Today (ahem, on my birthday…and, yes, I’ve stopped counting how many I’ve celebrated) I have a unique poem from Beth Overmyer, author of the middle grade novella In a Pickle. Be prepared to laugh as Beth takes over the blog!
Just in time for Christmas in July…I present:
The Rewrite Before Christmas
(Parody of Clement C. Moore’s The Night Before Christmas)
‘Twas the first draft of my novel and all through the book
There were typos and blunders, not even a hook;
The scenes were all tied together by a hair,
All hoping the editors soon would repair;
The characters were voiceless, all bland and cardboard,
They talked and they rambled, no sense in their words;
And my alphas and my betas put on thinking caps,
“How do I keep reading? I want a long nap!”
And out of my prose there arose such a clutter
Of dialogue tags such as “murmured” and “muttered;”
“Away,” “through” and “of” all ended each sentence;
I misspelled all words without a hint of repentance;
All adverbs were abused shamelessly;
The luster and shine was very much lacking.
When pressing my brain on to make this thing better,
There appeared on my desk an over-sized shredder.
With a clunky old hard drive, so ancient and sick,
I rigged up old Bob with the help of a fork lift.
More vapid than prairies my stories I shredded,
Lit them with a match, doused with unleaded,
“Now burn, you! Now, die, you!
Now shred, burn and fry, you!
No ands ifs or buts:
I’ll burn short stories too!
To the top of the shredder, to the top of the wall!
No dashes, m-dashes, n-dashes; away, all!”
As dry as leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
I watched the smoke drifting up, up to the sky;
So shiny and lovely, the ashes, they flew,
With smell of burnt plastic and toxic waste too.
And then I’d an inkling, a nudge in my head,
The itching and clawing, as that of the undead.
And I drew in my head an outline so sound
For a shiny new novel, and then went to town!
So, hear me exclaim as I drop out of sight:
“A novel isn’t written; thou must rewrite!”
In a Pickle blurb:
Charlie Pickle can’t stay put in the year 1920, due to an annoying habit of time-traveling. On a trip back to 1910, he meets a man with a secret. Murder makes the headlines that day, and Charlie’s new friend knows who the guilty party is. Now, not only does Charlie have bullies and murderers to contend with, he’s got some history to fix.
Find In a Pickle at the MuseItUp bookstore, Amazon, and other ebook retailers.
About the Author:
Beth Overmyer: writer of kidlit, penner of prose, petter of cats.
Author links:
Blog: http://bethovermyer.blogspot.com
Website: http://bethovermyer.com
