Crafting The Second Story by Jessica Haight & Stephanie Robinson (Guest Post)

Planning on writing a sequel or expanding your story into a series?

Here are a few tips we’ve learned while working on Fairday Morrow and The Talking Library, the second book in the Fairday Morrow series- coming this October!

The Overall Picture:

●      Remember to weave in the backstory! It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised about what you assume readers will remember about the places and characters. Plus, the new readers will need to be filled in.

Tip: Finding a balance for how much backstory you include is important, and that’s why securing a good developmental editor is key. 

●      Scene setting is critical. Pulling returning readers back in, and giving new readers the experience for the first time is the goal. The Begonia House has lots of nooks and crannies, which give it depth and character, so keeping continuity for the second book was challenging, but also very satisfying and fun. Who wouldn’t want to re-visit a spooky old victorian house packed with secrets and magic! :)

○      Building the new world of The Talking Library into the foundation of the the Begonia House was hard work, but in the world of story, anything’s possible. When you let your imagination loose, you might open a whole new can of worms and not even know it. Letting ideas flow, even if you wind up tossing them, is part of the process of crafting the scene- like shaving down the story to reveal its face.

Tip: We set up an “Information Dump” file. This is where we put all the good sentences we write after we spend hours getting them just so, then decide to cut them. Again, a bit painful, but part of the process. Sometimes, we can fit them into another spot where they’ll work better. The less you are attached to the specific sentences, and the more you are committed to the whole picture of your project, the easier it is to let go.

●      Keep your clues organized! In our case, the first mystery in The Secret Files of Fairday Morrow (book 1) ties into the second case the DMS (Detective Mystery Squad) tries to solve, so there were a lot of pieces to fit into the puzzle, and keeping the clues straight was important. Having consistent details is what pulls together story magic.

Tip: We collaborate using Google Docs to organize our writing. It’s a great tool for authors. It’s easy to share ideas and keep the manuscript in order.

Writing the sequel, or the next book in the series, is harder than the first book because you need to paint a clear picture of your characters and past book(s), but you also need to keep everything fresh while introducing new ideas. Organization is the key! Putting the final touches in place will be a reward and although it doesn’t come easy, it will be worth it.

Are you working on a second book or working on a series? We’d love to hear your thoughts and tips. :)

Happy writing!
~Jess and Stephanie

Connecticut Authors, Jessica Haight & Stephanie Robinson

The Secret Files of Fairday Morrow

Middle grade mystery for ages 8 and up

Pick up a copy!

Fairday Morrow and The Talking Library

Book 2: COMING THIS OCTOBER!

Catch a clue at fairdaysfiles.com

Follow the DMS on Twitter: @DMSfiles

Find Fairday on Facebook

 Fear not the unexpected.

Anything’s possible.

All the Many Kinds of Musics, by Anne Nesbet

I've been thinking a lot about music recently--and also learning how to think a little less, as I music a little more. Here's how that goes:

When I was a kid, my life orbited elliptically around two centermost things: books and music. I loved belting out folk songs in made-up harmonies with my sisters in the back seat of the car. Then came actual real music lessons (on violin! and piano!), and I discovered that learning to practice with a metronome (a Heathkit metronome! which I built myself with my Dad!) made me feel serious and grown-up, and I spent hours working through pieces line by line or measure by measure, following super strict rules: three-times-in-a-row-perfectly to move the metronome speed up one notch. Any error moved you back a notch--no mercy. I discovered I really liked the discipline of this; it was (I see in retrospect) almost a kind of meditation: a practice practice.

BUT! Although I became a decently competent musician in some ways through my metronomic practice, there were gaps in my music life. I mean, enormous huge gigantic gaps, involving perhaps the heart of the whole "music" thing. Playing a page of Beethoven without missing any notes is nice, but what do you do if music starts happening around you, and there isn't a score, and you haven't had a chance to practice?

In college I made a friend who played the concertina--a wilder, more portable relative of an accordion--and she introduced me to contradance tunes, to jigs and reels and waltzes. My sister, who was and is a real violinist in every sense, played the fiddle part, and my job was the piano. But here's where things got interesting for my rigid, metronome-trained self: the job of the pianist in a string band is not to "play the music" as written, but to play everything NOT written!

What do I mean? Well, here's the music for a traditional old tune called "Over the Waterfall":

That's the melody line, and the fiddle and the concertina got to do what they wanted with it. My job was to get us into a good rhythm, figure out chords that sounded cool with the tune, and get a nifty bass line going--all on the fly. It was terribly hard at first--and then it became exhilarating. I was learning to let go, learning to improvise.

I still had much, much more to let go of, however. Let's switch instruments for this next part of the story: let's bring out the fiddle.

I have played viola or violin in orchestras most of my life, and I've learned to be pretty good at sight-reading and playing the notes and so on. Not bad. But what about, you know, playing other sorts of music? What about bluegrass and pop songs and and and?

My secret shame from childhood on has always been that I don't know the right songs. I have never known the right songs. "Popular music" was absent from my childhood: we had one album from the Beatles and one Grateful Dead record (almost by accident), and that was it. I have a bad memory for pop songs. But friends, I'm here to tell you that we shouldn't let bad memories and lack of knowledge hold us back! The music's playing--jump in, jump in, jump in!

In my case, my musically courageous and gifted friend Jayne invited me to come jam with some buddies of hers. We are the most motleyest of bands! Tuba, ukuleles (plural), guitar, toy piano, kazoo, voice, jar of dried beans, banjo, accordion, bass, and fiddle! Here's a photo from last night's practice (unfortunately missing the Tuba, who was out of town):

Now these people are all infinitely cooler than I am, and they know, seems like, every cool song ever written. There isn't sheet music at all for the songs we play, and guess what? IT DOESN'T MATTER. It turns out that if I let go properly of my hang-ups, I can noodle my way around any song, any kind of music. And there is nothing more wonderful.

My new book, coming out early in 2018, is called THE ORPHAN BAND OF SPRINGDALE, and it tells the story of a motley band--French horn, ukulele, and bean jar--inspired partly by my mother's hardscrabble but horn-playing Maine childhood and partly by all the wonderful people who have taught me and are still teaching me to let go of my sheet music and jump into tunes that are (as my characters might say) "as real as jam."

Needless to say, this isn't just about music. Writing, too, benefits both from our learning the rules and from learning to let go. "Over the Waterfall" with all of us, again and again and again!

p.s. The cover for THE ORPHAN BAND OF SPRINGDALE is going to be revealed this coming Monday (July 31st) on Betsy Bird's Fuse#8 blog (http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/), so give it a look! You'll see some lovely motleyness there, I do believe.

Beyond the Numbers: Finding My Path to Writing (Guest Post by Karen Pokras Toz)

I am not one of those people who always knew they wanted to be a writer. In fact, growing up, I probably wanted to be everything but a writer. I was a numbers person (still am, really). While others signed up for writing classes in college, I took advanced math classes … by choice … for fun … and they were.

I had always believed you were either a numbers person or a writing/creative person. Clearly I loved numbers, so I deducted (mathematically and statistically speaking, of course) that writing or any other form of creativity was not my thing.

But something happened on this crazy journey of life. An adult story popped into my head. It happened twenty years ago. I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away. Then, I tried to write it, never getting through more than a paragraph or two. At each attempt, I would tell myself I had no business trying to write and would promptly put my notebook back on its shelf while returning to the comfort of my numbers.

For ten more years, my story sat, nestled in the back of my brain, but never far from my thoughts. In my heart, I felt I would be missing out on something huge if I let it go. The trouble was, I didn’t know what that something huge was or even how to try to find out. I decided to give it one more try. So I wrote – and I wrote – and I wrote. I couldn’t stop. Without any explanation, I had suddenly become the Forrest Gump of literature. Of course, I thought what I had written was pure brilliance. I would obviously become the next J.K. Rowling of the adult fiction world.

At a neighborhood party, I met a woman, who was a writing coach. She mostly worked with high school students on their college essays, but she offered to give my book a read. The results were worse than dismal. It seemed my masterpiece was not quite the best seller I had imagined. Not even a tiny bit close.

However, she found one redeeming factor. Buried within her many, many not so flattering, yet constructive comments, was a compliment about a flashback scene I wrote where my main character was seven years old.

“This voice is fabulous! I’m instantly brought back to my childhood. Have you ever considered writing for children?”

I hadn’t. And I’ll be honest, I wasn’t immediately on board with her idea. In my mind, this novel was to be a one and done, at which time I’d go back to my career in numbers. But when my two older children, who were nine and twelve at the time, expressed less and less interest in reading anything outside of their assigned schoolwork, (How could this be? I loved to read!) I heard my writing coach’s words again.

Going against my logical theory of numbers vs. creativity, I looked outside of my mathematical box and knew from that moment on I would be a children’s writer. I haven’t looked back since, although I still do love those numbers.

Did numbers play a factor in your writing? Share your story!

About Karen:

Karen Pokras writes middle grade fiction under the name Karen Pokras Toz. A self-proclaimed coffee-addict and lover of daisies, Karen spent fifteen years as a tax accountant, writing solely in numbers. 

When the voices in her head insisted she write in words, she discovered a passion for story telling. Since that fateful day, she’s published six middle grade titles, several of which have won awards. 

A native of Connecticut, Karen now lives outside of Philadelphia with her family. For more information, visit www.karentoz.com.

Karen's Middle Grade Series':

HIGHLIGHTS WRITING RETREAT: OR, HOW I REGAINED THE JOY by Mary E. Cronin

 

Back in the short, dark days of January, I was notified that I was the recipient of the Eileen Spinelli Scholarship at the Highlights Foundation, allowing me to attend a Highlights writing workshop. I want to tell you about it.

I was delighted that Eileen Spinelli found promise in my middle-grade novel pages and chose me for the scholarship. But when it came time to choose a workshop, I veered off the predictable path. I’ve been working hard on writing and revising two middle-grade novels for the past few years, and I decided to work on some other writing muscles at Highlights: picture book writing.

By the time the June workshop rolled around, I knew I had made the right choice. The twists and turns of the writer's life had drained all the joy out of my writing practice. Part of my brain (the novel writing part) felt over-worked, stale, and burned out. I needed badly to play, to have fun with writing. Returning to picture books, which is what drew me into the world of children’s writing in the first place, was just what I needed.

With author Darcy Pattison

Picture Books and All That Jazz was led by three dynamic picture book authors: Darcy Pattison, Leslie Helakoski, and Kelly Bennett. We workshopped picture book manuscripts and soaked up information about illustrations, page turns, word count, drama, character quests, and more. It was a long weekend packed full of information and inspiration!  

Making picture book dummies

Special guest presenters included Scholastic editor Natalia Remis and Boyds Mills Press art director Tim Gillner. The workshop took me out of my comfort zone and got me back into a more playful mode.

with author Kelly Bennett

Now, about the Highlights retreat itself. It’s a writer’s dream.  It had always seemed financially out of reach for me, so the scholarship was a true gift. I got to stay in my own little writer’s cabin (something I’ve always wanted to do!). 

Three healthy, beautiful meals are served each day, with coffee/tea/water and snacks on hand all the time. 

Did I mention the snacks?

There are opportunities for quiet reflection and writing, for walks in the woods, or for looking up from your laptop to see a deer prance by your cabin. It’s heavenly.

The Highlights Foundation offered several scholarships this year, and they will again—watch this space!  I recently found out that the artists-in-residence who will each choose a scholarship recipient are Laurie Halse Anderson, Kathy Erskine, Matt de la Pena, Denise Fleming, and Varian Johnson. I recommend choosing a workshop that will feed your creative spirit, refresh your writer’s brain, and perhaps build new muscles. It made all the difference for me.

On Getting Ahead of Myself (& Downward Dog) by Joy McCullough

When I was still acting, I loved the rehearsal process. Everything about it, from first read-throughs all the way through tech. What I did NOT love was the performances. It wasn’t a stage fright thing. I just loved the process, and not so much the product.

It was one of the reasons I quit acting—there really weren’t any gigs where you got to keep rehearsing indefinitely.

Writing novels, I’ve been working through the process v. product thing. Because there’s definitely something extremely product-oriented about writing a novel. And even more so if it’s going to be published. I mean, it will be a literal product. On bookstore shelves. People will hold my book in a way they never held my performances.

But focusing on the product makes it really easy to get ahead of myself. And there’s so much to be learned and gained from where I’m at right now. The moment I got my book deal, publishing friends started asking me about my plans for swag, or my plans for a launch party, or what I wanted the cover to look like.

But for the first time ever in my publishing journey, I wanted to be where I was without leaping on to the next thing. (Not that I’m not excited about those things—I am. Mostly. But what if I have a launch party and no one comes???)

Maybe it comes from my current spot on the publishing journey being so long-fought and hard-won. Maybe it’s all the yoga I do, and my teacher’s insistence that it’s not about making the perfect yoga shape, but about your intention and honoring yourself where you’re at. (“My teacher” sounds like I go to a swanky studio, but if you’ve ever been curious about yoga, might I introduce you to Yoga with Adriene?)

If you’re at an earlier stage of the journey, it might seem easy for me to appreciate where I’m at. Part of my overdrive of the last few years was always headed exactly here—getting the next book ready to query, so I could get the agent, and get on sub, and get the book deal. But any published (or to-be-published) author will attest that the ways to get ahead of oneself only multiply with each step along the way.

I don’t have magical wisdom on how to appreciate where you’re at, how to let go of making the perfect shape. Here’s what I do know: 99 times out of a hundred, the stuff I get ahead of myself about is not the actual writing. The writing is the process, the intention, the downward dog that’s maybe totally wonky and I’ve been doing it for a few years and my heels still don’t touch the floor, but I breathe through it and honor myself for showing up.

So as I sit down to write today, I’m going to try to breathe through that moment too. I invite you to do the same.

Do you get ahead of yourself in your writing/publishing journey? What helps ground you in the moment?

Cheers to the Copy Editors, the Unsung Heroes of Writing by Hilary Wagner

Definition: Copy editors begin the editing process by fixing any grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors. They also double check that names, places and organizations are spelled properly and that facts, dates and statistics are accurate.

As writers, we are very lucky. We get to live in wonderful worlds we create, places that defy reality and bring our readers somewhere we hold dear. What makes us even luckier, is having editors who work with us to make our stories shine. They help us ferret out plot issues. They take out the unnecessary. They approach us with the utmost honesty and are straightforward about changes that will only make the story better. 

All that said, there's special folks in this process that take it a step further. They are the highest quality of researchers. They are grammatical wizards. They have supernatural x-ray eyes. In essence, they perfect the imperfect. They are copy editors. 

I was very lucky to have a chance to work with one such wizard by the name of George L. Newman, who copy edited books two and three of the Nightshade Chronicles. Not only is he the nicest person you'll ever work with, but he truly cares about getting things right. Whether it was something as mundane as a comma or as detrimental as a line that could potentially throw off the reader, George found it. I can honestly say a copy editor is a prized possession to any writer. They allow us to write our story in our voice, but they make sure we are following those wonderful rules (and there are so many) of the English language. If we compare a book to a fine dining restaurant, a talented copy editor gives it that gleaming polish to contend for a Michelin Star.

The wonderful George Newman

I'd love to know others experiences on working with a copy editor and of course, give a big thank you to George Newman and all you copy editors out there. For someone like me, copy editing would be a grueling task and I'm so very thankful as a writer and a reader that you take the time to make those many books we all treasure glow with perfection. 

Of note, this was copy edited by my own eyes only, so be gentle. :)

CHEERS TO THE COPY EDITOR! 

Thanks for reading,

Hilary Wagner