If I Were the Queen

   My dream library is the one in Beauty and the Beast, inside Beast's castle! Besides all the leather bound books row after row and shelf after shelf, I love the soaring ceiling, the huge window and sweeping red curtain, the blue walls and the gleaming brass handrails on the curving staircases. If I were the queen I would have that library, and I'd have lots of servants to dust the shelves everyday and make sure there were no paper mites. And I would have other servants to read the books and make sure there were only fun ones. I would zoom around on a rolly ladder like in Belle's village library, and I would read and read and read....
   And if I were not the queen but still had lots of money, I would have a home library built that looks like this (but maybe minus the magic eye rug). It's less grand but super cozy and beautiful. I also love the idea of a window seat between shelves that I found on this website. What a grand daydream!

Penny From Heaven: Stumbling Upon a Classic

   The other day at work when I asked for more pennies for my till my manager asked, "From heaven?" with a big grin on her face. I had no idea what that was a reference to, but obviously it was supposed to be funny, so I laughed.
   On Tuesday I was downstairs in the juvenile fiction section. I found what I was looking for and was on my way upstairs to check out, when I noticed a colorful book standing up at the end of the H shelf. It was Penny From Heaven, by Jennifer L. Holm. I thought, "Oh, maybe I can find out what that meant!" Still, I wasn't sure if it was worth borrowing because I didn't like the cover and it was large-print. I stood there, putting it back and picking it up again, until I decided it wouldn't hurt to borrow it and not read it, but it would hurt to miss a good book. I didn't know how good!

  Penny From Heaven is about an 11-year old New Jersey girl in 1953 who lives with her young widowed mother and her Me-Me and Pop-Pop, plus her Italian grandmother and all her Italian uncles, aunts, and cousins. What a cast of characters (a lot of them are based off of Ms. Holm's family). Penny and her mischievous cousin Freddie remind me of Scout and Jem in To Kill a Mockingbird. I love the occasionally hilarious and always simple yet somehow eloquent and witty narration that makes regular, everyday things sound like an adventure! Even though some things in the story seem idealized, between butter pecan ice cream and doting uncles the author weaves in little known shadows from World War II and very real issues of fear, loss, and family conflict and secrets, plus a glimpse into a culture (and food) that makes you wish you had Italian relatives.

   I tried hard two or three times to put this book down and pick up my story, because it was the perfect, quiet environment for writing ...but I just couldn't! There was no comparison between the next chapter and the blank page. I read this all in one sitting (besides snack breaks for me and the guinea pigs). It made me bust out laughing, blink back tears, and remember why I like reading so much. Penny From Heaven is a children's book that's a classic no matter how old you are.

Free photo: courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Cats! A Nod to Wordplay

freedigitalphotos.net

   I've never had a cat before, but I've always liked them and have pet-sat them before. They're cute and fluffy, and they're big enough animals that they can think about more than food (unlike beta fish), but you don't have to give them attention constantly or take them for walks. They're just always around somewhere, padding their way down the hall, springing onto stools and tables, or curled up somewhere. When I spend the night at my friend's house and we finally stop talking and go to sleep, I usually find a furry gray lump called Applesauce on me, which is a good thing about cats in winter. They're foot warmers, too!

   The author I just discovered recently, K. M. Weiland, writes a blog called Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors, where she gives people like me tips and tricks of the trade.  According to Ms. Weiland, one of the 10 Essentials for an Inspired Author's Life is...a cat! Of course, at the beginning of the post she said some of the 10 are "more essential than others," but it made me think, "Oh, so that's why I like cats!" It just fits. I can imagine myself sitting in my snug little house someday with scribbled-in notebooks and a coffee on my desk, typing away with a cat in my lap.

Will My Side Character Usurp the 'Throne'?

   Rainy days are perfect for reading, but sunny, cool days are perfect for writing. Today was one of those rare days. Out of the whole year, three-fourths of the time it's too hot, one-fourth of the time it's too cold, and then you have a handful of days like today where there's a breeze blowing, and in the shade it's deliciously close to cold,  but the little bits of sun that peek through the leaves are warm enough that it's not uncomfortable. Even better is the fact that there aren't many mosquitos or gnats around. On top of that, class was canceled! Yaay!

Click here to listen to a cool day.

   I decided to bite the bullet and start writing. I'm using the idea from http://wordplay-kmweiland.blogspot.com about summing up a character in two words. Those two words are the foundation of who the character is, and you can add on and develop and change and branch out all you want from there. In the two pages that I've tried it so far, it's working. :)

   Me and my camp chair followed the shade across the deck as I wrote my story, but a few minutes ago the sun finally cornered me, so I came inside to take a break and write this. While I was writing, I noticed something interesting. I set out to tell the story of my main character, but it was my side character who actually came to life. I think it's because he's not main--I wasn't so worried about messing up. I just let him talk and do whatever he wanted.  Looks like he's about to usurp the 'main character throne,' which...that would actually be okay. I just hope that now that I know why he's comes to life, I won't get worried again and turn him into a stiff board!

Name Shopping

   I could  name-shop for hours!

(sorry the format is weird again but I wanted you to be able to read the names)

I look at basically four things when I collect names for characters: the time period, the common/rareness, the sound, and the meaning. If I'm writing historical fiction, I look at time period first and common/rareness second. For example, I'd look up what baby names were popular during the 1920's for a character who's twenty years old in 1940. For modern day (time period) I don't care too much about how common it is or what it means as long as the sound of it fits my  character. Fantasy (which I'm working on now) is the most fun, because my main focus gets to be on the sound.

   Sound. I guess it all depends on the person, what sounds right and what doesn't, but I wouldn't name a mermaid Ashley or a faun Riley, but somehow Coral and Tobias sound right.

   Meanings. I haven't introduced Wynna to you yet, but in her world of dragon-riding and dragon school, everybody's last names have to do with colors, metals, or stones (e.g. Braunhatte, Emeraldhatte). My centaurs' names sometimes have to do with nature or plants (e.g. Daisy or Forrest). But I found lots more unusual names that I want to use because of their meanings. Did you know that Fabian means "bean grower"? Or that Fynn means "river" and Fyodor means "God's gift"? Those sorts of names fill my list, but I don't know how important meaning actually is in the long run. I've never paused my reading to look up a character's name on google.


  I don't like flipping through the phone book, so I go to baby name websites and http://answers.yahoo.com/ for my shopping.


   How do you name your characters? Who are your favorite characters because of their names?

The Hiding Place: Book Review

 


Hi! School and work have kept me away...

...but I'm back!!



  I just finished The Hiding Place, and I recommend it to you. This is my second time through, and it's one of the most inspiring books I've ever read. If you cry easily have a box of tissues within reach when you read it! There are some books that people say "I couldn't put it down!"to when I thought, "Hm, how strange. I looked forward to the end of the chapter so I could put it down!" But I really did have a hard time tearing myself away from this book to do homework.

   The Hiding Place is Corrie ten Boom's autobiography. She was a Dutch Christian watchmaker who, with her family, hid and helped Jews during World War II. In order to get them to safety, the ten Booms worked with a secret underground organization. They came up with lots of clever methods to hide their tracks, but no system is perfect, and eventually they were caught. Corrie tells the story of her time in solitary confinement, how her family was separated, and about life with her sister in concentration camps. Through all of those scary experiences Corrie ultimately tells the story of God being the light and the love that shines brighter and reaches deeper than any darkness.

   As for writing style, I love her tone. It's so conversational and honest--her own voice. I felt like I knew her by the end. That's the kind of effortless-sounding narration I want to hear in my own stories.

   What books are your most inspiring?

Audio Update

   Part II of "The Umbrella" is on pause right now, because of busy schedules and because it's hard to find the right music, especially for a storyline that changes moods in short amounts of time. Don't give up on it, though! It's almost there!

Character-Building

   My biggest writing problem is not knowing what to write. So my brother-in-law told me I should start out by making up a new character, because once I know my character, the plot and all the rest should fall in place a lot more easily. At first I thought about just going back and learning more about some of my old characters like Wynna at dragon riding school and Helen from The Umbrella, but I didn't really feel like picking up old stories and plus, that's the easy way.

   So I decided to go with inventing new ones. From Monday to today I've gotten two "gesture sketches" or basic outlines.

   My first new character is a young centaur, maybe my age or younger. I'm thinking about setting him on a journey to learn about who he is. (That's the influence of my human behavior class.) I've always wanted to write a good centaur story, so that's exciting. The only problem with him is that I'm not always in the fantasy mood.
  For my second character, a customer (a nice grandpa getting ice cream for his grandchild) inspired me to branch out and try writing about someone way over my usual age range of 15-35. So an old adventurer is beginning to take shape in my imagination.

   As I'm deciding more about my characters I'm using an app called Lists for Writers, by Thinkamingo. One of the lists includes different character traits like cleverness, laziness, handsomeness, gentleness, etc. Picking out the ones I want is so fun! It's almost like shopping...