Snacking and Writing

I read this great article/cartoon a few years ago from the New York Times called Snacks of Great Scribblers by Wendy MacNaughton.  MacNaughton is an illustrator and artist that is based out of San Fransisco. 

Illustration by Wendy MacNaughton

It is what writers eat while they are writing and that is pretty neat.  Lord Bryan drank vinegar, F. Scott Fitzgerald ate canned meat from the tin and apples, Walt Whitman ate oysters and steak for breakfast, and Emily Dickinson snacked on her own homemade baked bread. 

The closest to my snack habits that I believe I have is to Michael Pollan who drinks pu'er tea and roasted almonds, but I drink just general American black tea, though I do enjoy Chinese tea, and usually pistachios.  But I eat almonds every so often.  Vendela Vida snacks on pistachios while writing so I am close to her snacking habits also.

I will also drink green tea, water, and ginger ale.  I actually really do not eat food while writing, but I drink a lot.  I usually take a break to eat meals.

I thought the article was fun and interesting.  What do you all like to snack on and drink while writing?

Revising Fiction II

I got feedback from my Creative Writing II class for my second installment of the book I am writing a while ago.  I just finished updating my piece. 

I knew when I posted it what was going to be the biggest problem and my peers pointed it out.  Too much back story and exposition.  Another big point my peers made  was "Who wants to go to a club to celebrate their birthday and sob about how messed up their life has been?"  Yep, that is what I did!  I went all emo and stuff.

Telling myself a joke:

-Brooke, would you like an emo cheese cake?

-Why would I want an emo cheese cake, Brooke?

-Because it is self cutting just like emo grass.

When I was writing my second submission to the class, I made a big mistake.  I forgot that if I wanted to write a happy scene I had to be in a positive mood.  I used to know this rule about myself, but forgot when I took a break from writing.  I can always write sob stories, but happy stories, I need to be in the right mind set.

So with that in mind, I re-wrote when I was feeling positive and spread my heroine's back history throughout the book.

I added more detail to the bar because it did lack description as my peers pointed out.  I also added a smell of typical club funk when the protagonist walks into the club.  I also make sure that the conversations stayed on point for the most part and did not jump around as much.

People said there was a lot of blushing, so I did a word find, and guess what?  There was a lot of blushing going on.  So with the word finder I found where all the blushing was and changed more than half of them and kept a few.

As to my main character being sweet and innocent.  I never meant to portray her like that, but I want people to take the characters as they will and form their own opinions.  Yes, I want to try and portray her as a nice person who can be considerate and responsible.  When I envisioned her, I envisioned her as an average American.  I thought some of her positive qualities could come from the fact she is a normal person who has made mistakes and has had experience in life.

How many people did you know who got arrested, especially in high school and for dumb stuff?

How many girls in high school got called a slut whether they deserved it or not?

I am keeping her back story as is right now, but I overhauled the chapter that had all of her back story in it.  Hopefully it will not feel as a much as shock with the re-write.

Thank you for the feedback everyone!  It was a help!

Creative Writing II Class

 Love Dr. Seuss!

My Creative Writing Class II class has been a blast to take.  I not only enjoyed the class, but I also enjoyed the people in the class.  I have been in writing classes before, but I found this class to be the most constructive and gratifying writing class I have had.

I was able to get to know everyone in the class, and everyone had a wide range of opinions and tastes.  Everyone worked hard and gave good constructive critiques of not just my work, but of their peers.

We did two critiques almost every week and would read ten to thirty pages for each critique and had to write 500 pages.  Being the long winded person I am, I almost always went past that.  I like the formula that we had to do our critiques in.  We started with something positive.  Things we liked about the story.  If we had a problem with the piece, we had to suggest ways to fix the problem.  Then we would talk about pacing, structure, the point-of-view, the target audience, who the piece would alienate, and so on.  When I critique people's work in the future, I plan on using this formula.

In class, we had to publicly tell our opinion of the piece we were critiquing.  Yes, I was nervous at first, but we did not have to stand in front of the class to do this.  And once you have done this a few times, it got a lot easier.

And no one in our class was ever like:

Love you, Mr. Ramsay, but I would never want to work for you
or get a critique from you!  I'm a wuss like that!

Everyone stayed respectful and professional.  You know it is a good class when people are giving their opinions littered with humor and people are laughing.  I always find laughter to be a good sign.

Even though most of the class was taken up by critiques and submitting our own work -everyone had to submit at least ten pages of different work twice- we also talked about platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs, to get your work out there.

We also talked about the movement of Booktubing and Booktubers.  One of our classes, we all did our own Booktube viedo.  I did the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.  I said "heart-wrenching" a lot and I do mean a lot, but I love that book.

We also had a guest speaker, Ed Schubert, who talked about everything from e-publishing, editing to the writing process.  He is currently the editor of Orson Scott Card's online literary magazine *Intergalactic Medicine Show.*  We also had our teacher, Ms. Golda Fried, talk about her own writing experience and how it was like her to get published.  She has written a novel and a book of short stories called Nellcott Is My Darling novel and Darkness Then a Blown Kiss stories.

We also talked about having other people talk about and plug your works.  :D 

We also had to create our own blog, and well, blogged.  We have had a lot of chances to write in class of not just our own work and our critiques of others, but with blogging.  We also had to edit our work from the critiques and write a sample query letter.

Thumbs up with all the practice with writing we had to do.

I will try to keep writing on my blog because it is good practice with writing.  I just have to think of topics that I can write on.

So, overall I enjoyed the class and everyone in it!  I will miss you all!

Now to answer Ms. Fried's questions of my plans for my writing future:

I wish I could have written more during class, but I always wished I could have.  I believe my writing output will be much better with not having to write papers for other classes.  I plan on continuing writing in the future.  I want to continue to practice writing even if its not for a book or for a short story.  I would like to finish writing my book, Harper's Winter Vacation.  If I do finish writing my book, I would send out query letters to agents.  It was not hard to find agents and publishers out there, especially ones that I liked.  The true question is whether I will be picked up or not.  If I do not get any bites, I plan on epublishing my work, like maybe on Create Space.

Schools Kill Creativity?

I had to do a forum post for my hybrid class of Children Development II.   As from the look of my post below and past blog posts, I can be rather long winded.  But since I am taking this Creative Writing II class, I decided to share my post since it was on the wonders of creativity.

Sir Ken Robinson's big point of Schools Kill Creativity is that creativity is just as important as learning how to read.  Creativity is squandered by today's standards.  Creativity is part of being human and one of our most extraordinary gifts.  We have no clue what the future holds.  Children have an extraordinary capacity for innovation.  Yes, I am summing up some of his points.

I loved his stories, especially the one about the teacher and the six-year-old girl.  It sounded like a joke, but I could so see it happen.  The teacher asks the girl, "What are you drawing?"  The little girl said, "I'm drawing God."  The teacher responded with, "But no one knows what God looks like."  The little girl responded back, "They will in a minute."  That made me laugh.  The one with his son also made me laugh because frankincense does sound like "Frank sent this." 

But his whole point is that children will take a chance even if they have no clue where to go with it.  Children are not afraid of being wrong and making mistakes.  Creativity comes from the fact of people and children taking risks   With time they are taught, mistakes are bad and wrong and children and people become afraid to take risks.

He believes that the creative arts are just as important as any subject.  Almost anywhere in the world, people value mathematics -I think he meant to put science somewhere in here also- and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom is art.  He says this is due to the Industrial Revolution, though it helped standardize education, but also made getting a job a priority-"Don't do that because you won't get a job"- and we see intelligence is shaped by academic ability.  Children and people are geared to go to get a higher education, but people can also feel deterred since they did not get the right grades in school.

He believes that we need to adopt a new outlook on human ecology where we need to take a new view on how we look at intelligence and how we educate our children.  We need to embrace creativity, imagination, and educate their whole being.

I actually agree with him.  I think a lot of early education programs have the right idea already.  I have heard more than one of my GTCC Early Education professors say that they wished the later grades taught more like the early education programs where the whole child is embraced.  I think the type of education and how we look at intelligence that Sir Robinson is talking about will embrace all types of different intelligences of the child and of many people.

Publishing House

So, I am going to look at five big publishing houses and give my impression of them.


Little, Brown and Company:

Little, Brown and Company is having their 175th anniversary, which is really freaking cool.  I was greeted by a Thomas Jefferson quote that says, "I can not live without books."  I can fully agree with that.  I was also greeted by an advertisement of J.K. Rowling new book, the Causal Vacancy.  It made me go "Ooo! Love her!"  So they have published fiction and non-fiction with one of their writers being Louisa May Alcott who wrote Little Women.


Penguin Group:

Penguin Group is one of the largest English-language trade book publisher.  Theodore Roosevelt joined G.P. Putnam's Sons, which one say would become the Penguin Group, as a special partner.  He published several books with them.  How cool is that? 



Harper Collins Publishers:

Harper Collins Publishers is a publishing company that is located in New York City.  I found a website that said they were established in 1817 and made Mark Twain a household name.  They also made one of my favorite authors a household name also and that is Kim Harrison.


Random House:

Random House says that it brings you the best in fiction, nonfiction, and children's books.  Random House successfully defended in court the U.S. publication of James Joyce's Ulysses, which set a major legal precedent for freedom of speech.  It also publishes the Webster's Dictionary.  Who doesn't like a good dictionary?


St. Martin's Press:

St. Martin's Press is apart of Macmillan.  From the Macmillan website, they say that "Palgrave Macmillan is a global crossmarket publisher. Palgrave Macmillan’s trade list is comprised of serious non-fiction representing the best thinking and research in the core areas of Politics, Business and History along with Current Affairs titles across a range of subjects."  Their website has a clean looking setup.


Conclusions:

It is hard to compare and contrast all these publishing houses.  They all have sweet histories and individual and nice websites.  They each have their own niche, followers, and style.  I say each to their own.  I would go with any of these publishing companies if they would take my book and get it out there.

If I could choose though, I would first rule out St. Martin's Press due to the fact I am writing a fiction piece and non-fiction being their thing. All the others have urban fantasy and romance, so it was hard to narrow it down.  To help narrow it completely down, I picked one of my favorite authors, Kim Harrison, and looked up her publisher.  So if I had a choice, I would go with Harper Collins Publishers.