I Survived Muskoka Novel Marathon 2012

Yes, I survived. More than that actually: I loved it! (MNM2012)

Imagine 72 hours to do nothing but write as much as you like. Heaven!! You could take time out to eat and sleep if you wanted/needed to. Meals were provided and prepared by and the lovely den mother Mieke, who even did our dishes afterwards (and didn't kick me out on the first day when I spilled my coffee).

On top of it all is knowing that while you’re there writing you're raising money for the YMCA Literacy Services. This will allow you to feel fine about ignoring your family for the whole time (because you get up before they do and you come home after they’re all in bed--heh heh. Thank you, family, for being so amazing and understanding.). And thank you so much to my sponsors. I'll be sending you individual thank you letters. All together the writers this year raised an astounding $14,572.50 last I heard.!!

I admit that I was a bit worried going in. I mean, me, write a novel? I wasn’t sure there was a story of novel length proportions in me. Okay, so I’m still not sure the story is worth anything but my amusement in writing it, but who cares at this point? I went in with an initial idea, and I came out with 60 pages written and a workable outline to keep going with. Here's my 60 page milestone ribbon (and note how there are others much bigger than mine).

For someone who writes at home in the (mostly) quiet it was scary to think about writing in a crowded room. But with the help of my iPod and some playlists it worked out just fine. I was focussed when I wanted to be and distracted when I wanted to be.

Susan Blakeney

The wonderful writer to the right of me was Susan Blakeney, who taught me that physically acting out things can really help you. And she is an amazingly prolific writer in that she STARTED AND COMPLETED her novel at the marathon. Wow.

Cathy Olliffe-Webster

The wonderful writer to the left of me was Cathy Olliffe-Webster, who is an amazingly brave and funny writer who demonstrated the power of perseverance because during the marathon she was able to write the ending of her novel--a goal which had alluded her in the past. Way to go, Cathy!

View beyond my keyboard

It was energizing to be with such a diverse group of writers, some of whom I knew going in and some I didn’t. I've definitely added to my "to be read" pile.

(LtoR) Kimberley Ann Sparks, Cheryl Cooper, Sharon Ledwith, Lena Coakley, Lori Twining

I didn’t submit my manuscript to the judges for the contest portion. Walking away with a huge chunk of a draft completed and a workable outline was reward enough for me. Thanks to Karen Wehrstein and Paula Boon and Dawn Huddlestone for all their work organizing the marathon. Check out the storify of the mnm Dawn put together: http://storify.com/MuskokaNovel/mnm-2012

Most memorable moments:

• Anne Millyard dropped in!
• Creme brulee from Spencer's Tall Trees--I went back for seconds
• Watching Sandra act out being very pregnant (thanks to a well placed pillow) and getting down to and up from the floor so Susan could see how that action would play out.
• The guy who stuck his head into a quiet room of writers writing and announced "It was a dark and stormy night--There, start with that." Groan. He was chased down for a donation.
• The three cats I narrowly avoided hitting on three separate drives to/from the marathon.
• Realizing it's truly astounding how many times some people stir their coffee before drinking it.
• The slurping, gushing noises of Karen's green tea thermos which she could not hear thanks to her noise cancelling headphones.

And some other random shots:

They provided all the essentials--earplugs, ibuprofen, antacids, bookmarks, and popcorn!

We all donated to the marathon to thank Mieke (in red) for looking after us all weekend

What a goody bag! Loved the pipe cleaners and playdough.

Susan decorated my water bottle and christened it "Swamp Water" 

Look at all those 10 page milestones people had!

Marathon Madness?

What have I gotten myself into? I must be mad. This weekend I’m participating in the Muskoka Novel Marathon. A whole 72 hours to do nothing but write. A novel. And I’ve never written one before. (I don’t think that fantasy adventure I started writing in high school should count, do you? Besides, I quit after about 2,000 words.)

I’ve always had some excuse to myself for not writing a novel even though I have plenty of half baked ideas. So the fact that I’ve committed myself to devoting three days to writing a crappy novel first draft scares me. Okay, I will have to sleep in there and I have to minus the time to attend my niece’s wedding. But that still leaves me a decent two and a half days. And I’ll be in a room full of other writers all doing the same thing! Will it be intimidating or motivating to see everyone around me writing away? I guess I'll find out.

But here’s the other great component to this event: we’re all raising money for the Simcoe-Muskoka YMCA’s literacy programs. All participants are asked to collect donations for the YMCA. Here is my Canada Helps donation page where online donations are accepted (if you take that as a hint or invitation I won't object) and you get an instant tax receipt.

Between my paper pledges and my online donation form it looks like I’ve reached my minimum fundraising goal. That makes me happy. Now here’s hoping at a minimum I can get some ideas flowing this weekend, and keep them flowing for the whole event and beyond. That would make me very happy. And maybe, at a minimum, I would prove to myself that I'm not mad.

Me, the Museum and Medieval Times

Before school was out, one late June afternoon I wrote this as my Facebook status:

Am in a school bus with 39 grade 4/5s in Toronto rush hour traffic and it's 30 some degrees and two plus hours home. Oh did I mention most of the boys bought swords at Medieval Times? My writing friends will understand I'm just callin it research. :)

I wasn’t kidding. Getting home from the trip was no picnic. It took just over three hours--an hour longer than it should have. Here’s a shot of the traffic through the front of the bus:

 But it was all worth it because

• I got to spend time with my youngest daughter and her friends 
• I love museums, so seeing a couple exhibits at the ROM was fascinating and made me realize I need to bring my kids back for a more in-depth visit
• I was quite serious about putting the trip down as research. I listened and observed and just absorbed the experience of being in grade four 
• and Medieval Times was just a lot of fun and made the kids feel like they really were at a king’s tournament. Plus it was air conditioned.

As if that wouldn’t make the day rewarding enough, I had an unexpected bonus.

At the ROM we took part in a special program. We donned cotton gloves so we could carefully handle actual objects from medieval times. ROM staff had grouped objects by theme at each table. My daughter’s table was full so I couldn’t sit with her, but there was a space at a table with a few boys. Turns out this table had a piece of chain mail, a knight’s spur, a rounded ceramic vessel that would have held Greek fire, and an odd tiny square piece of metal with intricate characters on it. Very cool.

I picked up the tiny square and looked at it closely-- it looked like it had Arabic lettering on it. The facilitator confirmed that yes, that's exactly what it was. I was holding an early Arabic coin. Wow! Here is a photo of the square coin. It was wrapped in a protective case.

The coin in its protective case.

This was my unexpected bonus because I’d just received the finished copy of an educational title I worked on for Crabtree Publishing called Arts and Culture in the Early Islamic World. I'd done lots of research but never actually handled something from that era or that part of the world. This makes book number twelve for me.

I was a bit flippant describing the journey on Facebook, but the whole day’s experience is one I count as excellent. More importantly, I think my daughter would count it that way too.

Bonus photos:

The hall at Medieval Times

The stadium at Medieval Times 

Two of the knights--boo! (We were to cheer for the Green Knight)

Scene Stealing Seagulls and SCBWI

Wow, what an experience at the SCBWI Canada East Niagara Falls retreat! Tons of talent, talk, and inspiration. Here's a bit of what it was like:

Keynote Quotes

"Story matters most." Emma D. Dryden, drydenbks, talking about all the many technological devices and platforms there are.

"Bring your props out before you need them." Kathleen Duey, talking about introducing physical elements or setting details to your reader when they're just insignificant details so you can bring them up again later when they become pivotal plot points.

"Think of voice as personality; the thing that stays with you." Nancy Conescu, executive editor, Dial Books for Young Readers, telling us she needs to see this in manuscript submissions she would consider acquiring or working on further.

"No more missing sock stories!" Tracey Adams, agent, Adams Literary, when asked what she does not want to see...but she did go on to say that anything can work if it works.

Most Memorable Moments

* Walking to dinner and coming across a bride and groom's photo shoot backdropped by the falls. But the wind was whipping the bride's hair and dress all up and around. Immediately, Kathleen Duey stepped up and suggested the bridal party, a group of mostly men standing idly by, form a windbreak by positioning themselves in front of the bridge and groom but out of the photo. They did and it effectively blocked the worst of the wind. Situation saved!

* Waiting to deliver Lesley Livingston to the group tour and snapping this photo as a seagull soared right towards me. Check it out:

* And downloading my photos to find some seagull snuck into my snapshot of Janis and Lesley. Scene stealer! Look at it there between their heads, bold as all get out!

Seagulls aside, in summary Jackie Garlick-Pynaert did an outstanding job of gathering the talent (which also included Patti Ann Harris, art director of Little Brown; author Kristin Clark Venuti; editor and author Lorin Oberweger; director and writer Roman White) and coordinating the conference.

I look forward to enjoying the new connections made at this conference for a long time.

Sky Circle

I was driving home yesterday when I noticed a peculiar contrail in the sky. Check this out:

It seemed weird to me that it was circular because they're usually straight. At least around here they are.

Then I came across this article thanks to Twitter about an air show happening further north and that planes performing in it would be flying over: http://www.cottagecountrynow.ca/community/southmuskoka/article/1369946

Ah-hah, mystery likely solved.

What did we ever do before the internet??

Save a Circ Clerk's Sanity

One common question I'm asked at the library is which of an author's books comes first...or next. You know, like if an author has a series or some related books that don't already come with "Book 1" or "2" or "Stupendously Super Series #3" stamped on the cover or spine, people want to know which one to read first...or next.

And I want to help them find out.

But I usually don't have a lot of time to do this because the person who wants to know is standing there at the checkout desk waiting. And there might be a lineup behind them. Yes, I can look at the book's copyright date. But sometimes an author will write a prequel, and I'd like to be able to pass that info along. The bigger problem with checking the copyright is I'd need to have all of the author's books there in front of me--which means leaving the front desk to go to the shelves or assumes the patron has brought a stackload up to the desk with them and none of the ones they want are already out on loan. Wading through holding or bib records is also a serious pain--you should see how many fields there are to scroll through for each book.

Or what if a particular author has several series' out, each with quite a few books in it (eg. Wilbur Smith)? You have to both sort which series each of the books goes into and then put the book in its order within the series. Searching Amazon.com, which often states book order for physical books, gives me too many results to wade through (movie adaptation, kindle edition, audio book edition, paperback edition, original edition, hard cover edition, etc.), especially for prolific authors, even if I refine the search. How long do you want to stand in line while I figure that out?

So I go for the author's website. Because they should be able to tell me pretty quickly, right? Sadly, I'm often disappointed.

Please, please, please, authors. Please, under the heading of "Books," clearly identify the chronological order in which your books should be read, and please identify which books are part of the same series.

Do this and circ clerks everywhere will be highly appreciative and, with sanity intact, be able to continue serving book lovers in our communities for a long time.

(Oh, and while I'm at it, you get bonus points for identifying a book title that's different in another country!!)

Brian Henry Bestseller Workshop

My lovely purple workshop notes

On Saturday I went to Brian Henry's How to Write a Bestseller workshop in Gravenhurst. I really enjoyed it. It was good to think at an objective or macro level about what makes a compelling story, a sympathetic hero, a realistic villain, and so on.

Of course, part of the workshop involved an exercise in writing. I must be the only writer I know who dislikes doing writing exercises at workshops. I'm not sure what's with me on that. Anyway, I have to say, once I got going I really did start to enjoy it. Maybe I'm just a little bit rusty because it's been awhile since I wrote longer narrative fiction (been writing short poetic prose lately).

It was truly fascinating to hear what some of the other writers had written for that exercise. As for my exercise, it sort of dovetailed with an idea I've been mulling over for a middle grade novel. My piece hinged on the content of a text message the hero was trying to conceal. I quite like that idea, but here's my problem: I have actually no clue what the content of that text message is. And I think it's kind of important.

So hopefully my brain mulls that one over for awhile. The workshop was a good kicker for me to begin thinking in a longer format than I've written up to this point. It's getting me to think about what I'm going to write for, oh, July's (whisper) Muskoka Novel Marathon in which I have to work on writing a novel for a whole entire weekend--eep! Nothing like a writer setting herself up for a huge and intimidating challenge...but it's also all in the name of raising money for literacy, and that's always a good cause.