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