Reading or Writing?

February 4, 2020 / Katie L. Carroll

I haven’t been reading much lately. I’ve only finished one book this year, though I’m in the middle of at least five books right now. I haven’t been writing either. The last drafting I did was in the fall, though I’ve been working through edits of ELIXIR SAVED, which, of course, are taking longer than expected as has everything with this story.

(If you’re curious about how an indie author differentiates between writing, revising, and editing, I’ll be blogging about my process later this year.)

So what have I been doing? I’ve been taking part in a few challenges. In January I did Storystorm, which was created by author Tara Lazar and is a brainstorming event where you come up with 30 story ideas in the 31 days of January. Are all my ideas winners? Definitely not, but I think there may be a few gems in there when I sort through them when I’m looking to start a new project.

This month, I’m doing Nonfiction Fest, presented by the Nonfiction Chicks and is a “month-long crash course in writing nonfiction for children.” I’ve been reading through the daily blogs, but I’m little behind in the daily challenges. I should have some time to catch up by the end of the month.

I like these types of challenges because it forces me to think about writing-related things every day, but they’re quick and you can do as much or as little as you want towards the challenge. For me, it’s not always about “winning” (i.e. completing every aspect of the challenge) but about learning and trying new things.

I’ve also been taking some time to celebrate ELIXIR BOUND for winning the Connecticut Author Project for Best YA Fiction. It’s not every day your book wins an award, so I’m trying to pause and enjoy it. I’ll be heading to Nashville later this month for the Public Library Association Conference where there will be a reception for all the Indie Author Project winners. My awesome cover artist Susan Tait Porcaro took the time to put the award badge onto the cover, so that version is now available (with a couple of small updates to the text as well, though the story is still the same…I might blog about this later, too).

I’ll be revealing the cover for ELIXIR SAVED soon, which I love so much, and was also created by the talented Susan Tait Porcaro. If you like Frozen 2, feminist matriarchal worlds, magical queens holed up in an ice palace in snowy woods, and epic quests, then you might just like ELIXIR SAVED. My goal is to get it up for pre-order in the next month or so…stay tuned for all that!

Finally, I’ve been working on planning some events. In addition to going to the PLA Conference, I’m scheduling local library events, I’ll probably be going to the New England SCBWI conference, and I’ve already booked a group Unworkshop retreat to the Highlights Foundation in the fall with my writing bestie Katlyn Duncan and a few other writers.

And of course, all the usual parenting stuff with the kiddos! I’m a room parent for both my kindergartner’s and 3rd-grader’s classrooms, so I get to help organize the parties. I’m coaching my 3rd-grader’s basketball team. And the usual story time at the library and such with my two-year-old. Busy times!

What have you all been up to lately?

Highlights Foundation Unworkshop: A Little Creepy, A Lot Productive

October 28, 2019 / Katie L. Carroll

The long weekend I spent earlier this month at the Highlights Foundation for an Unworkshop writing retreat now almost feels like a dream. Time moved differently there. The words flowed during the uninterrupted hours of writing, my fingers moved swiftly on the keyboard, but in the moment, time went slowly. Yet when it was all over and I was back home, it felt like the weekend had flown by.

My personal writing mantra in the word garden.

Did it really happen? (Yup, I got the bill for the tolls in the mail just the other day.) Did time stand still while I was there? (Nope, I had to go grocery shopping the day after I got home because of all the food the kiddos ate while I was gone.) So not a dream, and I really do have over 5,000 words written for my next middle grade book.

Inside the Barn where they serve three delicious meals a day, have 24-hour snacks and beverages, and writing spaces.

If you have the means and time, I would definitely recommend a writing retreat. And I recommend going with a friend (or five). My writing friend Katlyn Duncan and I went together, and it was so nice to have her there. She created a schedule for us and was a fun driving companion. We ate all our meals together (the food is as good as everyone says it is!), kept each other accountable, kept each other company during most of our writing sessions, and even took a nice hike one day.

Katlyn vlogged about her experience, and it’s well worth the watch to get a feel for what it’s like there. We’re working on planning a group retreat for next fall!

The Highlights campus in October was the perfect place to start the draft of my witchy, mean girls story. Maybe too perfect a place. Another writer who was there for an Unworkshop happened to have stayed in my cabin when she was at Highlights last year for a workshop. She told me of a ghostly encounter she had one night, and it promptly freaked me out. I lay in bed that night in the dark and couldn’t fall asleep. It was just so quiet! And, as you can imagine, with three growing boys, quiet is not something I’m used to.

Unfortunately I haven’t cracked that document back open since being at the retreat. I’ve had freelance work, author events, and this never-ending Elixir book to work on in preparation for it releasing next year. All good stuff, but that witchy story is itching at my mind, just waiting for me to scratch it.

Geese are turning out to be important in this witchy WIP, so it was very fitting to have this writing companion next to me one writing session.

I’m hoping to use the excitement of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November to get back into the draft. Katlyn and I have already scheduled a few writing meet-ups for the month. Anyone doing NaNo this year? My username on the website is ktlc1113.

ELIXIR SAVED Is On The Way

August 26, 2019 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been working on the second Elixir book, ELIXIR SAVED. Looking back over my folders of documents, inspiration pictures, and notes, I see at least one that dates back to 2010! Really, though, this is the book I had the idea for when thinking about writing a book for my sister Kylene (and ending up writing ELIXIR BOUND first). So really I’ve been “working” on this book for many, many, many years.

It’s been a labor of love (and hate). It’s been a hard book to write. I’ve taken many breaks. I still haven’t quite gotten to write “The End” for it yet, though my last round of revisions got me at least in a place where I felt like I can actually write the ending scenes. I had hoped to do that this summer, but life was too busy and my head (and my heart) wasn’t in the right place. Now I think they are.

As a reward for making it through those last revisions, I allowed myself to contact my awesome cover artist Susan Tait Porcaro. She sent me a concept sketch yesterday and it’s looking really good. It’s visual motivation to keep on pushing to get this thing done.

Plus, two of three of the boys will be in school all day starting later this week, so hopefully that will give me the time I need. If any of my novel critique partners are reading this, expect an email from me soon! It’s been so long since I’ve had anything for them to read.

So look for ELIXIR SAVED, coming Winter 2020!

Learning A New Lesson With Each Novel

July 8, 2019 / Katie L. Carroll

For every novel I’ve written, I’ve learned a different important lesson about a major aspect of writing. Not all of these novels are published (yet!), but as I work on finishing up this round of revisions on ELIXIR SAVED and reflect on what I’ve needed to work on most in this manuscript, I find myself pondering all the other areas of writing that I’ve improved upon during this long journey of being a writer.

For my very first manuscript, ELIXIR BOUND, it was all about point of view (for a good overview of what POV is see “Different Types of Point of View” on The Beginning Writer). My early drafts of that story were a hot mess of different POVs sneaking in to disrupt Katora’s voice. Even though the story is in third-person POV, I learned over time that it had to be a closed, or limited, POV. Katora was the one who had to tell that story, but a lot of other characters wanted to have their say unnecessarily. It took me more feedback and revisions than I like to admit to get the POV narrowed down properly.

Then came PIRATE ISLAND, which started as an exercise in voice (for an idea of what voice is see “How to Create Voice in Writing” by Mary Kole). I wanted to write something very different from YA fantasy, so I delved into middle grade and went contemporary. Middle grade voice is very hard to do well, and I still don’t think I nailed it in PIRATE ISLAND. Billy, the main character, was originally 11 and I ended up aging him up to 13 in later drafts, largely because that slightly older voice worked better for my abilities as a writer.

The next manuscript I finished (I’m skipping over that still unfinished WIP whose only lesson was teaching me when to shelf a manuscript) hasn’t been published yet, but I’ve talked about it here on the blog a little. That was is my YA thriller BLACK BUTTERFLY, which is super dark and gritty. There are flashbacks and it’s all in first-person present tense and was very intense and fun to write. The lesson here was all about novel structure. I played around a lot with the scenes and where they end up in the final version of this story. I wrote a lot of the story out of order, too. The first time I had ever done that and it was a very freeing experience that I continue to use in my drafting process.

That brings us to the novel I’m currently working on revising ELIXIR SAVED. As a companion novel, it’s been an interesting process to keep all the continuity issues in order. Surprisingly, the lesson here has been in world building (see “20 Things to Consider When Building Fantasy Worlds” by Sara Raasch for more about world building). Some of the world building was done in the first Elixir book, but we see a lot more of the world in SAVED, so there more work to be done for this manuscript. It has three different POV characters that go off into three different parts of the world, much of which wasn’t explored in the first Elixir novel, so I had a lot more world building to add.

One of my goals with the Elixir novels has been to create a super feminist world in the sense that there is no patriarchy in this world. So one of my biggest challenges was to check myself and my internal biases to see if those patriarchal views were sneaking in (and even for someone who considers themselves a feminist, I found a lot of those things rearing their ugly heads, and I’m sure I’ve missed some as well). This was a huge consideration in my world building.

I’m sure there are more lessons to come along this journey. And these are only the biggies that have come from each novel. There have been many, many other smaller lessons along the way. And that’s not even taking into consideration the publishing lessons I’ve learned or the ones I’ve learned from writing picture books. What have you learned from your own writing?

ELIXIR SAVED Update & Author Events 2019

April 29, 2019 / Katie L. Carroll

It’s been all ELIXIR SAVED and author events on the blog lately and today’s no exception. I’ve been compiling the mess of a draft that is ELIXIR SAVED and it’s been slightly terrifying. It’s been 8ish-year process to write this thing, it’s got three point-of-view characters, and it turns out that the manuscript is currently over 117,000 words!!! Yikes!

It’s been a journey to say the least. I haven’t quite written THE END yet, which I was hoping to do before I started the first round of revisions. But I realized I needed to read through what I already have in order to write the ending, which is weird because I’ve known the major events of the end pretty much since I started writing the story. Some things you can’t force, I guess. As I’ve been organizing the draft, the pieces of the end are already starting to come together in my mind.

I’ve also been busy scheduling and planning events for the spring and summer. This Saturday, I’ll be at the Author Expo and Book Fair at the public library in Torrington, CT from 12-4 p.m. That means I’ll be missing the New England SCBWI conference this year. 🙁 Hopefully I’ll get there next year.

Then in June I’ll be part of Pirate Day in downtown Milford, CT. It looks like I’ll be doing two presentations about the local pirate lore, one in morning before the pirates arrive by boat and one in the afternoon on the town green. There are a ton of fun activities throughout the day for the whole family. I’ll have PIRATE ISLAND for sale, games to play, and picture opportunities when I’m not speaking. It’s going to be a really fun (and busy!) day.

I’m also part of the CT Authors Trail this summer. I’ll be at the Voluntown Public Library in August for that. You can check out my Events page for all the updated details on where to find me. And I’m always happy to have people reach out to me for events and school or library visit; check out my Author Visits page for details on that.

As for the boys, we had a fun spring break a couple of weeks ago. We’ve started making our plans for the summer. I’ll have to do a picture post soon, so you can see what we’ve been up to. What have you all been up to lately?