Clint's Blog

Today, This Is Abi's Blog

5/24/2012

Well, it was bound to happen. My neglect of this blog has resulted in a full-blown rebellion. The Internet elves have gathered together, taken a vote, and decided that this space will be far better used by more diligent, more interesting, and vastly more attractive people than myself.

So for the next week or so, this blog will now belong to a series of very smart and even more awesome grade schoolers who participated in the book club I ran for their school. Over the course of the club, about the last three months, each of these students devoted herself or himself to writing, revising, and editing a piece of writing from the club with the intent of being published here. I made clear that anyone featured here would have to produce a truly excellent written piece (a rule that I excuse in regard to myself). That is exactly what each did.

So today allow me to welcome you to the blog of Abigail, who I and other very lucky people are allowed to call Abi, and to the first public description of a newly discovered species: the Torpion. The following is a transcript of Abi's description of the Torpion without any editing or adjustment on my part whatsoever--so she gets all the credit. (Oh, and I should also admit that she taught me how to spell tarantula correctly.)

*****

Torpion
by
Abi

The Torpion is a small but deadly creature. It is EVIL! It is covered in little tiny hairs like a tarantula, it can also fly. It smells like this special perfume. When someone smells the perfume they fall into a deep sleep. When they wake up they are under the Torpion's control. The more the Torpion catches the more likely it is to take over the world. It sounds like a baby croc crying to it's mother. It has a tail like a scorpion. It has ten eyes and three legs. It hast two arms like a scorpion. It eats fish called minos and for a treat it eats small birds and bugs.

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The Three Dimensional Page

3/5/2012

4 Comments

Between my work in education and publishing, I've had the opportunity to meet a number of people of a very interesting artistic bent. Such as Scott, a student I work with periodically in the writing center, who, turns out, is a prominent (or as prominent as one can be in his area) origami artist.

Origamist? Origamipod? Origamizoid? (I am a big believer that any word becomes cooler with the addition of the suffixes -pod or especially -zoid.)

After sharing my thoughts on the nature of debate and argument and the epistemological tug of war between the human head and heart, he told me about his uncommon medium of expression. Apparently, he is quite good. Good enough to make money at it and have shows both locally and across the country, including at least one in New York. After looking at his website, I would go so far as to say he is exceptional.

Scott is an interesting guy who describes himself as a big fish in an extremely small pond. I, on the other hand, am far smaller and in a much bigger body of water. A lake, maybe, or perhaps even a sea. Probably not an ocean. And I am approximately the size of the fish served other fish destined to be appetizers for big fish.

Maybe I should try origami?

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I Am Not a One-trick Pony

2/22/2012

3 Comments

But I am by nature a one-trick-at-a-time pony. By this I mean I like to work on one thing at a time creatively, from beginning to end, without stopping or interruption if I can help it. My preference is to start a book and write it to completion without dividing my time between projects.

I do all my research and planning and thinking and rethinking and note taking and outlining. Then I sit down and write the first three chapters, as a rule. I then write a synopsis, my first comprehensive treatment of the story. Using that synopsis, I write the rest of the novel, beginning to end, outlining each scene or chapter about a day before I write it. Once the rough draft is done, I usually give it a little time to cool before starting revision. I then do my three or five or eight revisions until I feel I can't see any changes that clearly make the book better. Then I write the proposal package, research agents and publishers, and submit. Only then do I move on to another project.

Recently, I haven't had the luxury of focusing on one project at a time. Instead, I've been bouncing around every which way. I made it about 70% of the way through my latest novel (a middle grade fantasy based on Babylonian dragon mythology) when I received the opportunity to contribute to the Writing for Charity anthology, available next month. More details here. So I put that off as long as I could to keep working on Babylon then put the book aside and wrote and revised the short story over the course of three days. I'd been thinking about it in odd moments well before that, of course, and I'm fairly pleased with the result. Not sure if they'll use it for the anthology, but I think so. If they do, look for the legal deposition of the troll from The Three Billy Goat Gruffs. That's mine. While I'm on the subject, I'd like to plug this event again: $45 ($25 half day), excellent workshops by fantastic authors such as Shannon Hale, Tracy Hickman, and Dan Wells, among others, writing critiques from these same authors, as well as a meal and silent auction on everything from manuscript critiques to dinner with authors. You should be there. More information at the site listed above.

Back to the jumble of my last few work weeks. Stopping the newest novel for the short story wouldn't have been that bad--if I hadn't received a request for a manuscript revision from one of my dream agents at the same time. That, of course, took priority, so using her comments and some very kind and rapid feedback from some great writers and better friends, I revised the entire manuscript and resubmitted. Still waiting on the result.

So that catches us up to the present. Right now, I'm finishing off a polish on my literary Korean ghost story, the manuscript revision requested in partial by the agent, and about to transition to a final revision on my latest completed work with a focus on a few specific localized issues. Then I'll write the proposal package and start submitting. And then, finally, back to my Babylonian story.

This is not my preferred method of work. But having been through it, I think it maybe should be, at least in certain ways. I'm getting a lot done very quickly, and I like that rate of production. Plus, an unexpected benefit has come from revising texts after they've cooled for weeks or even months, which I've never done before. I'm finding added perspective has come from that amount of time away from the texts, which isn't surprising in theory but is still startling to experience for the first time.

So here's what I'm thinking for the future. I still want to work on one thing at a time, as that is clearly how I do my best work. But I think I'll abandon my dedication to one work in process straight through the entire process without diverting my attention. When I finish a rough draft, I may set it aside while I pre-write and draft my next novel. I'll then go back and revise and send out, then revise and send out the second, then repeat the process. Or I may do an initial revision to address obvious problems I'm aware of after drafting before giving the text time to cool and moving on to my other project. Not sure yet. But I'll work it out.

So ten books in and my process is still evolving. Apparently, necessity is the mother of invention. Who knew?

And as you certainly did not notice, my font size on the blog is now legible.

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Today, This Is Abi's Blog

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I Am Not a One-trick Pony

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