Surround Sense

      For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain [and] the noise of battle.  ~John Cheever

     In this hot, dry weather, it would be nice to hear the rain...

       It's easy to remember to describe what you see and hear in your writing. The man is short and stubby, the sun peeks from behind the clouds, the report of a gun echoes down the alley, a bench creaks. But let's not forget to make our readers feel the ache in the main character's feet after wearing heels at work all day and smell the burgers-smell of McDonald's through the open car window and taste salty sweat after a chase through an abandoned mine.

       Of course, things like taste won't come up too often, so there is a balance. But when you have all of those things in the right proportion, it's like surround sound plus surround sight, touch, smell, and taste.

Kid Books

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”

― C.S. Lewis

    One of my favorite kid's books is Owl at Home by Arnold Lobel (who also wrote the Frog and Toad series). I read it again just before writing this post, and Owl is such a funny character! He wants to be upstairs and downstairs at the same time, he's afraid of the "bumps" at the foot of his bed, and he has the strangest recipe for tea. Owl is pretty pessimistic, but at the same time he's everybody's friend--even Winter and the moon!

Cassandra vs. Mr. Mortmain

     I Capture the Castle starts out with Cassandra sitting in the kitchen sink to write her diary. Toward the end of the book (spoiler alert!) her father, Mr. Mortmain, writes while locked in the Belmotte Tower with nothing else to do.
     I've written in a lot of different locations: at a desk, at the dining table, in my camp chair, in an easy chair, on the floor, on my bed, at the school computer lab, on the sofa, in front of the fireplace.

     When I visited my brother at his university we went to the library a few times so he could job-search online. It wasn't as fun as everything else we did (taco feasts, "24" movie nights, NERF battles), but it was good because I had homework. Even though at home I would've moaned and groaned and trudged through a single paragraph, somehow at the library I got more than two essays written, and without too much agony.
    The difference is that when I'm in a working environment I feel like, "Why not just finish my project right now? I'm stuck here with nothing better to do."
    For fiction writing, too, being trapped in the "tower" is good for me. Although my most creative place is probably my bed, my most productive place is in an office, especially if I'm there for a specific chunk of time. That way my brain can relax and focus on what I'm doing without the "hurry up!" feeling I get everywhere else.

    So, of the two writers in I Capture the Castle, I am more like Mr. Mortmain.

The Look of a Book

 There are lots of different looks for books. Hardback, paperback, electronic, paper, photo covers, text covers. To me, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the best-looking book in this picture, with its thick, hard covers, old pages that turn easily, and big first letters at the beginning of sections. It's what I call bookish.

If books don't look bookish, the story has to try a lot harder. Even good stories on crackly gray Scholastic paper are kind of hard to take seriously (although I own pretty many of those).

The prime example of bookishness (excluding their covers) is the 1970's publication of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. I've never seen books with more friendly pages. The paper is soft and off-white, the inside illustrations are pleasantly sketch-y (not sketchy as in shady, but sketch-like), and the font is easy to read but pretty. The feel, the smell, the look of a book...what kind of book-look draws you in?

Book Review: I Capture the Castle

     I just finished I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (who also wrote 101 Dalmations) and started reading where I left off on The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. But I changed my mind, put it down, and went to the computer to "capture" my impression of Smith's novel.
     If I had to put it into one sentence, I would say this. Beautifully, contemplatively written and hard to put down, with memorable characters. If that's enough of a review for you, stop there. But I can explain in more detail.

    Smith's novel is about 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, who narrates a year of her life in England in the in-between time period of the 30's (when class separation still mattered but they rode in trains and cars).  The Mortmain family lives in a run-down house attached to a crumbling castle (with a keep, turrets, a moat and everything). The diary is her writing exercise, where she attempts to "capture" her home, her family, poverty, and the things that happen to her. It's a poignant story about love and what people would call coming-of-age. I'm not exactly sure what to think about it now that I'm finished.

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

   I'll start with the bad news. My main complaint is that people treat her like a ten-year-old and her sister (who is 19) like an adult. Also, she seems a little too "consciously naïve," as a character describes her at the beginning. I have a few more issues, but I'll move on to the good news.

    What I like about Cassandra is that she is such a real, identifiable character, with a definite voice. She rambles about the interesting and puzzling things of life (e.g. thinking she knows exactly how to describe her antisocial, distant father and then realizing she doesn't really know him at all) and from her conflicting thoughts and emotions (on whether she is jealous of her sister or not, and whether she would enjoy good things less if she were rolling in money). Her entries are never dull, and every reflection makes a sort of point, and often she is so sensible. Or at least she tackles her problems head-on.

   What I like about the book in general: first, two main characters are aspiring writers. Second, I love Smith's narration, which is calmly conversational yet intertwined with vivid descriptions. Third, each of her characters is so amazingly unique. And finally, she touches on the cultural and vocabularial differences between America and England from the English point of view, which is interesting and eye-opening.

I give I Capture the Castle 4 stars.

Voilá!

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

     I guess we were closer to finishing than I thought! If you remember my post called Gaps, I told you about a prompt that helped me write a story. Here's a six-minute snippet of it, as a dramatized audiobook.
Shout out to Rina, who did half the work on this (and designed the picture).

    Listen, enjoy, and comment!

The Umbrella: Part One

     P.S. In case you didn't know, the words that show up in red in the body of my posts are links.

Harvesting Sound

       I understand now why it takes so long for movies to come out. I've been working on this audiostory with the help of another editor/producer/actress and actor for the past two days. The whole thing is about 6 minutes long.

      Since we make most of our own sound effects, we've had to walk in place in heels, shove file cabinets shut, scream into pillows, and kick the sofa.

     After we harvest the sounds, it takes at least an hour to edit ten seconds worth of sound. 

       Keep checking back. I hope by sometime next week I can post the final product!

Pootling

The "Lazy River"

       I love learning British-isms. Last week at our Bible study we were talking about going to the "lazy river" together. Agent B. (whose house we meet at) said we'd go there sometime in the afternoon, spend of an hour or two pootling in the river, and then...but that was all I heard.
       "What-ing in the river?" I asked. "Poogling?"
       "Pootling," Agent said, entertained by my amusement.
       For the next few minutes I was dying laughing. Pootling! What a funny word to describe bobbing around in the water and sort of swimming. I repeated it to myself and laughed out loud all the way home.

       That was last Wednesday. I think I can finally say it without getting tears in my eyes.

A New Discovery

     I just discovered something fun to do with my stories--making them into audiobooks on GarageBand! Yesterday I picked a story with at least two characters and a good amount of dialogue, typed it into a script, and practiced it once or twice with my actors. Then we used the Podcast setting to record our voices. It's extra fun to add sound effects (like footsteps and suspenseful music) and give your characters accents. It's creative, good practice reading out loud, and a fun way of hearing whether your writing flows naturally or not.

Papermania

         Have you ever tried to save money by not buying the mesmerizing glitter heels? Or the Odemwingie soccer jersey? Then, after waiting and waiting you cashed a birthday check, and you held in your hands a stack of crisp bills all fanned out. Think of the money smell, the slippery newness of the paper that's different from book pages or newspaper. You don't have to be "ooooo, money!!" to enjoy that--it's just nice.

 It's how I feel when I see a stack of notebook paper handwritten in pen, scribbled out here and there (with a sketch or two in the margins) covered top to bottom and front to back with a story.

Courtesy of my fellow writer who cranks out 6 pages a
day effortlessly while I work and work and finally finish one

Work While You Sleep

      However you feel about the Twilight books (which spent a lot of time being a bestseller and were made into movies), Stephanie Meyer's inspiration for them came from a dream about a sparkly vampire man talking to a human girl in a field.

        Because they're so random, the things you see in your sleep are sometimes more creative and original than anything you imagine with your awake mind. That's the good thing.

       There are two bad things. The first is that lots of people don't remember them. (You might think you don't dream at all, but really everybody does) It's hard to use a dream as a runway for a story if you don't know what happened in it. Here are a few tricks to help you remember.

-practice: just making a conscious effort to remember can help
-wake up early: if (like me) you sleep until 9 or 10 unless you have to be somewhere, set your alarm a couple hours earlier--also, bursting right out of a dream instead of snoozing might help you catch it before it slips away
-vary it up: sleep with your head where your feet usually are, sleep in the living room instead of your bedroom, or sleep in a different temperature (cold seems to work for me)
-record: as soon as you wake up, write down everything you can remember about your dream

       The second bad thing is that even if you remember them, dreams are unpredictable. You never know if they'll be about getting chased by a tickle monster named GiGi or going to work as usual. My dreams are mostly *very boring* and include going to school and walking around my house. But once in a while I dream about riding a horse through a window or that I find a magical piece of chewing gum that lets me fly.

          Think about panning for gold. Most of the time all you'll find is dirt and rocks, but eventually you might find a gleaming gold nugget worth a fortune. If you want gold, you have to go find it. If you want dreams, they stream through your half-conscious brain every night without your invitation. Why not work while you sleep?

**Babs voice, if you've seen Chicken Run.

Love Moves

One of the themes at the church youth conference I went to the first week of July was "Love Moves." Whether in response to poor children in Haiti who need school or New Orleansers whose hurricane-damaged buildings need repair, love doesn't sit still and think, "aww." Love takes action.

Books entertain readers, they transport us to before times, and they give us exciting views into other cultures. But books also inspire people and make differences in the world.

Take Sold, by Patricia McCormick, for example. It's the story of a 13-year old girl named Lakshmi who is sold into prostitution by her stepfather and taken to "Happiness House" in India, far from her home. It's a sad story, especially because it's based on the stories of real girls and women all over the world, but it's also a story of hope and rescue. Click on the news story below to see how Sold made love move in a high school classroom.

Book Inspires Students to Raise Money For Women in India