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July 24th, 2008
05:28 pm - Since May?
May? I haven’t posted since May? How did that happen?
Well, I do have third novel news, but until the signature is on the dotted line, I’m not going to say anything specific. Still…I’m happy…Very, very happy.
Taught a class I called Speculative Fiction’s Homes at Solstice, which seemed to go well. After discussing worldbuilding and writing homes, I ended with a bit of a warning and advice. I spoke of ways the setting, the story’s home, can embody the story’s central theme…But when writers do this, we sometimes make the home too narrow. We write a story that over and over again, in every way, simply says one thing. To avoid this danger, we keep in mind that themes don’t only have one facet. They have many. And our depictions of the home may be one way of depicting these facets.
In Ursula LeGuin’s A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, Ged becomes a hero by traveling throughout his world, but some of the most peaceful and happy people in the story are those who are settled. At the story’s climax, Vetch, or Estarriol, accompanies Ged across the water to face the shadow, but Estarriol has come from and might return to the island of Iffish and the small town of Ismay, where he is chief wizard. When Ged first sees Estarriol’s house, he says, “This is how a man should live.” And Estarriol replies: “Well, it’s one good way. There are others” (158).
Estarriol’s advice is advice I plan to keep in mind. Vividly described, unique, changeable, psychologically and metaphorically rich homes should be a way one should live. One way, but there are others.
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May 19th, 2008
05:01 pm - Lord of the Flies and Possible News…
I recently re-read Lord of the Flies…and still loved it. I remember first reading it as a teen and feeling the shock of recognition: I had met boys like Jack.
As I’m interested in omniscient narration, I found a lot to think about in Lord of the Flies. Writers studying omniscience should definitely take a look at Golding’s technique. For one short example, there's the end, when Jack and his hunters hunt Ralph. We are within Ralph’s panicked thoughts:
Don’t scream
You’ll get back.
Now he’s seen you. He’s making sure. A stick sharpened. – William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
As the narrator describes Ralph’s flight, he alternates between describing Ralph’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts and depicting Ralph’s moment-to-moment actions. And then Ralph encounters the officer, an adult. We see the officer from Ralph’s perspective. Then we see the boys – boys who have fought, hunted, and killed each other – from the officer’s POV:
The officer grinned cheerfully at Ralph.
“We saw your smoke. What have you been doing? Having a war or something?”
Ralph nodded.
The officer inspected the little scarecrow in front of him. The kid needed a bath, a haircut, a nose-wipe and a good deal of ointment.
“Nobody killed, I hope? Any dead bodies?”
“Only two. And they’ve gone.”
The officer leaned down and looked closely at Ralph.
“Two? Killed?”
Ralph nodded again. Behind him, the whole island was shuddering with flame. The officer knew, as a rule, when people were telling the truth. He whistled softly. – William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
In other news: I’m hoping to post about that third novel very soon…
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April 21st, 2008
04:53 pm - Vermont Children’s Literature Workshop (primarily for homeschooling parents)
I have more to post, but thought I’d start with this:
Pacem Learning Community presents…
Over the Bridge &
Beyond the Book Report:
Contemporary Literature for Your Child or Teen
and Ways to Engage in Meaningful Literary Reflection
a workshop for homeschooling parents and others
with Laura Williams McCaffrey and Rebecca Yahm
Just as books like Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia transformed children’s and young adult literature 30 years ago, contemporary classics continue to transform the genre. In our first hour, we'll examine genre trends and contemporary classics. We’ll also discuss resources for developing children’s and teen literature book lists. Our second hour will focus on meaningful literary reflection that fosters depth of understanding and an appreciation for good writing. We'll begin with ways to encourage active reading and personal response and then look at approaches to engaging higher-level thinking and developing an understanding of literary elements. You’ll leave with many ideas for making the reading and discussion of good literature a part of your child’s life.
Monday, May 12, 6-8pm
Pacem Learning Community, 29 College Street, Montpelier
$28/person
Pre-registration required.
For more information contact Rebecca Yahm at 454-9336 or ryahm@pshift.com.
To register, call Jacki at Pacem Learning Community at 223-1010.
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March 26th, 2008
02:04 pm - A Breather, Teaching, and Writing Interviews
The third novel is finally off my desk and on my editor’s instead. Writing this novel took a year longer than I expected. After I sent it, I walked around feeling like I was missing a limb for a few days, then started on the next novel.
I’m also preparing for my summer residency class at Solsticeas well as reading many, many pages from my students. And pages from my homeschooling writing students.
Writing food for thought: the very smart and accomplished Tiara Marchando is posting interviews on writing she’s conducted with Solstice’s faculty: Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Joy Castro, Laban Carrick Hill, Randall Kenan, and me.
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February 25th, 2008
02:40 pm - Maybe Not News but Still Interesting…
On women writing fantasy in the Guardian blog.
In case you’ve been missing out on Bookslut in Training.
Need to catch up on my Horn Book podcasts.
Notes from the field from librarian extraordinaire Philip Crawford.
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January 31st, 2008
01:02 pm - Registration Open
Registration is now open for Solstice’s summer writers’ conference. This summer’s children/YA faculty members are Tor Seidler and Marino Budhos.
Also CLNE's new incarnation.
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January 28th, 2008
09:36 am - Interview and Such
An interview with Nnedi Okoragorauthor of MG/YA speculative fiction.
Cell Phone Novels? – I found this a little fascinating.
More soon…
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January 14th, 2008
09:17 am - Last-Minute Rush, as well as The Future and Past:
I had to fill in for another faculty member last minute at the Solstice MFA last week. Nothing like teaching a class with five days to prepare. It seemed to come together the best that it could, however, and I was lucky my colleague had chosen books to discuss I’d already read. My students were both wonderful and patient – as they always seem to be.
While at Solstice, I also was lucky to hear the incomparable Sheree Renee Thomas speak on speculative fiction. Those looking for great reading should check out her blog, as well as her anthologies: DARK MATTER: A CENTURY OF SPECULATIVE FICTION FROM THE AFRICAN DIASPORA and DARK MATTER: READING THE BONES. If you have the chance to go see Sheree speak or read, absolutely go.
I’ll be heading back to Solstice for the July residency, and have been thinking about teaching a class on creating utopias, dystopias, and alternative histories. I’m finding I’m less interested in utopias, with the possible exception of the utopian aspects in WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME. The two dystopias I loved as a teen were 1984 and THE HANDMAID’S TALE. And then there was Blade Runner….So I could revisit these and start compiling a list of more contemporary books. (With many thanks to Sheree Thomas for directions to read in.) I’d look particularly at the YA field, but I’m not all that concerned with staying strictly within publishing’s definition of the YA genre.
The secret I’ve yet to reveal to my students is that I basically use my teaching as an excuse to read or re-read a bunch of books I’ve been longing to sit down with.
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November 30th, 2007
01:49 pm - CLOUD ATLAS
CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell is a rather remarkable book with six interlocking novellas structured a bit like nesting dolls. I’m not even sure how one might describe the overarching story, though each novella has a clear and compelling narrative arc. I’m particularly fond of Mitchell’s selfish, thieving, mean, at times moral, sardonic, tragic, talented musician, Robert Frobisher, who in this passage describes his brother’s letters from the WWI front:
“Adrian’s letters were hauntingly aural. One can shut one’s eyes but not one’s ears. Crackle of lice in seams; scutter of rats; snap of bones against bullet: stutter of machine-guns; thunder of distant explosions, lightning of nearer ones; ping of stones off tin helmets; flies buzzing over no-man’s land in summer. Later conversations add the scream of horses; cracking of frozen mud; buzz of aircraft; tanks, churning in mud-holes; amputees, surfacing from the ether; belch of flame-throwers; squelch of bayonets in necks. European music is passionately savage, broken by long silences.”
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November 26th, 2007
09:34 am - Recovering
Pneumonia knocked me out for more than a month. I managed to keep working on my revision, but wasn’t able to keep up the blog. With the holidays fast approaching – gingerbread houses to make, children’s dance rehearsals to drive to, a variety of family rituals to uphold – I’m not sure how much time I’ll be able to devote here. But for now:
In case you missed it the first time around, Jane Langton’s excellent musings, the first and the second, on fantasy writing.
More articles on fantasy literature from Horn, as well as November’s article on sequel prejudice.
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October 5th, 2007
02:06 pm - The Arrival and Exhaustion
If you haven’t yet seen Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, I highly recommend you seek it out. “Beautiful and strange” indeed, also wordless and poignant.
There are moments while writing a novel when one thinks one simply can’t go on…and then does anyway. Today I definitely had one of those moments.
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September 28th, 2007
02:26 pm - Committing Genre and Busy, Busy…
I just love Ursula LeGuin’s comments on how Winterson ‘commits genre.”
Remembering Madeleine L’Engle.
The CLN fantasy event went very well. I had a whirlwind tour of Minneapolis and St. Paul, met some great teachers and librarians, listened to Gerald Morris tell “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” and managed to get my PowerPoint working. (Mac meets PC. Need I say more?) Also got to meet Pat Rothfuss and had dinner with the incomparable Marion Dane Bauer.
I’m deep in a revision of my third novel. It’s going well and quickly.
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September 6th, 2007
01:35 pm - Oooo – The Big Bad G Word and KW West
Very interesting stuff in Horn Book Magazine about gender and reading.
And now there’s a Kindling Words West.
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August 28th, 2007
11:06 am - Thief in the House of Memory and To MFA or Not
I recently finished Tim Wynne-Jones’s Thief in the House of Memory, and I’d like to read it again. Wynne-Jones has created a realistic literary novel that has the feel of a moody fantastical suspense story. His protagonist, Dec, lost his mother several years earlier when she abandoned him, his father, and his younger sister. His father married her best friend and built a new house for them all, but the father has left the older family home on the hill. He both maintains it like a family museum and neglects it. Dreamy Dec begins to see his mother again and isn’t sure whether he’s haunted by ghosts or memories, especially after he finds a dead man in the House of Memory on the hill.
I’ve written responses for my first set of Solstice MFA student packets and have been thinking a lot about why writers might choose to enter MFA programs. Why would they? Especially children’s writers, when so many successful children’s writers don’t have them? I don’t have one. And, yes, I have an agent and an editor. And, yes, I’ve released two novels and am working on a revision of a third.
I don’t think you need an MFA to be a good writer, or even to grow as a writer. And yet, I’m finding from my proximity to VC’s MFA program and from my own work in Solstice that these kinds of MFA programs, at their best, can give writers an opportunity to experience rich mentor/mentee relationships. Some people are lucky enough to discover agents or editors who will work with them in this way before they’ve written a story that’s strong enough to sell. Many others don’t.
More thoughts later…
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August 9th, 2007
02:03 pm - YA Devotion and More
Endicott has devoted an entire issue to Young Adult Mythic Fiction.
Looking for places to submit work?
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July 31st, 2007
11:18 am - Just Quickly: Beagle and Gaiman
Locus has posted excerpts of its interview with Peter Beagle.
Gaiman in Time.
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July 27th, 2007
12:00 pm - Heading to MN
In September, I’ll be heading to Minnesota, where I’ve never been, to speak at a Children’s Literature Network event with Gerald Morris and Vicki Palmquist. Very exciting.
Also, I wish I could slip away to MA in November to hear Susan Cooper, Gregory Maguire, and Roger Sutton.
Hoping to post more about writing, fantasy, and to MFA or not to MFA soon, but I’m off to take my kids to the beach.
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July 18th, 2007
11:55 am - Return from the Deep.
Well, I made it through a crazy June and July. Solstice’s MFA was a busy and inspiring ten days. I have a lot more to-be-read books on my list.
I’ve been thinking recently about analyzing – thinking intellectually about writing – and storytelling. Below is a thought on this that I presented at Solstice:
“We are going to examine how they [fantastical images] tell us something about the “real” world, and I am hoping this kind of analysis helps you when you sit down at your desk. It helps me. And yet doing so is like practicing scales. You practice the scales until your fingers and ears know them; but to play a piece of music, to play an improvised solo, you absolutely don’t play a scale. You use pieces of scales. You use notes, chords, keys, consonance and dissonance. But you play a mood, a memory, a seduction, an apology, a kiss on your sleeping twelve-year-old’s forehead – the child who, when you drop her off at the door to her school, blushes, says a quick good-bye, and no longer touches you before she leaves.”
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May 23rd, 2007
02:57 pm - Back to the Earlier Scheduled Programming –
If you’re looking for great fantastical reads that aren’t necessarily “blindingly white,” check out Endicott Studio’s Recommended Reading Lists as well as Endicott Redux.
Wish I had more to say today, but I’m functioning on 5 hours sleep, as I did yesterday and the day before. Please, please Sister Insomnia, go bother someone else…
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May 15th, 2007
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