On April 20th it snowed in the Northwoods, by the night, most of the snow had melted off the ground and the trees. This morning I woke up to a beautiful and inspiring snowy wonderland scene outside my bedroom. Fresh powder replacing yesterday’s melted snow. Right now, there’s a blanket of white that covers the grass, and lays on the branches of the evergreen pines and the branches of the trees that lost their leaves last fall.

April is national poetry month. So I’m posting a poem I wrote called, The Kitten, I hope you’ll enjoy it.

I’ve been working on my Pockets entry, but I found out a couple days ago that the Pockets Fiction Contest is canceled for this year. I’ll continue to work on my story and hope they’ll bring the contest back next year.

I didn’t get any submissions out in March and I didn’t get my picture book finished. Thankfully, it doesn’t need a major rewrite, but a little tweaking here and there. Sometimes I’m not sure which is harder, a major rewrite, or fixing small things in a pretty much completed manuscript. Both can be easy sometimes and difficult at other times. I’m also working on my middle grade novel, trying to find a way to connect the beginning with the end.

Also, I have a finished middle grade novel that I’m trying to find a publisher for. I’ve spent several days researching publishers, but I can’t find one that’s a match for my book. So, I’m going to put the manuscript on the shelf for right now. As I focus on other writing activities, I’ll continue to keep an eye out for a publisher that would be a good match for manuscript.

Right now, I’m going to look out my window and see what the falling snowflakes will inspire.

I was out walking when I heard a sound,
I followed it and you’ll never guess what I found,
A gray and white kitty,
With soft blue eyes looking up at me,
I reached out to pet it’s fluffy coat,
When a male voice from behind me spoke,
“She’s a stray!”
I couldn’t imagine her living that way!
“Take her, she’s free,
A good home she will need.”

I mentioned in my last post that I was doing a major rewrite on a manuscript. I said I was going to expound on one area of the story and take out other parts that weren’t significant the story. Well, the rewrite was successful but after I finished the rewrite something still felt wrong. I knew the story wasn’t ready for submission…yet. I didn’t know exactly what I needed to do but as I read the story I thought maybe it should be told from the point of view of another character. The plot, the theme, and the final scene remained the same. The only thing I changed was the character that was telling the story and that’s when everything clicked. The story was ready for submission and is now in the mail to Pockets.

I also mentioned in February that I wrote a picture book in January that is currently being revised as well as a picture book I wrote in February that I am revising; hopefully both of those will be March submissions. I’m also revising a short story for Highlights that still isn’t ready for submission yet, but I’m hoping after a couple more revisions it will click just like my other story did and be off in the mail soon.

Well it’s the end of the month and I’m proud to say that I wrote a poem and a chapter for my middle grade novel. I also wrote a short story, but discovered that as usual I was over the word count specified by the publication I planned to submit to. Shortening a story isn’t usually that hard. But in this case every time I sat down to cut words I ended up adding more without realizing it. For some reason, I was focused on expanding one area of the story. This also caused me to go over word count again. After doing this a couple of times, I decided the cycle had to be broken. So, before I can submit my story for publication I will be doing a rewrite with a new focus on the area that I keep expanding with every rewrite.

Here’s an example of what I’m doing:

Let’s say the story I’m writing is about two girls, Kasey and Angela. They have been best friends for as long as they can remember. They used have everything in common, but now as they grow up, their interests change. Angela likes shopping for dresses and Kasey likes playing second base on the local little league team. So they have a fight and go their separate ways. As they do things on their own, they realize they have more fun doing something they don’t like with each other, then doing something they do like alone. In the meantime, their teacher has partnered them for the science project. While trying to come up with the biggest best project ever, they realize they both still love science, and by the realization they have more fun together than alone, they discover how important their friendship really is.

This is fine for a novel, but not a short story. By focusing on both issues I will go over the word count indefinitely. So, I get to work cutting words. Then, I realize that during this process without knowing it, I’ve added more words, doubling the length of the scene at the science fair. The problem: I’m over my word count again. So, I do another rewrite, cutting even more words, but again I’ve made the science scene even longer, and yes I have too many words. In order to break the cycle I have to decide which detail in the story is more important. In this case it is the science fair scene that keeps increasing in length with every edit. I will then cut out the scenes where girls are spending time apart. Because in this story it is their mutual love for science that brings them back together and not their other interests.

Well, here I go to work on my rewrite. Check back at the end of the month to see the progress on this story and my other writing projects.

Welcome to 2009. (even though I wrote 2008 on a form the other day!) :=) As you know from reading my posts throughout the year that I didn’t make my goal of 52 submissions. I sent out 33 that’s 10 more than I submitted the year before. If you read my “My Early New Years Resolution” post you know my new goal was write 2 stories each month from October thru December and I’m proud to say, I did accomplish that. I also sent out 2 submissions in December, which is good considering I wasn’t planning on submitting anything until after the new year.

Description is one of the hardest part of writing for me. So over the holidays I decided to take a break from my actual writing and I started to experiment with screenplays. Another part of writing that is hard for me is tying the beginnings of my stories to the ends. So, instead of beating my head against the wall trying to come up with a middle, I start a new project. That would be fine, if I did it once, let the other sit and then go back to it and look at it with fresh eyes. The problem is, I tend to start a few too many projects before I get back to the others and finish them. I now have 3 screenplays with beginnings, ends, and no middles. I also have ideas for 3 more. If I ever think up the middles I would be able to submit them. Actually, if I could think up middles for a lot of my works in progress I could do a lot more submitting.

Now, sometimes I ask myself why I wasted my time on screenplays when I could have worked on my middle grade novel, a picture book, or my entry for the Pockets contest. I tell myself, (Yes, I ask myself a question and then answer myself. But I never do it out loud, I don’t want people to think I’m crazy ;=).) Anyway, I tell myself that no writing is ever wasted. I created settings, I developed characters and worked on my dialog. So even if I never sell the screenplays, my experiment over the holidays was far from a waste of time.

This year, I’m sticking to the same goal as my new years resolution. I’m going to write 2 stories a month, while taking the time to work on my middle grade novel (and the middles of my new screenplays.) I also hope to submit 2 stories a month, because after writing the two stories, they should be ready for submission the next month. So I’ll keep you up to date on my writing progress. Happy New Year, everybody.