Free Workshop: Wednesday, July 28th, Provo Library (550 N. University Ave.) at 7:00 p.m.—I’ll be teaching my Conflict and the Mechanism of Story workshop, which is my most popular.  The event is held by the local chapter of the League of Utah Writers, but is open and free to all comers.  Come ready for a near two-hour interactive workshop on the foundational mechanism of story, which is the basis of my entire approach to writing.  The group will also be having a critique hour starting at 6:00 p.m., which I will participate in if I arrive early enough.

2nd Annual Writing for Charity Event: Saturday, August 29th, Elizabeth Stewart Treehouse Museum (347 22nd Street, Ogden, UT), 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.—While I won’t be attending this year, this charity workshop will allow aspiring writers to get feedback from fantastic writers such as Shannon Hale, Brandon Mull, and many, many others.  For more information go here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=111647283883&index=1

Granite District Media Workshop: Tuesday, August 31st, Jackling Lab (3760 South 4610 West) at 7:30 a.m.—I’ll be giving a one-hour workshop on narrative literacy as the foundation of education to media and library personnel of secondary schools in the Granite School District.  This is not open to non-district personnel, but if you’re one of the lucky few this is when it’s happening.

The League of Utah Writers’ Annual Roundup: Friday and Saturday, September 17th & 18th, Hampton Inn and Suites (307 North Admiral Byrd Road, Salt Lake City, UT)—This year I will be delivering a two-hour workshop on Triple-duty Writing, which teaches how to achieve all three actions of a story simultaneously on every page and in every paragraph.  For information and to register get more information here: http://luwriters.org/

The Idaho Library Association’s Annual Conference: Thursday – Saturday, October 6th-9th, Red Lion Templin’s (414 E. First Ave, Post Falls, ID)—While the times have yet to be determined, I will be presenting an hour long workshop on narrative literacy as the foundation of education and doing a signing.  For more information see here: http://www.idaholibraries.org/node/644/    

But I think I  know at least one reason why this book has been so difficult to write: it is the least plot driven story I’ve ever written, which has left me with very few linked chapters.  It isn’t very often in this book that the events of a previous chapter clearly delineate where the following chapter is going to launch from.  Far more of the chapters are self-contained things or largely so, more like vignettes than scenes in a narrative driven by a pervasive central plot.  This has created a number of complications in composition, including one I’d never thought about before: Out of the current 24 chapters, about 14 of them started pretty much from scratch. 

It’s been like having to restart the same story 14 times.  Writing 14 story beginnings in one book.  14.  Any writer knows how tough it is to start a book—at least if you want the beginning to be good.  Well, in this mortal combat with the blank page in which I’ve been engaged for the last too many months, I’ve had that tussle with good beginnings just about every week, literally.  And whenever I work out something in which I feel fairly confident, BANG!, it’s time to write another chapter from a cold start.

So, a word to those who would be wiser than I have been: if you want your story to be less of a beast to write, use a roaring, comprehensive, contiguous plot.  Don’t just make up a fourteen-year-old Korean-American protagonist and have her respond to life—um, or death—as it comes, including bickering fishermen, a panicked policeman with a gun, and kids from school in a make-out session gone wrong.  That stuff is hard.

Here’s an example, the beginning of chapter 24: a radio commercial for Hottie Tottie Yummy Gum.

Don’t make yourself come up with radio commercials to write a chapter, or plays, or anything that odd.  Just write a novel.  That’s hard enough.   

Just finished chapter 23.  It topped out at just over 4,000 words.  It took me a week and a half to write.

I feel like a building has fallen on me and, not satisfied with my level of pancakeness, is now tap dancing. 

Okay, time to man up.  Here comes another stomp!

*****

Just a heads up that I will be teaching a workshop at this year’s LUW Roundup after all.  It’ll probably be my Triple-Duty Writing presentation, the same one I gave at the LUW event in the spring.  More details as they become available.  Also, a reminder that my June 29th post covers a less common (and free) workshop of mine that some haven’t had a chance to attend.  If you’re interested, read that post. 

 Pulchritudinous. (adj) Meaning: Physically beautiful.  Yeah.  What it should mean: Decomposed or some other synonym for a corpse in an advanced stage of rot.  Why I like it: Because it’s the most vile sounding—and vaguely dinosaur-like—term for ‘beautiful’ I’ve ever heard. 

Cyclopes. (n) Meaning: The plural of ‘cyclops.’  What it should mean: A circus performer who puts a trapeze on a ball and socket joint and spins in circles while doing all his tricks.  He will inevitably die during his first performance.  Why I like it: I like that ‘peez’ at the end.  It would be even better if the plural were ‘cyclopods.’

Demagoguery. (n) Meaning: The practice of being a demagogue.  What it should mean: The practice of being an alternative to Armageddon.  If you don’t get this, google “Gog and Magog.”  Why I like it: Those double ‘g’ sounds into that slurred ‘uery’ ending are cool, who wouldn’t like one who commands by inspiring irrational passions, and the word sounds naughty but isn’t.  I like words that sound naughty and aren’t.

Lickspittle. (n) Meaning: A fawning, servile flatterer worthy of contempt.  What it should mean: A category name for the very worst of all the annoying yappy little dogs whose owners have for some unfathomable reason taught them that on occasion humans actually want to kiss dogs.  Why I like it: It’s deliciously disgusting plus fun to say.  Come now, how can a word with both the ‘ck’ and double ‘t’ not be great?  It’s the closest English comes to the brutal assault that is political German. 

I used to do this workshop frequently, but over time I’ve added to my arsenal of presentations and, as I’ve done the Conflict workshop more than any other, there are fewer and fewer venues where I haven’t already given it.  So this workshop has become something of a rare opportunity.  If you are one of those who has been looking forward to a chance to attend this workshop, or if you haven’t been to it previously, here’s your chance:

I’ll be conducting my presentation Conflict and the Narrative Mechanism on Wednesday, July 28th, at the Provo Library (550 North University Avenue, Provo, Utah).  The workshop will be from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.  While the presentation is in conjunction with the local chapter of the League of Utah Writers, it will be free and open to the public.  No registration is required.  From 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. the chapter will hold a critique session in which I will offer feedback if I can arrive that early.  For more information contact the Utah Valley Chapter of the LUW (contact information can be found here: http://www.luwriters.org/ch_utah.html).

If you haven’t attended this workshop before, clear this evening on your calendar if you possibly can.  I don’t know when I’m going to give this workshop again, certainly not for free.  In all probability the next time will be at a conference requiring paid registration, and even then I can’t promise when this will happen.

Many people ask if I teach a creative writing class at SLCC.  I don’t.  This workshop is the closest thing to that.  I fervently believe that, baring significant cognitive challenges, anyone can learn to tell stories good enough to publish.  If you master nothing more than the concepts covered in this workshop on conflict and narrative, I believe you can publish.  It covers the entire foundational theories behind how I write myself.  So if you want to practice how I practice, come to hear me preach/teach (whichever you prefer).

*****

Way off topic, but I couldn’t help myself: if I was a visual artist, I think I would be this guy: http://www.newsweek.com/photo/2010/06/25/celebrities-get-weird-in-artist-s-paintings.html.

With this 2010 CILIP Carnegie Award (http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/2010awards/), perhaps the second biggest award for children’s writing after the Newbery, I believe that Gaiman has cornered the market on medals, plaques, trophies, and other such presigious nick-nacks.  The Graveyard Book is the first novel in history to win both the Newbery and the CILIP Carnegie.  It isn’t often that embarassements of riches and success in this scale are deserved, but if such is ever the case, it must be so with Gaiman.  Who I still intend to be when I grow up.

Here’s what the SCBWI said in their newsletter:

Writer Neil Gaiman scored a first “literary double” by winning the prestigious children’s fiction prize — the Cilip Carnegie Medal — for his fantasy tale THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. He is the first person ever to have been awarded both Britain’s Carnegie Medal and the US Newbery Medal, considered the two most important children’s literary awards, for the same book. He also narrowly missed a “triple” in 2010 when the book , illustrated with evocative line drawings by Chris Riddell, was also shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for outstanding illustration.    

THE GRAVEYARD BOOK is about a boy named Nobody Owens who, after his family is killed by a mysterious man, is adopted and raised by the occupants of a graveyard. The idea occurred to Gaiman in 1985 when he saw his then two-year old son Mike riding around on his tricycle in a graveyard near their home in East Grinstead, West Sussex. It echoes the plot of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, in which orphan Mowgli is brought up by animals in the jungle.

The Carnegie Medal is only the latest honor won by THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. Last year, it won the 2009 Newbery Medal when the American Library Association (ALA) cited it for its “delicious mix of murder, fantasy, humor and human longing”, noting its “magical, haunting prose”. It also won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novel, sponsored by the World Science Fiction Convention; the 2009 Locus Award for best YA novel, sponsored by Locus, The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field; and the 2009 Booktrust Teenage Prize, when the UK-wide charity dedicated to encouraging people of all ages and cultures to enjoy books called Gaiman “the rock star of the literary world”. The book was also shortlisted for numerous honors, making it one of the most honored works in recent history.

Asked what winning means to him, Neil Gaiman said: “For my seventh birthday I was given a boxed set of the Narnia Books by CS Lewis. The last of them, The Last Battle had the words ‘Winner of the Carnegie Medal’ on it. I did not know what the Carnegie Medal was, but I knew it was something important. It was the first literary award I had ever heard of. And if the Narnia books had won it, then it had to be the most important literary award there ever was.”

Gaiman, 49, was born in Hampshire and grew up in the UK. He now lives in the US and is best known for the Sandman comic series and his novels Stardust and Coraline which became big-screen hits.

Cost: $50. Includes free books and abundant materials. (Note: If you want to come, but can’t afford it, you can help Rick Walton with one of his projects in exchange for workshop tuition. Email Rick at rick@rickwalton.com for details.)

Location: Will be given to you upon registration.

Faculty:
Picture Book Workshop: Rick Walton is the author of 80 books for kids including several best selling picture books. He works with a wide range of publishers, and is friends with a number of agents. He teaches a picture book writing class and a children’s publishing industry class at BYU. www.rickwalton.com

Novel Workshop: Mette Ivie Harrison is the author of several best selling fantasy novels, including Mira Mirror and The Princess and the Hound. She has a PHD from Princeton and has done the Iron Man twice, including the one this year in St. George. She publishes with Henry Holt, Viking, Harper Collins, and Egmont. www.metteivieharrison.com

Schedule:
9:00 -10:00 Introduction to writing for children and adolescents.
10:00 – 12:00 Break into picture book and novel groups. Discuss what makes a good and bad picture book and novel. Critiquing of manuscripts.
12:00 – 1:00 Potluck Lunch and chat about writing for children
1:00 – 3:00 More critiquing
3:00 – 5:00 Back together to discuss marketing and to help you develop a plan to sell your manuscript.
5:00 Go and write!

If you are interested, email Rick at rick@rickwalton.com letting him know you plan to come and whether you write picture books or novels.

Send your check for $50 dollars to:
Rick Walton
2880 N 840 E
Provo UT 84604

Register soon! Space is limited.

Yeah, my fellow bad writers or writers of bad things.  ( I would hope that our ability to write bad things does not necessarily brand us bad writers.)  Beat that! 

This is the type of thing I do when I can’t think of what to do.  But really, is this a “type” of thing at all?  Can anyone really believe there’s a whole category here in which to gather disparate things according to some common characteristic?  I guess that’s the type of thing I do when I can’t think of anything to do: something against type. 

Neil Gaiman is a wise, wise man.

Another analogy for writing a book might be a prize fight, two bare knuckle boxers slugging it out until someone finally gives in to the agony and collapses.  That’s kind of how I feel right now, and I’m afraid the book is kind of kicking my trash.  It feels like I’m a bit out of my weight class, to tell you the truth.  Who knew that a 50,000 – 60,000 word novel for teen girls would be a super heavyweight?

My philosophy in life (or one of them, for I have many, some of which change according to circumstance or whim) is that overkill is highly underrated.  A challenge that is extra dead is still dead, just handled with a bit more certainty and style.  They say styles make fights, and my fighter style is very much a puncher.  Why jab when you can hook, or even better, throw crushing uppercuts?  Why win points when you can get knockdowns, or rounds when you can knock someone cold? 

That’s the way I prefer to write my books as well.  The book wants to wear on you, grind you down, body blow after body blow, hoping to inflict so much discomfort and pain that you’ll just give up.  I want to beat the cursed thing into submission as quickly as is humanly sustainable.  1,500 words a day, six days a week; no jabs there.  Just power punch after power punch, trusting that the book will fall down before my energy is exhausted.

That isn’t working now, because this book is a different beast. 

I’m too tired to swing with that much force.  When I try, all too often the punch doesn’t land squarely.  I feel it’s a glancing blow, sapping my strength but not worth the energy put in because the writing stinks.  (I’m always certain the writing stinks at this point in the book.)  So now I’m trying to win this fight by points, which I’ve never done before.  I’m jabbing—five hundred words one day, three hundred and fifty the next, lowering my daily goals to 1,000 rather than 1,500.  It feels like trying to knock my opponent out by throwing cotton balls.  The book, on the other hand, keeps nailing me with with rabbit punches and strikes below the belt.  One chapter demanding to be a play, for instance; that’s fighting dirty.

I feel beaten and puffy and spent, and knowing that ten rounds are done and only two are left isn’t helping much.  I don’t know how I’ll make these next two rounds.  “Keep jabbing, kid!” I imagine Mick from Rocky saying.  “Just hang in there—jab, jab, jab!  And stay off the ropes!”

Okay, I’ll keep throwing my cotton balls and hope that this titan (imagine the love child of Dalph Lundgren and Mr. T) will eventually fall down.

Cut me, Mick.  Cut me.

Ding! Ding!          

*****

Had to add this, as it is mega-awesome: Poet fight at Oxford!  See it here: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1997486,00.html.

How can anyone read this and not be at least a little happier in a naughty way?  I mean, it’s got gender conflict, sniping about the definition of what is and is not poetry, democracy evolving in the age of the Internets (I only refer to the Internets in the plural, one of my favorite contributions George W. Bush made to history), a winner take  all competition, even a mention of W. H. Auden, my favorite poet (and you won’t hear any positive word and any variation of “poet” come from my mouth in conjunction very often at all).

I especially love this description of throwing dirt on an opponent (apparently poets can double talk as well as politicians): this poet “naively—and with hindsight unwisely—passed on to two journalists… information that was already in the public domain.”  Love it!  Do you know, I once heard someone say that the Japanese were looking to “move in on” Shakespeare in their grand scheme for world domination.  That’s in the public sphere as well—it’s even on video record—so I guess it wouldn’t be irresponsible of me to just kind of repeat that without a disclaimer or anything in an interview.  Right?

And just for kicks, the final two stanzas of Auden’s “Funeral Blues”:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

‘Lilliputian’ is the coolest word ever.

What’s the most awesomest: tacos, invisible lasers, Latin, pin cushions full of cut hair, or Ralph Nader?  To rank the awesomest things in the world go here: http://www.mostawesomestthingever.com/

Chocolate sucks when you’re not supposed to eat it.

I have worn two black shirts the last two days, not the same black shirt for two straight days.

I now think of the book I’m writing as The Lovely Bones as written by Sara Zarr who occasionally does her best Laurie Halse Anderson impression.  It is the most difficult thing I’ve ever written, I don’t have the time I need for it, and I think it’s killing me.

I’ll be presenting for the first time to library personnel at the district level this year.  (Literally just found out the first workshop is at the end of August.)  Getting up in front of people and speaking is the easiest and least worrisome part of my life.  This confirms that my present state of mind is messed up.

I still don’t get reality television.

The subject of the new A-Team movie provokes this realization: as a five year old boy Mr. T was the coolest being on the planet. 

I still haven’t forgiven my little brother for breaking my Atari when I was six.  He stuck pencils where the games were to go.

I’m a fake plant kind of guy for inside decoration, as fake plants aren’t needy.  No wilting or dying or junk like that.

Today would be worse if it was also a bad hair day.  I don’t know that I have bad hair days.  I think this may be balanced by the fact that I have no good hair days.  “Hair” is not a category of distinction for me when evaluating my days.  For this, I am glad.

I’m sure I would love a Mac if I ever learned to use one, which I likely will not any time soon.

Why am I on Facebook?  Does anyone else ever wonder that?

Met a guy named Jehovah yesterday.  It was on his ID and everything.

Is “tall, dark, and handsome” a rule or more of a flexible guideline?

I need to remember to request “very spicy” at Bombay House because “spicy” is not.

Does time really exist or are all our clocks and things simply constructs that really symbolize a nothing?

How long can one go without dreaming without going insane?  I can’t remember a dream I’ve had in ten years.

What level of randomness and irrelevance can readers endure before they abandon a blog?

Finito.