I Didn't Know That... by Carol Ferguson

 

 We are pleased to have Carol Ferguson as our Guest Blogger today.

I am a member of the Hillcrest Church Tattered Edges Book Club. We meet once a month at the church and decide on a book or two that we will read the following month. Our choices are meant to widen our reading experience and can be fiction, non-fiction, historical, theology or biographies.

We just finished reading I Am Malala and it has made a drastic difference in how I view women of the Middle East. We have also read Snow Child, Summer of Light, Friendship Bread and Orphan Train. Quite a variety and some that stretch our minds.

At the beginning of this year, however, our leader had a new idea. She came up with a list of books for us to read during the year, in addition to our monthly choices. There were no titles on this list, only topics. A few of her suggestions were: a book about slavery; a book written because of 911; a book about Canada; a book about a place you’d like to visit; a book written before 1900.

Quite by accident I found a book written before 1900 at a used book sale at the mall. I had never read and since it was only $2.00 I bought it. From my past experience with Charles Dickens, I expected it to be an interesting, fun and a fairly quick read. I was mistaken. Great Expectations

It was unabridged, three-hundred and eighty pages long and each page double the average number of lines. I found it hard to keep track of all the characters and the plot was involved and convoluted. Then I also kept stopping to consider if a word I had just read really was a word or if Dickens was playing tricks on his reading public.

Out of that book came this blog. Prompt: choose three words you didn’t know before, look up the meaning and use them in your writing. Now that I’ve finished the book it has been placed on my bookshelf with all my other books circumjacent (surrounding it). That word wasn’t even in my fat Gage Canadian Dictionary. I eventually found it in the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary. I am sorry to say that the reading of Charles Dickens Great Expectations has not given me a monomania (obsessive enthusiasm) for historical English literature. Perhaps in years to come I will confute (prove to be false) that statement as I continue to widen my reading experience.

My habit is to write a book report on each book I read and it was difficult to decide exactly how much of Great Expectations to put in my report. Which one thread should I choose that Dickens had woven through the entire story? What was Pip's Great Expectation? I have no idea so maybe someone reading this would please let me know. J

Learning through Writers' Organizations – Ramona Heikel

Although writing is a challenging task and the publishing world is in constant change these days, organizations are making themselves available to help writers at all stages and skill levels. Here I will list a few resources that have come up on my radar, most for children’s writing and for Canadian writers.

SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators – Canada West, is a great organization to help children’s writers. Although I didn’t join the organization, I contacted them a few years ago for information, and they invited me to meet the local group at their monthly meetings. This connection led to me joining a critique group that met at one of the members’ homes near me. I met with them for quite some time and found the camaraderie, their talent and honest feedback to be key in my growth as a writer.

Angela Ackerman, the organizer of that critique group, a generous mentor and an extraordinarily talented writer of young adult fiction, co-writes a blog for writers of all genres. Originally called The Bookshelf Muse, it is now called Writers Helping Writers, at http://writershelpingwriters.net/ . There you can find information and tips for various writing topics, and information about their books. The first one, which I was privileged to help launch, is The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, which helps writers find words and phrasing to describe—show not tell!—their characters various emotions, and is endorsed by James Scott Bell. Two subsequent books are entitled The Positive Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Attributes, and The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Flaws.

CANSCAIP is the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers. The page on their site I have used the most is their links page, which is a lengthy list of many helpful resources, ending with the list of Canadian children’s publishers, which has been guiding my own search for a book publisher. They also offer competitions, blogs, book trailers, mentorship, and information on library visits. The most fascinating part of their home page to me is that the organization has a traveling art exhibit of original illustrations created by 35 Canadian illustrators which have been published in children’s books.

Some more quick mentions for lack of space: the Canadian Children’s Book Centre is another organization that helps children’s writers and authors via their website, which includes their Get Published writing kit, and their listing of Canadian Children's Book Publishers Accepting Unsolicited Manuscripts. The Purple Crayon at http://www.underdown.org/ has been a long time favorite place for me to visit, and is run by a children’s book editor. Having taken the Children’s Writing course from The Institute of Children’s Literature, and having benefited from the great articles and information on their website for years before I took the course, I cannot help but point you to this quality organization. This was by far the best writing course I’ve taken, with excellent detailed feedback on everything I wrote.

I do not doubt that many of you have also found these resources useful and hope you will share your experiences, and also add some resources of your own!

Posted by Ramona
www.happilywriting.com

 

Never Stop Learning -- Steph Beth Nickel

How to confound your family in one easy step . . .

Curl up on the couch reading Lynne Truss’s Eats Shoots and Leaves and laugh uproariously while your family is trying to watch television in the same room.

“Only a writer,” you say. And you’d be right. Or an editor, agent, or publisher.

That scenario actually happened, by the way. Truss’s book is still one of my favourites.

And who else would read The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style cover to cover and get excited when he or she came across the wonderful reference tool by Kathy Ide titled Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors?

Would you consider an online subscription to The Chicago Manual of Style one of your best professional investments?

Those of us in the writing industry think differently than others, but you already knew that.

Two years ago, I sat in on literary agent Steve Laube’s continuing class at Write Canada. It was a great class, overflowing with so much insight. After all, he has been in the industry over three decades and has learned a lot over the years. One of the best takeaways was a list of books Steve considers must-reads for authors. I have been building my reference library based on his suggestions.

When I saw Steve at The Word Awards in June, I suggested he add Don McNair’s book Editor-Proof Your Writing to his list. I would encourage all fiction writers to get a copy of McNair’s book. It is well worth reading and referring to often. In it he shares 21 ways to almost instantly make your writing better.

I have quite a backlog of Web posts I would love to read by industry professionals like Jane Friedman, Jeff Goins, and Kristen Lamb. And I know there are countless others, many of which are tucked away in folders connected to my email accounts.

Stacks of books. Piles of back copies of Writer’s Digest. Websites galore. It can all be very overwhelming. But I have to keep learning, and so should you.

Life is all about maintaining tension (some say balance) and we must be careful not to spend so much time learning that we neglect doing. Writers must write. Editors must edit. Publishers must publish. (I’m sorry, but this just doesn’t work for agents.)

Whatever our pursuit in the writing industry – and elsewhere – we must continue to do what we do to the best of our ability while continuing to learn at every opportunity.

Here are six tips on how to expand your knowledge:

1. Each day look up at least one word you come across that you can’t readily define. Keep a list of words and their definitions and review it often.

2. Pull one of your favourite reference books off the shelf and re-read it.

3. Purchase one new reference book and commit to reading it before the end of the year. I would suggest Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors or Editor-Proof Your Writing.

4. Search the Web for webinars or blogs directed at writers. Read at least one post and/or “attend” one webinar per week – or one per month, if that’s more doable for you.

5. Be humble. If you think something is right but aren’t 100 percent sure, look it up in a reference work like The Chicago Manual of Style. (As I mentioned, the online version is extremely handy.)

6. Attend the InScribe conference in the fall.

What is your favourite skills development book or website?


Steph Beth Nickel invites you to contact her by e-mail . . . or visit her website,  blog or  Facebook page.

Choose Your Own Adventure by Sandi Somers

With school starting this week, I think back to the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books which my elementary school students loved. Readers could choose optional plot points leading to one of a number of climaxes and resolutions, or conversely to a dead end where they had to backtrack.

In this month’s prompts, you choose your own adventure: Tell us your best ‘How-To’ tips. | Take the Dictionary or other reference and select three words you don’t know and write a piece using those words. | What new resource has you wishing you would have had that when you first started out? | Inform your readers about the genre in which you write.

My first forays into “choose your own adventure” for this month’s blog post led me to brambles, mud holes and dead ends. Finally my meditation on the story of Joseph brought me to a satisfactory conclusion.

The Forward Moving Strategy of God

I have always been drawn to the Biblical story of Joseph, because it has spoken to me so often in so many circumstances. And as I’ve talked with other writers, I discover how his story has great implications for our writing.

Joseph had a dream. Two dreams. Dreams of greatness. Dreams of stardom. Was he aware that the source was God?

But then God took him on a circuitous route that contradicted the very idea of those dreams.

His envious brothers sold him to Ishmaelite traders and he landed as a slave in Egypt. There in Potiphar’s house he developed managerial and leadership skills. He also developed faith—deep faith—in God. But Potiphar’s wife accused him unfairly and he was bound chained and thrown into prison.

As a forgotten foreigner in Egypt, his life must have been at its lowest ebb.

He must have wondered how the evil done him could have any purpose.

He must have wondered if his prison time would ever come to an end.

Yet his faith in God grew and strengthened his character.

God was with Joseph, and these circumstances became the raw material out of which God was preparing him for his strategic role in Egypt. In time he was promoted to viceroy where he saved Egypt and his own family from famine. In Egypt, God formed his family into the nation of Israel.

Joseph’s story challenges us to look deeper into our dreams for our writing.

God is the source of our vision.

He wants to use us strategically in the lives of others.

He motivates us to move forward toward that vision.

However, circumstances may contradict our plans—health concerns, family disruptions, a major move—any number of situations may come up to prevent us from writing for a time.

At first they may seem like dead ends.

We may feel nothing is being accomplished.

We may even wonder if we have lost our way.

But God is the God of detours, and he gives us signposts such as this: “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left” (Isa 30:21 ESV).

So, like Joseph, let us be faithful in our current situation.

Let us yield our detours and our future to God.

Let us hold fast to any promises God has given us.

A day will come when we will look back and discover how even these detours have been part of the “forward moving strategy of God.”[1]


[1] Lloyd John Ogilvie. Lord of the Impossible. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1984, 55.