Another Motivating Shop Talk - and a New Writing Challenge!

I’m glad it’s the end of February already – there’s only a few weeks left until a long-awaited Spring, and on Saturday, Michelle, Lisa and I went to another Shop Talk meeting at B & N.

It was a small but lively group this month, led by Karen Kaufman Orloff. She talked a bit about the June conference, saying that registration would start in a few weeks. She said she’s doing a book signing and reading at the store (Barnes & Noble Poughkeepsie) on Saturday, April 16^th, for her new picture books, “Talk, Oscar – Please!” and “I Wanna New Room.” I’ll probably be working that day, but hopefully I’ll be able to check in on her event during my break. I hope she’ll get a great turn-out, and some new readers for her excellent picture books.

Karen also said that she and fellow picture book author Della Ross Ferreri are offering a new season of their writing class, “The ABCs of Writing for Children,” at Merritt Bookstore in Millbrook. It will be held on Tuesday afternoons, from April 5 – May 17. They cover story ideas; characters and structure; rewriting; and submission to publishers, as well as give writing exercises and manuscript critiques. I don’t write for the very young children’s age group, but if I did, I would definitely take this class. Karen and Della are both talented, knowledgeable and accomplished authors, and I’ve learned a lot from them both in the Shop Talk groups – I think any writer of kids’ books could benefit from this class. More details about the class and their publications can be found at Karen and Della’s websites – www.karenkaufmanorloff.com and www.dellarossferreri.com.

Cara, a new writer to the gathering, had taken Karen and Della’s class, and she said it was good. She’s working on writing picture books. The rest of us in Saturday’s group are working on middle- grade or teen novels.

Karen Shan has finished her manuscript of a middle-grade historical novel and has sent it to two agents. She read us a passage – it’s been awhile since she’s read her work in the group, and I’ve missed hearing her excellent writing. She’s woven details of her meticulous, immersive research of the early 1900s Turkish and Armenian setting into her story of an orphan boy who’s taken in by a desert sheik. It was great to see her manuscript in its mailing box -- I hope she’ll find a good agent who will appreciate her great work and will work hard to sell it to the right publisher.

Kim Sabatini shared her wonderful news with all of us – her book, Touching the Surface, did find a great agent: Michelle Wolfson of Wolfson Literary Agency, who recently sold the book to Anica Risi, an editor at Simon Pulse, the teen imprint of Simon & Schuster!! I’ve had a good feeling about Kim’s story since I first heard her read the beginning chapter in Shop Talk several years ago. I read an early draft of it, and it’s so imaginative, interesting and heartfelt, that I knew it would be published one day. And I can’t wait until its publication, in the Fall of 2012, so I can buy a copy and read it in its book form. I’ll write about Kim in more detail in a following blog post, and her writing journey in her own words can be found in her blog, Jess Free Falcon, at www.kimberlysabatini.blogspot.com. Congratulations, Kim – you and your story deserve the best of success!

Michelle is also awaiting news from an editor – Connie Hsu, of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Connie had read the beginning of an early draft of Michelle’s funny, yet moving middle-grade novel, Blackboard, about a traumatized-to-muteness little boy who finds a new kind of family among the eccentric outcasts of a 1940s small town, at last June’s local SCBWI conference. Michelle said that Connie had liked it, suggested some changes for the re-write, and encouraged Michelle to send her the whole book as soon as revisions were done, so Michelle sent it out before the holidays. I’ve had a really good feeling about Blackboard, too, ever since I heard Michelle read the first scene, where the wildly whimsical schoolgirl Pinky defends small, silent Damon from the playground bullies, in our Wildwood Writers group. Michelle has a great way of combining unique characters, unfortunate situations and playful humor with inspirational themes like forgiveness and benevolence. I hope the editor will get back to Michelle with the good news that she deserves, soon.

It was good to see Janine, a writing friend of Kim’s who’s also attended the local SCBWI conference and previous Shop Talk meetings, there on Saturday. She said that she’s had several book projects going at once, including a couple of teen novels and a novel for adults, but she finds it hard to stick with just one thing. I told her that’s exactly how I feel – I never have problems coming up with story ideas, but it’s hard to commit to just one when they all interest me and demand my limited time and attention. I said I think I have writing ADD! Kim wondered if that’s what happened with my tween novel, What Luck, and I said yes – I like the story but after awhile, I put it aside because it didn’t seem like it authentically represented my vision or voice as a writer. I feel more personally and creatively involved with my current teen novel, disAPPEAR, that I’d started a few years back and recently took off the back burner to work on. Now I’ve just got to find the time and perseverance to finish it!

Lisa said that she’s mainly written adult speculative fiction stories and novels, but recently got into writing a novel for teens because she won an online Mediabistro course, as a prize for winning the Family Circle Short Story contest last year. She picked out the teen novel class from the many course offerings because it seemed the most advanced, and it was taught by an editor, Kendra Levin of Viking Children’s Books, rather than an author. She enjoyed the course so much and got so much out of it that she’s taking an advanced course this year.

Lisa also said that she’s written eight different novels – each for the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month) challenge that’s during November of every year. She said that’s the way she’s used to writing now, and she recommended the challenge to us. She said she thinks it would be good for anyone who faces writer’s block or has trouble sticking with a project, because with a deadline in 30 days, there’s no time to second-guess a project or go back to rewrite it – you just have to keep writing, and focus on finishing. At the end of the month, you can have a finished first draft – even if it’s very rough – that you can use as the basis or framework for your improvements and revisions. She said that even though there are a couple of manuscripts that she’d never continue writing, because she thinks they’re so awful, there are also some that she thinks have potential and she’s worked on revising them. I said I’d tried NaNoWriMo once, but it was impossible to stick with the writing schedule because November is the start of the retail holiday season, and the only thing I could focus on was getting through work each day until the holidays were over. So November isn’t a good time for me to try the challenge, as long as I work in retail. Lisa said that sometimes people start their own NaNoWriMo groups at different times of the year.

That idea must have stayed on our minds, because after we’d had lunch in the B & N café (Kim had to leave early to get back to her kids), Lisa, Michelle, Janine and I kept talking about NaNoWriMo. I said that could be a good thing for me – especially since it could help me break the cycle of starting a new project; going back to rewrite every few pages before writing further; and then getting a new idea that grabs my attention before I’ve gotten far on the current project. We all agreed that it would be a good writing challenge to take on, and then we just decided to try it ourselves during the month of March.

So Janine has set up a Facebook group for us, named “March Madness – Writer’s Style,” and the challenge starts tomorrow! I have to admit I’m feeling a little intimidated – I’m still not too sure I can keep up with the fast pace of writing on the fly that’s needed to see it through until the end. But I’m glad there are four of us involved, and that we can all understand and encourage each other through the ups and downs and twists and turns of this upcoming challenge.

For me, it could end up being the craziest thing or best thing I’ve done in a long time! I’ll post when I can, to tell how it’s going. Good luck to all of us – I hope that by April 1^st, we’ll all have finished first drafts, with the potential to become viable, publishable books, to share with each other!