Tag: #amwriting (Page 2 of 6)

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!

Writing The Story Keeping Me Awake At Night

April 1, 2019 / Katie L. Carroll

I wrote something new recently and very different from anything I’ve written before. It came to me in a rush of excitement and creativity in a way I’ve never experienced before.

I’ve had ideas come crashing in, images or characters or some spark that leads to a story. But this was different. In the past, the ideas have been pieces of something bigger that needed a lot more thought to turn into a full idea.

This time, it was like I was possessed by the muse. It was literally keeping me awake at night. The idea, and moreover the emotion of the story, was a wave that kept churning inside me and wouldn’t let me focus on anything else until I let it out. And it came to me in such a fully formed way.

Not to say that it was easy to write. It required a good amount of research, but the research was just as exciting as the writing. Writing it felt like putting two parts of myself together that I hadn’t found a way to fit in the same context, even though the story is nothing about me in any way. It melded two of my passions that I’ve been trying to figure out how to intersect but had never been able to do so before.

I know this all sounds kind of vague, and I’m purposely avoiding specifics here on the blog for certain reasons that I’m being quiet about right now.

But I wanted to share the enthusiasm I’m feeling right now. Much of the writing and submitting process can be a slog. You face plot points you don’t know how to solve, characters that aren’t fleshed out enough, a voice that doesn’t stand out enough. Then there are the rejections…don’t even get me started.

This, right now, how I’m feeling. It makes all those things worth it. So I just wanted to let you all know that. Thanks for listening!

Science, Math, and Nature as Inspiration for Themes in Writing and Beyond

October 25, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

Long-time readers of the Observation Desk might remember that I’m a fan of science. Some of my old posts include “We Are All Stardust”, “Big New for the Big Bang,” and “Seems the World Will End in a Bang, Not a Whimper.” I find science and nature (and even sometimes math!) to be a great source of inspiration, not only for writing but for my life.

There are so many wonderful, beautiful, crazy aspects of our universe. An exploding star, called a supernova, sends particles shooting across the universe. These happen all the time in our universe and have been happening for billions of years. All the elements that make up earth, including our own bodies, were once ejected particles from a supernova.

Then you have the Fibbonacci Sequence, which starts at 0,1 and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two (0,1,1,2,3,5,8, etc…) and put in order in boxes make a spiral. Many things in nature follow this pattern, from flower petal and seed arrangements to how spiral galaxies are formed.

To take a look at a math example, did you know that a computer cannot truly generate a random number? Because computers function via algorithms, or sets of rules programmed in to the computer, it’s not possible for a computer to do random.

And whether or not I totally understand all these concepts that fascinate me (spoiler alert: I don’t, but I keep trying anyway!), they never fail to inspire me. They push me to examine the patterns in my writing. On a micro level, I look at the the words, language, and sentence structure patterns I fall back on, so I can push myself beyond my own cliches.

On a macro level, it pushes me to recognize emerging themes in my writing. What themes did I go in with and maybe didn’t follow through on properly? What themes didn’t I notice, ones that maybe stemmed from my subconscious, that can make my story better if I tease them out more and reinforce them? Where are there more opportunities to refine any symbols I’ve used or places where I can introduce more?

Taking a patterned analysis to my writing allows me to make sure every detail (word, sentence, symbol, description, etc…) counts to work toward a greater whole through theme and plot.

To take all this a step further, trying to understand the science and math that governs nature can help me examine my own life for themes and patterns. It pushes me to a greater level of introspection and hopefully to a better place as human being. And that will only contribute to me being a better, more deliberate writer.

When I work at honing that merging of the creative and analytical thinking, stuff moves in ways I could never have imagined before. The world, my stories, my life…everything reaches a whole new level of understanding in my mind. And that feels like a pretty incredible phenomenon.

Weaving Historical Facts Into Middle Grade Fiction

May 15, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

Coming on the heels of discussing the real history and legends that inspired my middle grade adventure PIRATE ISLAND (see my post “The Real Pirate Lore That Inspired PIRATE ISLAND”) and while I’m currently deep in research mode for my next middle grade novel, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to weave real history into novels. And how to do this for children’s books in particular.

Much of the history I’ve researched both on famed pirate Captain William Kidd (for PIRATE ISLAND) and on witch trials in Connecticut in the 17th century (for my current WIP) deals with dark topics and violence. Both involve execution by hanging, murder charges, and other not-so-pleasant topics. I’m a firm believer that children’s writers should not shy away from writing darker stories, and that these stories are important, so long as the material is handled in a thoughtful way (see Newbery winner Kate DiCamillo’s essay in TIME “Why Children’s Books Should Be a Little Sad”).

The key is to keep it age appropriate, which is hard to do when kids anywhere from say 7 or 8 all the way up to 13 or 14 might be reading your book. That’s where subtlety comes in. You can include heavier themes and images in a subtle way where more mature readers will get them and less mature readers will simply gloss over them. I like to think of animated movies for a good example of this. So many drop in jokes that are for the adults but that children just won’t (even if they’re funny to the kids on the surface, they won’t get the innuendo behind it).

Beyond making the material age appropriate, I think it’s important to make the history relevant. Whether that means making it fun (which isn’t necessarily the case of the history I’ve included) or by making it personal. Captain Kidd’s history is personal to Billy, the main character of PIRATE ISLAND, because Billy becomes obsessed with Kidd and models Kidd’s behavior to be brave. The history of the hidden treasure drives the plot of the story, but Billy’s emotional connection to Kidd drives the emotional story line.

I’ve only scratched the surface on this topic, but in the interest of keeping my blog posts short, I’ll leave you all on that thought for now. But there’s so much more material I have on weaving history into stories, I have to revisit this topic. Anything in particular you all would like me to discuss on the next post?

Coming To The Realization That This Isn’t My Story To Write

March 19, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

In light of some really thoughtful, hard conversations going on in the children’s literature world about representation, I was thinking about a manuscript I’d started but never finished.

I loved the characters. The world I had begun to create had lots of story elements that I both love reading about and writing about. It is a YA retelling at its heart but has unique elements that I thought would make it stand out. I completed over 50,000 word on it for National Novel Writing Month (quite a few years ago). My critique group liked the bits they saw of it. I adore the story, and the plot had really started to come together in my mind. I did quite a bit of research for it. But I never finished it.

I thought it was because I couldn’t find the right character to tell the story. I played around with having a different point-of-view character. I played around with multiple points of view. I rewrote the beginning and tried it in third person instead of first. Yet I could never quite figure out how to tell the story. So I put it away. I had intentions of maybe coming back to it someday when I was a better writer who could maybe find the right voice.

But now, I don’t think I’m going to come back to it. I think I now know why I was having so much trouble trying to figure out how to tell that story. It’s not because I don’t think I could write it and write it well. And it’s not because I don’t think it would make for a good story. In fact, I think it would make a really great story, one I’d love to read some day. But I’m not going to write it.

One of the things that we as storytellers need to be asking ourselves, beyond if we can write a story and write it well, is should we be writing a story. I couldn’t find the right way to tell this particular story–as much as I love the idea of it–because it’s not my story to tell. It deals with cultures and characters who would probably not be best served with me doing the telling. I can (and have) visit the place where my story takes place and research the culture, but I’m not part of it, so the story would suffer for it. It could end up being harmful in its representation.

Maybe I’ll come back to the basic idea of doing a retelling of the tale that inspired the original idea, but with a totally different spin to it, one that I am more equipped to tell. And I have plenty of other ideas floating around in my head and notebooks that I certainly am not lacking for new stories to write.

Of course, it hurts a little to put this manuscript to rest. I’ve put a lot of work into it, and I want to be able to tell it. I won’t, though. And I’m okay with that.