Portable Writing Workshop

Posted on by Beth Hull

What you see here are seven stalkers that haunt me during Z’s nap, after her bedtime, and all those hours in between. They follow me to the front room: “Don’t read to your daughter. Instead, zone out and think about plot.” They gaze at me from the nightstand while I try to fall asleep: “Why are you sleeping? You’re wasting precious writing time.” They lounge next to me on the couch in a way that says, “We’re watching you. Pick up that Nintendo DS and you can forget having a breakout novel.” They join me at the table: “Are you going to eat that? Should your main character eat things like that? If she doesn’t want to, will you put her in a situation where she has to in order to, say, save the world? Just how important is ice cream to your novel?”

From the top left, the stalkers are:

1. Idea notebook for The Black City (working title of my current project/new manuscript). Please note (and admire) the bright Post-it tabs adorning the top. They divide the notebook into the following sections: Plot, Characters, Setting, Creatures, and Magic. The Creatures tab is so far kind of pointless. I might replace it with Ice Cream.

2. Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass. The gimmicky title turned me off, but after being stalked by the title through various literary agent and writer blogs, I finally decided to give it a chance. (Much like Jacob in the Eclipse movie. Cringeworthy and excessively stalker-ish on the outside, but sincere and…never mind. The comparison doesn’t work at all.) (Really. Forget the Jacob comparison. It never happened.) Another bonus for this book is that it’s a library copy, well worn in, and I can prop it open with one of my other notebooks and have two hands free for eating…ice cream.

3. Manuscript book. I hate sitting at a computer and trying to create something, so I write by hand instead. At the computer there’s so much pressure. Most of it is behind my eyeballs somewhere, but also in my neck and back a little. Plus our computer’s in the basement, and I don’t want to spend that much time down here if I can help it. Unless I’m reading blogs and eating ice cream.

4. Black pen. Used for pretty much all writing. Diary. Notes. Manuscript. So far ineffective as spoon for ice cream.

5. Blue pen. Essential to snarky comments in margins of manuscript, and note-taking. It’s a pleasing color, a welcome relief from the Black pen. Also not a spoon.

6. Red pen. For heavy-duty editing. Great also for recording Unforgettable Fabulous and Difficult-to-Convey Ideas of Inspiration (example: DUDE. Make her have crush on old guy) that may never come to fruition, but probably will because according to #2 above, a writer needs to make things as difficult as possible for her protagonist. The red pen is also not a spoon.

7. My current diary book. Full of notes on Maass’s book. And the occasional glob of melted ice cream.

Everything a writing mother needs to get herself through the day. Notebooks, pens, a gem-book on the writing craft, and…stupid Twilight comparisons. No! Ice cream!

It’s the Friday before Labor Day, which means I’m in the mountains somewhere, or on my way at least. I won’t have internet access to moderate comments until Monday, so if you haven’t commented before and your wonderful words of wisdom don’t show up right away, they will soon.

Oh, ALSO. My writing “pardner” Seven and I have made a pact to write 1200 words, six days a week, so by the end of October we’ll have finished the first drafts of our works-in-progress. Does anyone out there want to join up? If you’re interested, you can contact me through my contact page, or leave a comment here.

My Kid is a Genius Dot Com

Posted on by Beth Hull

Early on, I knew my child was a genius. It was evident as soon as she made her great escape and joined the rest of us On The Outside (also known as childbirth. There’s no poetry for it, really) (And if you think I’ve forgotten how painful that was, think again.)

But as I was saying. Genius. My daughter…oh yeah. She memorizes like, everything. She can identify a few different species of birds (her father’s influence, naturally). She can have meaningful conversations on the phone with her grandparents. So at her two-year well-baby (fine, well child) visit, I thought I would ask her doctor: “How do you know if your child is a genius?”

I refrained just in time. It’s such a cliche, I-think-my-child-is-a-genius. And why is it a cliche? Because we all think that about our kids! With good reason, too. I don’t know what the statistics are on just how many words they learn every single day, but it’s more than I’m learning, I assure you. [Mental note: add word-a-day calendar to Christmas wish-list.]

So, I shared some of the reasons my Z is a genius. Tell me about your kids (or your niece, nephew, or tiny friends). This is your golden ticket for Genius-Child Bragfest 2010! Share! Mom, feel free to share extra! (Just make sure it’s about me.)

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Posted on by Beth Hull

The long-awaited third book of the Hunger Games trilogy. I waited, waited, waited. I bought it the day it was released. I came home, read for two hours. The next morning I very luckily had my mother-in-law here to let me be a totally lazy excuse for a mom give me time to myself. I read for three hours, finished the book…
…and spent the rest of the day moaning about it.
But first, what worked: Collins handled the plot, with its many twists, exceptionally well. I cannot imagine trying to keep track of all the ins and outs of scenes and developments and secrets and subplots wrapped in agendas and sprinkled with yet more secrets. The themes of power and politics were fleshed out beautifully. The twist with Peeta, while not wholly unexpected, was done in a way I didn’t expect, which made for some fun and fascinating reading.
[Alert, danger danger, LOOK OUT – SPOILER ALERT!]
[And also warning: this is the place where I start sounding even less like a book reviewer, and more like a reader ranting.]
Blood and gore abound in Mockingjay, which doesn’t make it very different from its predecessors. What killed me, though, absolutely killed me, was the downer of an ending. Lives are completely changed by war, I get that. It’s terrible and sad and maybe Collins was right not to soften the way Katniss’s life changes. It was just so depressing, though. Maybe this makes me shallow, and that’s okay, but I kinda wish I hadn’t read it. I was looking for entertainment, a seemingly-impossible satisfying wrap-up to a love triangle, and the end of Voldemort, er, I mean President Snow.
In addition to those things, I got oodles of violence. I guess I could handle it in the first two books, but if this had been a movie I’d have walked out. (I sat through Sin City with a blanket over my head in the movie theater. Yes, I brought a blanket with me. Based on reviews I expected to be a little freaked out. I was a LOT freaked out and so glad I had a snuggly blanket to hide under. I thought of giving it to the nine-year-old girls sitting down the row from me, then thought it would be better used to strangle their father who sat with them, but I just cowered under it like the cowered [couldn’t resist] I am. But I digress.)
The problem with the violence in Mockingjay wasn’t that it was unexpected or too detailed. I guess it was the children. This sounds a little funny, I suppose. I mean, the Hunger Games themselves are fights-to-the-death of 12- to 18-year-olds. But there were little kids dying all over the place in this book, and even if you aren’t a mother I’m sure this kind of thing would get to you.
Then, of course, we get the piece de resistance at the end, the big explosion, the one that changes everything. It changes Katniss, her place in the war, her allegiances, her trust, and her relationship with Gale. Really it was a brilliant explosion for the plot. But it’s what turned me off to the whole book, just a few chapters from the end. It sounds funny, I know, complaining about violence against children in the Hunger Games books. It’s like saying, “I prefer my violence against children to be a little more light-hearted and smaller-scale, thanks.”
After the bombing, it was all different shades of bleak.
Despite the Harry Potter-esque epilogue tacked on to the end, I felt hopeless. Katniss was forever changed by the war, the people she lost, and the part she had in it all. How could she not be? I just, I don’t know. Some hope would be good, occasionally.
Overall, I think Collins accomplished what she set out to do: she wrote a piece of realistic science fiction that does not glorify war or killing. She kept Katniss true to Katniss’s self, she didn’t sell out (and that “she” can be deliberately ambiguous, referring to Collins or Katniss). She kept us all glued to the page, cheering and crying for Katniss.
Sigh. But mostly crying.
(PS: I don’t know what happened to my paragraph breaks, but I’m on my way out the door and don’t have time to mess with it. I apologize for the irritating lack of white space, and I’ll try to fix it later.)

Diary Books I Have Known and Loved

Posted on by Beth Hull

The topic today is diaries. I have more books than I care to count, and most of them are full (although I just bought two new blank ones when I was picking up my copy of Mockingjay).

So here are photos of the book covers and some of the pages, in all their glory, spanning over ten years of writing. Except for one, every one of these has been filled up with my (often pointless, repetitive, self-obsessed) writing (something like this blog, actually).

By the way, I had quite a few extra “excerpt” photos, chosen for their bright, colorful pages and/or illustrations. Upon closer examination, though, I found either embarrassing confessions or cruel, vindictive entries (usually about ex-boyfriends. Sorry boys).

What makes a good diary? An accidentally pornographic cover is always a plus (see black & white photo diary, above). My preferences include plain, quality paper so I can use a variety of pens and they won’t bleed through. Spiral-bound is easier to write in. I prefer somewhere in the ballpark of 6 by 8 inches, although some of my favorites are 8.5 by 11.

If you have a favorite diary, or diary preferences, I’d love to hear about them.

One Small Banana to the Head…

Posted on by Beth Hull

…One Giant Leap for Mommies Everywhere

So I promised I wouldn’t name any names. But I heard the greatest story last week, about a mommy who threw half of a banana at her husband’s head.

First, applause to the mommy, because the banana actually made contact (I would have missed and would have had to clean smeared banana off the microwave door).

Second, I in no way advocate the use of bananas as projectiles in domestic conflicts. And neither does Mommy X (like Madame X, get it? No? Whateva.) (Although, a banana isn’t the worst choice of things to throw.) (A tomato might be better. I’ve got ’em in spades, and some have gotten kinda soggy.)

Mommy X didn’t say why she got so angry she was driven to throw the banana. And it doesn’t matter. Haven’t we all been mad enough to throw a banana at some point? What’s important is that Mommy X was enraged. Enraged enough to hurl something at her husband’s head (lucky she was holding half a banana and not, say, cutlery). We’ve all been there, right?

The rest of the story, if you’re interested (and even if you’re not because this is my blog), is that the Banana’d spouse thought she was joking around at first, and he chuckled a little bit. Then he saw the look on her face and said something along the lines of, “Oh, I get it….”

So, confession time: have you ever been mad enough to chuck something at your Significant Other? Or (I can’t resist) – have you ever gone bananas?

What, you want me to go first? Fine. Yes. I threw my cell phone. But luckily Husband wasn’t actually at home. That was the problem – I was trying to call him at work and couldn’t reach him. I was very upset at the time, obviously.

I was rewarded with a new phone.

(For an interesting Parenting article, “Mad at Dad,” you can click here. And here’s the follow-up article.)