on naming dragons

Though nobody but family and friends has read my story up to this point, and they know why my dragons are named the way they are, I can't stand it anymore and I'm going to explain why they have the names they do.

First I have to start off with The Glass Slipper vs. The Slipper and the Rose. Everybody goes crazy for Slipper and the Rose. Whatever. I am woefully under impressed with it. On the other hand, nobody has ever heard of The Glass Slipper, and I love it. Cinderella is feisty and has a temper and the fairy godmother is delightfully loopy. I found on You Tube the best clip in the entire movie. Not only does it show Ella's temper, but it also has the best line in the whole movie, given by the fairy godmother.

Ella: You're getting wet.
Mrs. Toquet (fairy godmother): It's the water.

Very simply stated but beautifully executed.

The link to the scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AnGaBWowkA&feature=related

In the clip, Ella complains about everyone calling her Cinderella because she's covered in soot. Mrs. Toquet muses over the name Cinderella and decides she likes it, along with apple dumpling, pickle relish, and other words. She likes how they feel on her tongue when she says them.

And that is exactly how my dragons are named. Jambalaya was first. It is simply a fun word to say, and years before I had any kind of a story in my head, I knew it was the perfect name for a dragon. Jambalaya. Wonderful word. Mulligatawny followed about a year later. There was still no story, but there was now a second perfect dragon name. Mulligatawny. I love it. Once the story did come along, I kind of had a pattern set, so I started looking for fun food words to name the other dragons. I stuck with soup for the boys (though Pumpernickel is not a soup, but he is also an older dragon, not one connected to a child) and used dessert/sweet words for the girls (Flummery and Sassafras). They are just fun words to say.

That is the extent of the mystery of the dragons' names. They don't have funky southern or middle eastern accents or anything. They're just fun to say.

The other day I saw the word Knickerbocker. Totally fun word. Though Knickerbocker is not an actual food word, the context I saw it in was the name of a sandwich. I'll have to see if I need a name for another dragon, or if it might be the name of something else entirely. A wonderful word to say.

Knickerbocker. Pickle relish. Cinderella.

writing seminar

Last Saturday I went to a seminar taught by Stacy Whitman. The focus was on the opening lines/first chapter of middle grand and YA fantasy/science fiction. What you need to do to hook to the reader/agent/editor. I enjoyed it, and Stacy said she wants to keep holding classes/seminars like this, and I hope she does. I would have enjoyed this one more if I hadn't been up until 3:00 the night before working on the opening lines of the first chapter of my book. Last week was a pretty crazy week around here, but even so, I shouldn't have put off trying to 'fix' things until the last minute. When I had my husband read it, he pointed out all the things that I did with the new opening, which were things I had specifically wanted to do by writing a new opening, so I was rather proud of myself. When I read those same lines at the seminar, it was pointed out to me by nearly everyone the things that I had not done (it was just talking heads and there was no sense of setting or character). I sighed and felt the briefest moment of 'why the crap am I doing this?!?', but that quickly disappeared, because they were exactly right. I am not (necessarily) a crappy writer. All of the things they mentioned were things that were bothering me in the back of my mind but I couldn't figure out how to work them out, so I went with the things I was actually trying to accomplish, and left the rest to be dealt with later. I know that's bad form, that I should only bring the best I can do to be worked on, but like I said, last week was a messed up week around here on a lot of levels, and what I did was the best I could do at the time. I am so glad the week is over and I look forward to polishing out the rough stuff this week. So here are the two different first lines:

A pale blue dragon glided gracefully to land in the clearing.

"Today the elf will surrender to me," Dawson said, stabbing the air with his empty fist.

Honestly, the second one has a little more oomph than the first one, don't you think? I'm not talking Newbery Award, but it's better than the first. Thank heaven for seminars that make you prepare things ahead of time, and then make you think even more afterward.

Which reminds me. My wonderful husband (with some unintended help from some wonderful friends) enrolled me in BYU's Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Workshop this June. I've been wanting to go to this for years, ever since I first heard about it, but we've never had the money. After a generous, but unacceptable, offer from friends, we decided we had the money this year. If others are willing to sacrifice for me, I'd better step up and start pulling my own weight. So I'm going, and I'm excited, and more than a little nervous, and I've got a lot of polishing to do between now and June.

Awesome article recommended by Dave Farland

Check this out.

the whys and what-nots

I am a writer, because writers write, and I do. I am not yet a published, look-they-paid-me, writer, but that's what this blog is all about. Well, I don't know if it's ABOUT that, but hopefully at some point somebody will pay me for being a writer, and this blog will document the journey.

The journey at the moment is rather interesting. I have/had a completed-ish middle-grade fantasy. Last September I started going to a writing class/workshop and got very favorable feedback. The instructor was very anxious for me to get my manuscript out, so when I had finished workshopping the first three chapters, he had me start working on a synopsis (which I cannot write) and a query letter (which I cannot write). There was great frustration in the class/my psyche (I actually gave myself a headache from banging my head on the table during class after yet another 'this is not a synopsis' moment). There is still frustration happening in my psyche, but the class has gotten better because I have gone back to workshopping my manuscript and have given up on the synopsis and the query letter for the moment.

It seems that the query letter (which I cannot write) is one of the all-time most important pieces of writing I can ever do in my whole life. The query letter has to be so succinct, so gripping, give the essence, the feeling, the voice and the over-all wonderfulness of my novel in one miraculous page. The synopsis has to do the same thing all over again in more than just one page, but far, far less than the pages of the novel. (The actual number of pages for a synopsis is still a mystery to me, leading to the problem of me being able to write one.) Since the query letter is the first thing an agent and/or editor will ever see of my writing ability and my book, it has to win them over immediately.

Right.

At this point let me say that I write novels because there are more words in them than there are in short stories. Quite frankly, my novel is really good. If it were possible for an agent/editor to read the whole thing in ten seconds, they would love it (if they were looking for a novel about siblings, dragons and magic, at least). I CAN do short, but I leave a lot of things out when I do, which, again, is why I wrote a novel (and not a query letter or synopsis). I still have not figured out how to write the cotton-pickin' query letter, which means that I have not sent anything out to any agents or editors yet, but other things came along to distract me from query letters for the moment.

For Valentine's Day my lovely husband upgraded my computer, which had been giving me fits for months and months. In the process of saving all of my writing in My Documents folder, my manuscript did not get saved, becuase, apparently, when I saved the document which was my manuscript, I did not save it in My Documents. Yes, I have issues with computers. More to the point, I have issues that I didn't know I had. From now on I will be making sure that all of my documents are in My Documents.

All was not lost, however, as one of my annoying computer habits is saving different versions of things in different ways. I had originally finished this story a few years ago. After putting it on the shelf for a while, I sent it out to Stacy Whitman, who at the time was at Mirrorstone. She sent me a very nice rejection with some very helpful suggestions, which caused me to make some changes to the story. Those changes, along with editing from the class I've been going to, were in the document that didn't make it through the computer upgrade. I did still have the original document from years ago, and print outs of (most of) the workshopping done in class.

That's where I am. I need to add the new beginning to the old story, plus make the changes suggested in workshopping, along with any other bright ideas that come to me along the way. It is frustrating, and sometimes tedious, but actually quite enjoyable.

Last weekend I went to Life, the Universe, and Everything, the BYU science fiction and fantasy symposium. I've been going for years (nearly two decades), with the thought always in the back of my mind that someday I would be one of the authors sitting up on a panel. This year was no different in that respect, but the daydream seemed a little closer to reality than it has been in the past. Stacy Whitman now lives here in Utah and is giving a seminar this month for YA fantasy writers. I am hoping to go. The instructor of my writing class has put together a writers' conference for next month that I am excited to go to. I found out about, and signed up for, Dave Farland's Kick in the Pants. James Dashner is doing an author's visit at my kids' school on Tuesday. I'm going to go just to see what he does.

All of these things surrounding me with writing. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm doing an author's visit myself.