So I’m still working on getting a post put together about my writing retreat at the Highlights Foundation. In the meantime, any picture book authors or author/illustrators should check out the #PBCritiqueFest contest, hosted by Picture Book Spotlight. There’s an amazing line up of authors, author/illustrators, and agents offering up critiques for the lucky winners!
This is an area of writing where I still consider myself a newbie, so I’m certainly throwing my hat in the ring. September and October (so far) have been super busy months both in my personal and writing life, so I’m hoping to catch up with all you lovely blog readers soon!
Happy autumn! It’s been so busy here since school started! Summer was busy with fun activities and relaxing with the family, which I loved, but I got so little work done. So I’m happy to have been able to focus more on work this past month.
I’m loving my new schedule with the two bigger boys at school all day and just The Gentleman (who still naps in the afternoon!) home with me. I’ve been able to get a lot done, and I’ve really been pushing myself on the ELIXIR SAVED revision. This is seriously the book where everything has taken forever. Other exciting news for ELIXIR SAVED includes an upcoming cover reveal (sneak peek below)!!!
I’m also gearing up for a long weekend writing retreat at the Highlights Foundation! A writer friend and I are doing an Unworkshop. I’ve heard wonderful things about the Highlights workshops, so I’m excited to experience the place for myself. The idea of the Unworkshop is that you have time to focus on whatever project you’d like; they provide the meals, the lodging, and an inspiring rural setting. The plan is to get some major words written for my witchy middle grade book. Picture MEAN GIRLS meets THE CRUCIBLE!
Indie Author Day at the Norwalk Public Library is also coming up on Saturday, October 12. The full list of authors attending hasn’t been released yet, but based on past years, I’m guessing there will be large number. I’ll be there with ELIXIR BOUND and PIRATE ISLAND.
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.
I’ve been having so much fun stopping by Little Free Libraries all summer long and leaving copies of ELIXIR BOUND with a code for an ARC of the upcoming second book in the Elixir series, ELIXIR SAVED. I have a pictures to share, but first an event announcement!
My stop on the CT Authors Trail is coming up on Monday, August 5 at 6:00 pm at the Voluntown Public Library, which is located at 107 Main Street, Vountown, CT 06384. In addition to learning about the inspiration behind my books, there will be games, writing prompts, signed books, photo ops, and maybe a sneak peek at ELIXIR SAVED (if I’m feeling brave!).
And now for the summer reading fun I’ve been having with Little Free Libraries and the Elixir series. States visited so far include Connecticut (of course), Virginia, and Vermont, with one on the way in New York. I’ve loved checking out the different themes people and organizations have come up with for their little libraries. We’ve encountered The Lorax, space, and a couple of beachy ones.
The boys have enjoyed picking up a book at a few of our stops as well! I think my favorite one so far was a bright yellow one, not because it looked particularly special but because it was at the soccer field dedicated in memory of my sister, Kylene.
I’ve been posting pictures on all my social media accounts (find me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter), so you can follow along as I drop off the rest. You can also get the latest updates on my progress on ELIXIR SAVED. I finally finished the big revision I was working on (about a month late), and now I’m getting the final scenes written and the three POVs organized so I can send it out to my beta readers. I’ll also be contacted my cover artist soon to get working on that. Yay! I’ve tentatively set a November 2019 release date, so get ready for another journey into the world of the Elixir!
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?
