Author: Beth Hull

Welcome Home!

Posted on by Beth Hull

Z liked our time in the mountains so much, she decided to sneak some Bug House gravel home with us in her “cooking” bag (see above). (Sidenote: the Bug House is the screened-in building everyone hangs out in. We each have our own sleeping cabins – with bathrooms! a luxury the Hardy Womenfolk insisted upon – but the sleeping cabins are tiny, so the Bug House is the area we can all visit without getting attacked by too many bugs. There was a skink friend, though.)

And the other thing…it never really sunk in, before, that after a vacation, you’ve got to clean your filthy clothes. With one or two people, this isn’t much. With three people, it can get a bit out of hand.

No Mommy-blog is complete without a photograph of Mt. Laundry

The beer bottle is propped up there so you can get an idea of the vastness of Mt. Laundry. Am I folding? No. The sheer vastness of the mountain discourages me from even attempting to scale it. Instead, I think I will go in my bedroom and cry.

Good news: Z’s exhausted, and my parents are here to help distract her & tire her out. Bad news: I’m exhausted, so less likely to make the most of my sanity-time.

The Best News: It was an awesome weekend. Not only did Husband and I go on some hikes together, but I had plenty of visiting time with both sets of our parents, and I had plenty of writing time – even created a rough outline for the sequel to le manuscript. And Z got to do all the things almost-three-year-olds should get to do in the wilderness…go for walks with grandparents, read stories, eat huge breakfasts, search for the skink, watch Mommy have a panic attack over the Giant Red Spider of Doom, then watch her do it over again over the Giant Red Spider of Doom’s Clone BFF.

I have a lot to say about the Giant Red Spider of Doom, but I’ll save it for a day when I don’t have Mt. Laundry staring at me with its x-ray laser vision from the other room.

And the best thing for kids to do in the woods: play in the dirt with sticks and rocks.

5 Rules for Getting It Written

Posted on by Beth Hull

I wrote the first draft of my work-in-progress (nicknamed le manuscript) in a little over two months. I’m sure it’s not the fastest record on time, but it’s much better than my first manuscript (over a year to complete) and my second (clocking somewhere around eight or nine months). Experience has something to do with it, but for me, it helps to have some rules.

You can do something with assigning word counts to different stages of the plot, like Anne Greenwood Brown describes in her blog post that inspired this one, “Kicking Out a Fast First Draft.” What I did was a slightly-less-insane version of NaNoWriMo, a goal of 1200 words per day. My friend Seven organized it, and we and a few other writers encouraged each other to go, go go!

Not all of us finished our drafts. Part of what helped me was I was already somewhere around 15,000 words ahead, because I’d started drafting le manuscript in February, then gave it up in March when I realized Manuscript Numero Dos needed some serious help (it still does). But I got le manuscript done, and will now be revising it for the next 86.92 years.

Here are some rules that helped me reach my goal:

1. A Writing Schedule Is Your New Best Friend. This was easy at the time, because Z was still taking her naps (this is a blog post for a different day). The rule was: I pick up my blank book and work on that draft, as soon as she goes down for her nap.

2. A Back-Up Writing Schedule Is Your Second Best Friend. If, for some reason, I got distracted by the scrub jays in the back yard, or the way my pinky fingernail desperately needed filing, or how that spot on the wall kinda-sorta resembles an ex-boyfriend’s nose… If I didn’t make 1200 words during Z’s nap, I had to finish them up after she went to sleep that night.

3. Clean Houses Are For People Who Don’t Write. Or who write, and have maids. Or who write, and have older children they can make into their chore slaves. I did whatever household chores I could while Z was awake. She really loves to “help.” That’s right, Z, washing dishes is FUN. Never forget it, ’cause this is just the beginning, baby.

4. Do It On Paper. My Paperblanks journals are the bestest ever. You know why? No wireless internet. No Mahjong Titans or other tempting solitaire games. No wireless internet. No lights to irritate the eyes after prolonged exposure. No wireless internet. I recently read a blog post, How to Get More Done by Pretending You’re on an Airplane. It’s true. The most writing is done distraction -free. Twitter, lately, has been hearkening to me like a sadistic siren, and I don’t even like Twitter. I don’t. There. I said it. Now every time I try to log on they’ll tell me Oops! they’re over capacity.

5. Outline It. I’m way too much of a control freak to just start writing. I also adore lists and bullet points. So I come up with a rough idea of where I want the story to go and how I want it to get there. This doesn’t mean that I know all the major players right away. This doesn’t mean I ignore tempting paths – I take them. Having an outline keeps me going because I don’t have to chew thoughtfully on my pen while deciding what should happen next. One of my critique partners, Jo, has a good post on creating an outline (click here for that), although I get by with a bullet-point synopsis.

Like Anne Greenwood Brown says at the end of her post, there’s no way she’d share her first draft with anyone, not even her mother. I agree. The first one is total trash. If anyone has tips on how to revise a novel in two months, do share. As things are going, I only have about 86.33 years left of revising le manuscript.

There’s probably more, but I’m off to the woods for some mosquito-slapping, bear-dodging, holing-up-in-my-cabin-and-writing adventure. See you Wednesday.

Writing Prompt: Found Letter

Posted on by Beth Hull

Recently I started following the YA Muses blog, after I met Katy Longshore at a local get-together. The prompt is this: “At a used book sale, you purchase a leather-bound volume. At home, you thumb through the pages and an old letter tumbles out. What does it say? Write the letter.”

Here’s my response to the prompt.

*

I knew you would find this letter if I hid it here, among the books you call friends. You can’t look at a book without picking it up, thumbing through it, getting pulled into story.

You call these books “friends” and I imagine your surprise when one of them betrays you with this note.

Because the stories are the problem. A woman obsessed, you cannot stop. You paused briefly to give birth, but before your daughter was even weaned, already the pen, the paper, and the book were there, open before you while she slept at your breast.

No one needs to tell you these years are fleeting. You watch them scream past, measuring them in unsellable manuscripts, pausing to breathe and scream back only if something, or some little person, dares to disrupt your solitude, silence, sanctuary.

The guilt of the time you take for your failings is heavy indeed. No wonder you take photographs, evidence of what time you do spend with her, hoping that those frozen memories will be enough to convince her, when she’s older, that everything you did, you did for her. That it was always about her, never you.

Let me tell you a secret: the dedication at the beginning of your manuscript – published, unpublished – will never be a substitute for you.

Put down the pen, and play with your daughter.

She’s a Maniac, Maniac on the Floor

Posted on by Beth Hull

There’s a very good reason my parents didn’t name me Grace. The reason became clear in ballet class when I was six, and the instructor kept having us count to eight while we lifted our arms in (not-so) graceful arcs, and then count to eight as we lowered our arms in (not-so) graceful arcs. I assume the repeated exercise was because we weren’t getting it. Or maybe that was just me.

“I know how to count to eight. I want to leap and bound across the stage! In one of those sparkly frilly skirts! I want to be a ballerina right now. I’ll wear diamonds.”

I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t name me Patience, either.

I love to sing, and whenever I see a musical, I wish I could sing and dance together. It’s been my “wild” dream – the one I know will never come true. I think everybody needs one of these wild dreams, if nothing else than for entertainment when life isn’t treating you kind. Got a sick toddler you need to rock? Hum “Memory” from Cats and picture yourself slouching rhythmically under moody stage lights. Waiting in line at the DMV? They don’t have to know you’re smiling because you just nailed “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago and the audience is going wild. Long drive through Nevada? No way – you’re belting out “Popular” from Wicked and You Are a Star, Baby. Wearing diamonds, of course.

But none of that actually involves, you know, dancing. When my brother introduced me to Just Dance 2, I fell in love, then stole my mother’s Wii and bought my own copy of the game. Now, not only do I get to dance, I get immediate, objective feedback. And I can compete with my brother (and lose every time), which is always fun.

Favorite dances:

  • “Rasputin” by Boney M.
  • “Baby Girl” by Reggaeton
  • “Call Me” by Blondie
  • “Jump” by Studio Allstars (not Kris Kross? But it sounds just like them. Weird)
  • “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha
  • “Iko Iko” by Mardi Gras
  • “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne

I’ve only hit myself in the head with the controller a couple of times. Fine, maybe three or four times. Like I said, my name is not Grace. I haven’t actually knocked myself out yet, so I’m not too worried about it.

Z occasionally joins in. She’s “Baby” in the photo above, with 18 points. (She dropped the controller and found something better to do in administering injections to her stuffed animal friends.)

So I can sweat and be aware of every excruciating minute, or I can have fun and suddenly realize that my heart rate is up and I’m panting and sweating.

So. Jillian Michaels? Or a dancing video game?

Oh, daddy, I choose to dance. Even if flailing about with the controller occasionally bruises my forehead.

Where She Went by Gayle Forman

Posted on by Beth Hull

The set-up: Adam’s got his rock star career, celebrity girlfriend, a world of fans – everything he ever dreamed of…except Mia.

Main character’s goals: Although Adam’s ultimate goal would be to have Mia back, what he seems to be reaching for is closure, because he doesn’t believe it’s possible to get back together with Mia. Also, his goals have a lot to do with avoiding the other members of his band, with whom he used to be very close and now, not so much.

My reaction: Okay, I’m going to take off my nice gloves here, and say that I really would have preferred the story from Mia’s point of view. I fell in love with her in If I Stay, and was less than thrilled to start reading Adam’s voice all of a sudden (I try not to read the blurbs before I start a book). However, if the book were told from Mia’s point of view, it would no longer be Adam’s story, it would be hers, and it wouldn’t be the same story at all.

I will say, for what the story is (i.e. Adam’s, not Mia’s), it was done well, with all the emotional resonance and rockstar anguish you could hope for.

Of interest to writers: Is everyone else disappointed when a sequel is told from a new perspective? I can think of a few where I was disappointed. Are you ever tempted to write a sequel from a different character’s POV? Although I’m not ready to draft the sequel to my current work-in-progress, I’m thinking about it, and one side character in particular is shouting that she wants a starring role.

Bottom line: Not Mia’s story.

Reminds me of: Jane by April Lindner