Ever seen this book?
Rolf Potts published it in 2002. If you ever needed encouragement to travel, you'll find it in VAGABONDING.
Potts has a great guest post on Tim Ferris's blog today: 5 Travel Lessons You Can Use at Home. Practical and inspiring.
In addition to the post is the full video of a talk Potts gave at Do Lectures last year. If TED Talks are about great ideas, Do Lectures are about taking great ideas and applying them.
We may be adding Germany to our spring trip. Also, we've registered for a race in British Columbia. More about those developments next week!
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Friday, February 26, 2010
Rolf Potts on Travel
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Newsflash: Some Classics Are Good
This you knew, of course. I have to be reminded periodically.
Latest reminder: JANE EYRE, by Charlotte Brontë (published in 1847 under pseudonym Currer Bell).
Sure, I have some problems with it. After reading current middle grade and YA novels for a year, the mid-nineteenth-century sentence structure takes some mental adjustment. There seems to be little differentiation in speaking styles among characters. Even very young characters speak with considered grammar and melodramatic passion (and not the kind a kid today uses when he claims to be "starving!" and in need of a Big Mac). There is much laying of heads on sympathetic character's shoulders, chests, knees...whatever's available, really.
But! The story was compelling from the start. I'm not far yet -- Jane's still ten years old and at Lowood -- so I look forward to seeing everything unfold. That the book takes place on England's moors was a huge draw for me; it's an area I want to travel and a big reason I sort of enjoyed The Wolfman.
My positive reading experience got me so pumped, I made a new Twitter icon (above), based on this tweet by fellow Upstart Crow Josh Berk. Metal umlauts have their own Wikipedia page, by the way. Har.
How about you? Has a "classic" book ever surprised you?
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Monday, February 22, 2010
A Writer's Manifesto
Yike. Manifesto. Sounds pompous, right? I agree, but manifesto is one word and declaration of intent are three. Efficiency wins.
Since I've decided to become a working fiction writer, I want to examine my goals and lay some ground rules for myself. I put them here in case they can help you, too. Feel free to add points in the comments, or link to your own writer's manifesto.
1. I'll write.
Regularly: I'll schedule time to write and honor that schedule. Freely: I'll write first drafts with the laptop screen down, using only lowercase letters and periods. Without excuses: I'll not postpone writing to feed a muse, because muses do not exist.
1a. I'll make brave decisions.
Nothing else is worth writing. Or reading.
2. I'll keep my crap first draft to myself.
It's a three-eyed troll with dandruff and bad breath. It talks during movies. It farts in libraries. It is not ready for society.
3. I'll revise.
With flaming swords of grammatical righteousness and structural truth, I'll smite the crap. I'll add things, delete things, move things. I'll try not to overuse commas, as is my wont.
4. I'll employ beta readers.
They'll be people I respect as readers or writers. I'll appreciate their time. I'll thank them for their help.
5. I'll accept constructive criticism.
The only goal is to make the story as strong as it can be.
6. I'll scrap what doesn't serve the story.
Description, scene, character, chapter. If it's loitering in my story, I'll kick it out. There's wordsmithery, and then there's verbal masturbation. I'd rather not be the only person enjoying my work.
7. I'll defend what does serve the story.
Sometimes I have good ideas. I'll fight for those.
8. I'll be patient.
My agent has other clients. My editor will have other projects. Publishing moves slowly. Except when it doesn't, in which case...
9. I'll be ready.
I'll learn what I can about the industry. I'll anticipate requests. I'll be flexible.
10. I'll treat publishing for what it is: a business.
I expect to make a modest living, so those who pay me can expect me to deliver. I'll treat those who work with me as professionals with similar goals. When editors tell me an idea won't sell, I'll listen; they know the market, or at least the amount of risk their house will accept.
11. I'll take responsibility for reaching my audience.
I'll understand my stories and where they fit (and don't fit) in the scheme of things. I'll embrace available technology. I'll ignore my natural tendency toward wallflowerness and participate.
12. I'll appreciate my readers.
I'll listen. I'll share. I'll point them to other authors and books.
13. I'll be true to myself.
When I want to be alone, I'll step away. When I want to explore a new genre or medium, I'll do so. When my opinion is constructive, I'll voice it. I'll write stories I would want to read.
14. I'll give back.
Others have helped me, so I'll do the same, even if only to refer people to sources more knowledgeable and useful than me (i.e. almost all of them). I'll volunteer time, effort, and product to causes that speak to me and the writing community.
15. I'll read.
A lot. If the author is alive, I'll buy their book new (ebook if available, paper if not). If the author is dead, I may buy it used, check it from a library, or use a public-domain e-text. I'll learn what craft I can from those books and enjoy the rest.
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Friday, February 19, 2010
Backward, Forward, or Sideways?
Let's have a little fun with today's travel post.
Let's assume time travel is possible.*
WHERE would you travel and in WHAT TIME DIRECTION: backward, forward, or sideways (alternate universe)?
Would you want to a see a particular place? Witness or change a historic event? Meet the you who didn't make that really dumb decision back in 1983?
We won't get into morality here. Assume you can go where and when you want, and do what you want while you're there, and come back home (if it still exists) when you're finished.
So there's that choice.
Now.
What if you couldn't come back to here and now? Would you go? Would it change your destination?
*[image via How Stuff Works, which says time travel may be possible.]
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Thursday, February 18, 2010
Get in Touch With Your Inner Tiger
See DYRK DANIELS' great set of tiger photos here (2 pages).
Found via @CynLeitichSmith and @planetalvina. Thanks, ladies!
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Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Austin Half-Marathon: Success
So while all sane people were still in bed Valentine's morning, we ran this nice race in Austin, home of hippies, 'Horns, and hills. And I gotta say, those hippies put on a sweet event.
The course was a loop, so we didn't have to shuttle from one end to the other (lookin' at you, San Antonio Rock & Roll). The Half went like this: 3-mile uphill, 3-mile downhill, 3-mile flat stretch, then 4.1 miles of crazy up and down. Lesson reinforced: I prefer running uphill to down. I like the resistance, and it's less jarring. That said, those last few downhills gave me my first running-related bruised toenail, and it looks TOTALLY HARDCORE. Or did before it turned a nancy shade of lavender.
Overall, the course was prettier and more interesting than the San Antonio route. The weather was great, too: about 45F at the start and fairly dry. A nice turn of events, since the news had speculated rain showers and temps dropped below freezing Sunday night.
The start needs work, I say. There was a corral of 300 seeded runners at the front. When the fireworks went off (and possibly a gun), those elite runners took off. The rest of us -- about 13,700 -- then shuffled as one giant mob to the start line, taking off only when we reached it. The result was that I had to run in a fairly tight pack the whole race. Even though we would have had to wait longer to run, I'd have preferred the staggered start we had in San Antonio -- it would have meant a roomier running experience.
(Complete rundown of the San Antonio Half, by the way.)
So how'd we do? Very well, if I do say so. Dave shaved 9 minutes off his previous time: down from 3:19:57 to 3:10:58. I hacked 13 minutes from my time: down from 2:24:47 to 2:11:44. That gave me a pace of 10:05/mile and allowed me to beat my race goal of 2:15:00. Rock on!
We've rested from running (and pasta-eating) since Sunday. Dave wants to work on his speed now. I'd like to do the same by training toward this spring's local 10K events. We stuck to our training plan for this one fairly well, though I found running five days a week too much to schedule. The training's had a nice side benefit: I've kept off my normal winter weight gain (take that, fat gremlins!). Now to keep on keepin' on...
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Monday, February 15, 2010
Your Local Librarians = Awesome. Love Them. Help Them.
I recently attended a great panel organized by my local SCBWI chapter. It comprised two elementary-school librarians, a middle-school librarian, and the collection development specialist for our public library system. They talked about their most popular requests, what makes a good author visit, the importance of reviews, and how authors can help librarians promote literacy...
KIDS' MOST REQUESTED BOOKS
Fiction
manga
supernatural/paranormal romance
bilingual
monsters (silly ones)
super heroes
scary stories
science fiction
fantasy
Nonfiction
how-to sports
manga
physics of roller coasters [!]
Biblical
picture books on character building and social skills
super heroes
biomes
weird facts
AUTHOR VISITS
The middle-school librarian said she schedules few author visits because YA books tend to be long enough that a whole class won't have read them. The elementary librarians do schedule visits, though their money resources differed: one can have 2 authors per year at less than $1,000 per author; the other said her PTA funds author visits well, with several visits per year and up to $2,500 available for each author.
The well-funded librarian said her PTA will purchase books at a discount from publishers for sales and signing at author events. She also said they often plan for the same author to visit several schools while in town.
So what makes a good author visit? Kids love making a connection with an author, so your presentation should be engaging and visually interesting. Kids want to know who you are as a person, so show them -- photos of you as a kid will probably go over well.
Also important: your presentation should be age-appropriate for the group you're visiting (one implication being to have presentations for a range of ages). And kids love to know the Story Behind The Story, so if you have one, share it!
To extend your author visit, the panelists emphasized the importance of your author website. It gives kids a chance to make (and maintain) a personal connection -- especially if your site is interactive.
By the way, author Kate Messner has a great article about using Skype (and other videoconferencing software) for author visits.
REVIEWS: GET THEM
One thing the panelists agreed on was that reviews are essential to acquisition. Librarians simply don't have time to read every kidlit book published, so they depend on reviewers to point them toward quality books. The credence that reviews lend a book comes in handy if/when someone challenges a book in a library collection: all of the panelists said they will point to a positive book review to defend their acquisition of that book.
Some review sources they mentioned:
Voice of Youth Advocates (VoYA)
Library Media Connection (LMC)
The Horn Book
Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
...and blogs.
HOW TO SUPPORT LITERACY AND LIBRARIANS
To the first point -- supporting literacy -- the panelists had one big suggestion: talk to kids about what you're reading. Tell them what you're enjoying, what's exciting or different or funny or topical -- they will be interested!
How to help librarians? Besides pointing kids to good books and being an exemplary visiting author, it really helps to align your presentation to state education standards. (In Texas these are the TEKS.) Doing so will help librarians justify (1) the expense of bringing you in for a visit, and (2) the time away from classroom (curriculum-based) activities their students will take to hear you speak.
Personally, I plan to link to the standards of every state on my author website. You can find these on a state's Department of Education website. The panelists didn't say so, but I bet working up a study guide for each of your presentations would be a great idea; once you have the states' standards bookmarked, it's easy to personalize your study guide for each state/grade level. As the person at Magik who collects teacher feedback on our production study guides, I can tell you it's very helpful to tell teachers what standards any given activity covers. They really appreciate knowing.
Thanks to Noemi Lopez-Rohstall, Jennifer Eckert, Jennifer Smith, and Bev Golden for participating on this panel, and to Catherine Stier for coordinating and moderating it!
**UPDATE** From my mom, a former teacher in Bloomington, IN:
"MCCSC [the local school district], among other drastic things, has proposed cutting all elementary and middle-school librarians. I don't know where this logic came from, I guess the school board thinks all they do is re-shelve books. This just goes to show you how fragile the life of a librarian is, and how undervalued they are, at least here. The vote is Friday. Duane Busick's Facebook page has become an advocacy forum for librarians. His wife is the media specialist at North. He started it last Wednesday when the cuts were announced and it has grown like wildfire since."
If you live in the Bloomington area, or just want to show your support for librarians and everything they do, head on over to Mr. Busick's page and say so! For good measure, here's Adrianna Busick's page -- great profile image (added at top)! And here's the Support Public Education in Monroe County page.
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Friday, February 12, 2010
Snakes in a Truck Stop
Pretty sure we saw this here in Texas, to which I'd suggest, "KNOW YOUR MARKET, CANDYMAKERS!"
One of the worst ideas for candy, ever...
Travel tip: if you find yourself in coral snake country, remember this rhyme:
Red and black, friend of Jack;
Red and yellow, kills a fellow.
It refers to the positions of the colored rings on a snake, ie: red-next-to-black versus red-next-to-yellow.
Notice on the atrocious gummy candy above that the red and yellow rings touch. That's how they are on a coral snake, which is poisonous ("kills a fellow").
There's at least one other snake that looks a lot like a coral, but the red and black rings touch. From what I understand (from Dave, who HATES snakes), the red-touching-black snake is not poisonous ("friend of Jack").
Found this photo on my phone today, so thought I'd share.
**UPDATE** The red-touching-black (benign) snake is called a Mexican milk snake. Thanks, Julie!
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Thursday, February 11, 2010
Yep, I Watched It for the Ads
Tony Romo and Brett Favre were out, and I was fine with a win from either the Colts or Saints, so yeah. Totally watched the Super Bowl for the ads.
My favorite will make me laugh for a long time...
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Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Book Birthday: THE DARK DAYS OF HAMBURGER HALPIN
Josh Berk is many things, I'm sure, but the facts I have are that he's an Upstart Crow author and a librarian in Pennsylvania. So, cool-times-two. Or three, if you like Pennsylvania.
Check out the awesome reviews of HAMBURGER HALPIN.
"Wow," you say. "I want that book!"
How convenient: it's available through IndieBound.
Or maybe you're a little short on cash. That's cool. Put it on your GoodReads list.
Want to connect with the author (in a non-creepy way, please)? He's signing books (and possibly dancing, singing, and serving cake) in these places. Also, he tweets.
Upstart Crow has many authors debuting this year -- lots of opportunities to discover cool new voices in children's lit. Keep an eye on the sidebar for upcoming books. Happy reading!
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Monday, February 8, 2010
3 Inadvertent Writing Lessons: SCBWI Winter Conference 2010
1. Read your work aloud.
What happened: SCBWI Executive Director Lin Oliver (who is awesome, by the way) tripped repeatedly over the full name of the organization (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) before saying, "Someday we'll rename this something I can pronounce." (I agree and call SCBWI "Scooby.")
How it applies: Awkward things like frumpy language, unintentional alliteration, and goofy punctuation are often best discovered by reading them aloud. Parents may read your book to their kids. Listeners may discover your book through audio. You may get to read an excerpt for the public. Uncover the bumps while you can still fix them!
2. Don't stick to your outline just because you have one.
What happened: The first conference session I attended was lackluster. The speaker was unorganized and unprepared to fill an hour. At other conferences, attendees can move among sessions -- if one turns out lame, you quietly slip out and into another. For SCBWI Winter '10, we had to choose our sessions ahead of time, and got a ticket to get into each one. Regardless, I should've left that first session and asked my way politely into a different one.
How it applies: Say you're an outliner, a plotter. You like to know how your story begins, what its turning points are, and how it ends. You map a book down to its scenes. By the time you've done so, you feel you already know your story -- you just have to write it down. But story discovery doesn't end in the planning. One of your characters is going to say, "I wouldn't do that," or "You want me to say what, now?" and you'll need to be flexible. Flexible enough to chalk up your first outline as development experience and move ahead with one that fits your characters best.
3. Take chances.
What happened: I'm confident about a lot of stuff. I can push my body to do tough things, I'm very good with maps, and I can smack down at trivia (bring it on). But put me in a room full of people and tell me to make friends? I AM A TOTAL CHICKEN. (bawk.) One of the greatest reasons to go to a writers' conference is to meet other writers and writing professionals. Doing so can keep us from becoming crazy cat ladies. But I mostly failed on this point at SCBWI. I met a few folks (hi, folks!) but I didn't take full advantage of being in the company of 1,000 other book lovers. What did I have to lose? Nothing.
How it applies: If we don't take chances, our work isn't art. It just isn't. Art is in the unexpected choice, the elegant solution to a difficult problem, the reinterpretation of a known that transforms it into something altogether new. Yeah, your bold word choice may sound ridiculous the next day. Your main character, an epidemiologist who happens to have studied exactly the right regional dialect of 14th-Century Norman, may seem constructed when he slips back in time to plague-era France. And someone may read your book and say, "This is just Harry Potter, with wombats." But! There's always the chance you've done something artful, something lasting, something worth the time away from your family, your friends, your Buffy DVDs. That chance is there for the taking. TAKE IT. Nine times of ten you'll turn it into a steaming pile o' poo. But time #10 will transform that poo into a shiny nugget of awesome for the ages.
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Friday, February 5, 2010
Gearing Up For France
This is Sarlat, a medieval French town renowned for its Saturday market and one of our bases for exploring the Dordogne region this spring.
The other town is Les Eyzies de Tayac. Anthro students and paleolithic art lovers know of the Les Eyzies area through the discovery of Cro-Magnon skeletal remains there and nearby cave paintings at Lascaux. Authorities closed the cave to the public long ago (breath and finger oils damage the paintings), but apparently they made a great replica for a museum. (If you've read Jean Auel's EARTH'S CHILDREN series, Jondalar comes from a Cro-Magnon settlement in this region.)
These are the places we're staying:
La Lanterne (Sarlat)
Ferme de Tayac (Les Eyzies de Tayac)
I hope to give them glowing reviews when we return!
[image via Hostellerie de la Bouriane]
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Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Recovery week. Uh, yeah, that's it...recovery.
Last run: a week ago today.
Since then: below freezing temps in NYC, continual rain in San Antonio.
Race day: Sunday, Feb 14
Next run: tomorrow; rain, shine, or otherwise. Putting it here so you guys can shame me if I don't run. :)
**UPDATE** Did it: 3 miles, a bit sloppy weatherwise. So did Dave. *YAY*
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Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Book Birthdays
New sidebar item:
Lots of cool kidlit books will be born this year, including the work of three of Super Agent Chris's clients. You can find the books (with links to their GoodReads pages) at the top of the righthand sidebar, in order by publication date.
First up: fellow Upstart Crow Josh Berk's THE DARK DAYS OF HAMBURGER HALPIN, on the shelves next Tuesday, February 9!
[image via TMCnet]
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Track changes are awesome...
...except when you're a compulsive checker-offer.
Super Agent Chris and I use MS Word's Track Change feature for manuscript revisions. By which I mean: he leaves comments and change suggestions, then I make (or don't make) the changes and delete his comments. Not exactly a two-way conversation.
This latest round requires more feedback on my part, so I'm leaving comments. The only problem: I used to measure my progress by watching the number drop in the Review Pane. I'd start with, say, 55 comments and end with 0.
ONLY NOW THE NUMBER IS GOING UP.
Geeuuuurrrgh.
Tip to Microsoft (because I know you read this): enumerate comments by user in the Review Pane. Please? So I can get it down to 0? Thanks!
Until then: geeuuuurrrgh.
[This is so discombobulating, I posted about writing a day late. And from work. C'mon, Microsoft!]
How's about you guys? Any project compulsions you adhere to with or without reason?
[image via Cooperative Social Responsibility]
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