NaNo Congrats, Writing Advice from a 12-year-old, And Poem #3

I’m pleased to announce that all the friends I’m spying — er, cheering — on at NaNoWriMo now have words to their names. Yay!! The public guilting shall abate for a time.

This morning I programmed this article to run on the homepage of NewMoon.com. Check it out — this 12-year-old will cut through all your wimpy excuses for not writing (I don’t have time, I’m not a good speller, my grammar sucks, etc.)!

And, here’s my poetry attempt from last night, using the help of my picto-journal:

Religious though he is, even he can see the

hyporcrisy of praying to the Lord Almighty

when no one has a prayer

left anyway. They mostly all

turned away the summer the

war tanks rolled over the

many fields so pains-takingly planted that spring,

taking away the one thing that had

always made them trust in the

Goodness of the Lord,

from whom came the soil, the rain, the growth.

“Too much sin,” proclaimed the preacher.

“God has his reasons,” the old women’s voices murmur

as they rock on front porches

just as they’d said when Baby Dawn was born

with her parts all in the wrong places

when Mary’s husband left for groceries

and never came back

when Nyla’s son got so drunk

that he didn’t think to check for the train.

This is bigger, perhaps, but no different

makes no more sense,

so they clack rosary beads between their fingers

which tremble from palsy

or explosions.

The image was from some religious publication — a pic of an old preacher in a black robe with a massive cross spreading his arms in prayer while a tank rolled over a field in the background and with an explosion in the distance. The caption said, “Religious hypocrisy has turned many away from God.” I used the words from the caption as the original “spine” of the poem, although I think the poem would be better off without them in later drafts.

NaNo-ers, My Heart is With You!

The badges are so pretty this year!

Well, it’s here! For writers and would-be writers everywhere, this is the day you’ve been waiting for. November 1st, the official start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Well do I remember the joys, the sorrows, the euphoria, the stress, the comraderie! of this month of exuberant, frantic writing. And although I’m not participating this year, I am hoping to do all I can to support those who are: I created a NaNoWriMo page for the girls at NewMoon.com (which will also be featuring writing tips on the homepage all month long), I’m using my adult power and influence to pressure teens at the library to participate, and I’m planning to spy on and harass my friends who are participating (0 words so far, for shame!! If you’re participating and would like me to harass you, leave a comment with your NaNo username below — mine is sedeara.)

I certainly won’t be slacking on my writing this November, though! Besides asking my friends and associates, “Are you writing? Are you writing? Are you writing?”, I’ll also be:

1. Writing poetry every day for the PAD Chapbook Challenge. Poetry is not my strong suit due to the fact that I don’t read a lot of poetry, so I’ll be doing that this month, too. I intend to rely heavily on my Picto-Journal for inspiration (I’ll be adding some new pics to it tonight). I also plan to convert the daily “writers block” prompts over at LiveJournal as poetry prompts. And, I hope to bust out the guitar for the first time in 11 months and try to write a song for the first time in 4 (yikes!) years. And of course, I can’t forget magnetic poetry! I hope to share some of my efforts here.
2. Finishing the third draft of ETD, which is, incidentally, my NaNoWriMo project from 2008 (written just as I was starting this blog).
3. Attending the Call to Action national conference in Milwaukee. I write for CTA’s 20/30 (young adult) blog, with my most recent post being about the Biblical idea of “holding all things in common.” (Is it Communism? Socialism? Democracy?) I’m excited to hang out with the other bloggers in person again, to be traveling to the event with my best friend, and to hopefully be gaining some inspiration for upcoming blog posts.
4. Fantasizing about what I would be writing if I WERE doing NaNoWriMo this year. Lately, I’ve become very preoccupied with an idea I have for retelling Rapunzel. Thus, I dressed as Rapunzel for Halloween and have been listening a lot to a Rapunzel concept album a friend made for me. How fitting that Disney’s Tangled (which I’ve been looking forward to for years) also comes out this month!

Rapunzel dreams of having a life outside the tower

Enjoy all the wonderful writing November has to offer! I know I will!

Books and Busy-ness (or Business)

Yesterday, the day I’d been waiting for all summer arrived: my local library’s annual booksale.

For the first time (at my mom’s insistence), I paid $10 to get into the “pre-sale” and was there when the doors opened. The pre-sale price was defintely worth it — I’ve never enjoyed such a wide selection at a library booksale before! I came away with 44 books for $30 (well, $40 if you count the presale fee, but that’s still less than a buck a book!) Over the next few days, I’ll be uploading my finds to LibraryThing if you’re really curious. The biggest gem was a paperback, like-new copy of The Tale of the Genji, arguably the first novel ever written. I’ve been looking for an affordable copy of this since I edited an article about its author, Lady Murasaki, for New Moon Girls magazine. In other news . . .

• Speaking of New Moon Girls, a few days ago I posted about their donation campaign, in which you can donate to give New Moon Girls to libraries, schools, or girls’ organizations. If YOU work for or know of a library, school, or organization that should be the recipient of a New Moon gift, you can email New Moon to put your name on the list.
• I recently received my second high-scoring review from Scribendi, the editorial services company I contract with. This means I’m being “promoted” to a higher service level, and that I’ll have access to more orders. If you’re ever in need of a good edit, Scribendi provides high-quality (if I do say so myself) edits at rates that are cheaper than most private editors.
• Despite the 44 books that cheerfully opened this entry, I realized when I got home that I’d forgotten to pick up a book about gardening to help me turn my brown thumb green when I have the land to plant on. So, yes, I’m going to the book sale again today. Wish me luck — or restraint!

Support Girls’ Voices!

Although I’ve been writing stories since before I learned to write (I put together picture books which I “read” to my family), I decided that I officially wanted to be a writer when I was 10 years old, thanks to the encouragement of a substitute teacher who I didn’t fully appreciate at the time (Mr. Helgerson, if you’re out there, THANK YOU!). A few years later, my life got a little rocky; my family was going through transition as I was trying to fight puberty off with a stick. I also became the target of intense bullying.

Although you couldn’t pay me to go back to that time, it continues to be a time in girls’ lives that I care deeply about. It was too painful to write about at the time, but I did continue to write through it. My writing became a way to escape from what was happening, and I may have hardly survived high school if I wasn’t constantly sneaking away in my mind to plot my first novel. At that point, I also realized the value in the catharsis of writing, filling piles of notebooks with my day-to-day thoughts and events. When I discovered the Internet, I thought I was in heaven. Not only was I able to connect with people like me far from my lonely little town, but I was able to share my writing with a real audience. As far as I was concerned, posting my stories online was as good as being published.

That’s one of the reasons that I strongly support venues for girls’ expression, and it’s definitely key to why I worked for New Moon Girl Media for six years on staff.  (I continue to work with them by contract.) New Moon provides both a magazine and web community where girls can connect with one another and share their creative work, all within an emotionally and physically safe environment. The presence of adult moderators makes NewMoon.com one of the safest places for girls on the web. It’s incredibly important that places like New Moon continue to exist for girls, which is why I encourage you to participate in New Moon’s initiative to give 500 gift subscriptions in the month of August. You can donate a subscription to a library, school, or girl in your life, or pass a flyer on to people who care about girls. On behalf of girls everywhere, I thank you.

Content Writing Made My Dreams Come True

OK, the subject line might exaggerate — but just a little.

Although I’ve been an approved writer since January, I just recently started writing for Demand Studios. Before this, I’d always been so busy with my other clients that I only had the chance to give Demand Studios a cursory check. Usually, the topics weren’t in my area of expertise; I think a good general rule might be that, if you don’t understand the title, you probably shouldn’t write the article.

But last week, I discovered that a lot of medical titles had come through. Alongside theology, medicine is one of my true intellectual loves. When I worked on New Moon magazine, I would always vie to work with the Body Language articles, and I usually got them — although I was always a bit flabbergasted that not everyone wanted them as much as I did. I mean, there’s no one in the world that this stuff doesn’t apply to. We all have bodies, right?

I’ve often internally bemoaned the fact that I didn’t go into a medical profession — usually when I’m feeling a bit dismayed at the chronically low income my chosen profession predicts. But then I remember that people who work in the medical professions run a higher chance of coming across vomit in their day-to-day life than I do, and then I remember why I didn’t go to nursing or medical school.

So I’ve fantasized about medical writing, wondering exactly how one does land a cushy gig like that. But in the past week, I’ve written two articles about bipolar disorder (with another on the way), three about ADHD, one about autism, and one about acne. At least part of my question has been answered: content writing is one way to earn both experience and money doing the kind of writing you’ve always dreamed of doing.

Happy Birthday, Judy Blume

I can’t stay long, but I didn’t want to let this day pass without mentioning that today is YA author Judy Blume’s seventy-first birthday (if my math doesn’t fail me!). In addition to being the mother of young adult literature as we know it, she’s also a champion of free speech. This is one cool septenarian!

(I wrote a bit more coherently about her significance to generations of girls here.)

Confession is good for the soul

So, after confessing my lack of progress on my short story a couple nights ago, the words have started flowing again. It helps that, as a freelancer, writing is one way to procrastinate working . (Don’t worry, I always make my deadlines). Although, speaking of procrastinating, I did feel bad about not posting yesterday, as it was Make Your Dreams Come True Day, and we writers definitely have big dreams. So after encouraging the girls at New Moon Girls to take a step toward their dreams, I had to take my own advice and make one step toward my dream–or at least toward my New Year’s Resolution.

And I’m beginning to understand why some folks are so gung-ho on short stories. It IS nice to see the end in sight at the beginning!

Short, midnight, pre-holiday message

I do freelance work for New Moon Girls, mostly working with the newly launched web community for girls, NewMoonGirls.com. It’s a fully moderated website, which means that a trained adult sees everything before it goes public. I’ve been moderating the site for hours now — thousands upon thousands of words. I’m ready to take a page from adolescents — those girls can WRITE!

Back to work. (Oh, and I’ll be taking as much of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off the internet as possible. You should, too. Hug someone. ).

My Madisonian Adventure

That's me!

I got back at about 11 p.m. last night from my weekend in Madison. My note to self is that one should never spend only one night in Madison. I feel convinced that every gift I possibly could have wanted for family could be found on State Street, but, alas, I had to leave before I was sure, and too much of my Christmas shopping is still undone.

The reading was great, as was the venue as was meeting Michelle Sewell, editor of GirlChild Press, and hearing her stories about the process of putting together these fantastic anthologies that bring girls’ and women’s voices to the public. The photo embedded in this post proves that it all really happened — after arriving for the reading in the nick of time, I forgot to unpack my digital camera, so thanks to Michelle and others who took and shared pictures. (The next and final Just Like a Girl reading is happening this Friday, December 12th, at Charis Books in Atlanta.)

The highlight of the trip, though, was getting the chance to hang out with Natalia Thompson, girl writer and activist extraordinaire, and Ruthie, a former Girls Editorial Board member. Both these amazing and talented young women have served as editors and writers for New Moon Girls (and have garnered publishing credentials elsewhere as well), and if you have an 8 – 12 year old girl in your life, I cannot recommend New Moon Girls highly enough as both a creative outlet and a place for girls to find community. Yes, I do work with New Moon, but I don’t plug it because I work with them; I work with them because I love them. A lot. I think you will, too.

Although I arrived in Madison Friday night with my mind still woefully empty of a potential SF short story — this despite driving by a strangely lit hill that I’m quite sure is a landing zone for UFOs — I’m pleased to report that an idea burst into bloom on the long, dark, caffeinated drive home. Now the challenge will be to “think short” as my friend and fellow writer Jenny urges, and that will be a new direction after coming off NaNo. But I will try to tell this story in 10,000 words or less — and failing that, there’s always the Writers of the Future contest, which has a 17,000 word limit.

What I’m up to Now

I’m excited to be starting this blog and have decided my first post will be a quick snapshot of what I’m working on right now in my writing and editing life.

- I’m working on an article for the Bi-Women Newsletter, due November 15th.

- I’m participating for the third time in National Novel Writing Month. I’m about 1,500 words behind schedule, but I’ve hit the 50,000 word goal both times I’ve participated, so I’m optimistic. I write young adult novels during NaNoWriMo because they have story arcs that can usually be nicely developed, and possibly completed, within 50,000 words. I also love reading and writing young adult literature, and this is a good opportunity to do it. This year’s novel is more autobiographical than anything I’ve written before, which will be an interesting process to observe.

- I’m doing freelance editorial work for New Moon Girls, especially surrounding the web community at NewMoonGirls.com. New Moon Girls is a girl-centered, girl-created resource where girls can reach their full potential through self-discovery, creativity, and community. Full-disclosure: until last month, I was a full-time employee of New Moon Girl Media and held editorial and management positions within the company. Although I left to pursue freelance work full-time, I’m tickled pink that I get to continue working with them. I fell in love with New Moon Girl Media the first time I read a copy of New Moon Girls magazine in 2001, and if you check them out, you just might fall in love, too. If you have a girl-child in your life (or even if you don’t), I definitely suggest checking them out.

- I’m editing a children’s book for a self-publisher.

and

- I’m getting comfy in my newly set-up ‘writing space’ and learning my way around my brand new blog.