writerjenn

Good news for some of my writer friends:

The Mad Poets Society is having a "New Women's Voices" reading this Thursday evening, in Media, PA. Four women will read (including the marvelous Kelly Fineman), followed by an open mike.

One of the Kimberly Colen Memorial Grants (awarded by the family of the late Kimberly Colen and the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) went to Jessica Dimuzio, a member of my local writers' group.  I have been sitting on this good news for weeks, not knowing when the committee was responding to all the applicants, and not wanting to let any cats out of bags prematurely.  But since Jessica picked up her award last week at the New York SCBWI conference, I think I can congratulate her publicly now.  I hope to post more about her project in the near future, but for now I will say that her book was based on a real-life dog, and the dog went to NY too.  (She says he loved the limelight.)

A toast to my talented friends!

And now back to the world of revision, revision, revision . . . balanced by a bit of new first-draft writing if I'm lucky.  This new work is much darker than I had expected--it's leading me all over the place and I'm letting it, because with a first draft, I don't have much choice.  The choices come later.  Anyway, it's nice to have a new work peeking up like the head of a crocus, because the novel and the short story I'm working on are in those very late drafts where I'm working on exciting things like (brace yourselves!) punctuation.  And tweaking single words here and there.  

You can thank Kelly Fineman  for putting this topic in my head.  While reviewing PIANO STARTS HERE: THE YOUNG ART TATUM, she remarked upon the difficulty of working with a first-person present-tense voice.  (Which she thought Robert Andrew Parker carried off quite well in PIANO STARTS HERE, by the way.)

Her comment intrigued me because I like the first-person present, and I've used it myself.  I like the immediacy of it.  But thinking about this has put me onto a whole chain of thought about tenses, and the combination of person and tense.  Here is where my chain has led me:

We've all seen present tense used with first person.  Can you think of any examples where present tense has been used with third person?  Do you think it worked? 

When present tense works, why?  When it doesn't work, why not?

Pick up a novel or story written in present tense, and rewrite a paragraph in past tense.  What difference does that make?  Which version do you prefer?

Repeat above exercise with something written in past, changing it to present.

Repeat above two steps with your own works in progress.  Does it make you want to change the tense?

Just for kicks, try a couple of second-person exercises, one in present tense and one in past.  

So far, I've tried the past-to-present switch on a couple of books on my shelf.  For one of them, it juiced up the text, gave it even more energy.  For the other, it didn't improve things, and actually was a bit irritating.  I've done present-to-past and past-to-present switches on my own writing plenty of times.  Each story seems to make up its own mind about what it needs.  But I like having lots of tools in my toolbox.

The winds are howling, my windowpanes are rattling, and silvery clouds are gathering overhead. But spring is coming! I know because today I saw some of the earliest harbingers: snowdrops bowing their creamy heads, and witchhazel with its fruity-scented yellow stars. In this area, snowdrops and witchhazel are the earliest bloomers, getting a jump on even the crocuses. So, even though these blossoms are going to get their little heads frozen off tomorrow (projected high: 26 degrees F. Ouch!), the tide of spring will inevitably turn.

In other news, the authors at Author2Author are giving books away this week:

Monday – IT'S NOT ABOUT THE ACCENT, by Caridad Ferrer
Tuesday – SOMETHING TO BLOG ABOUT, by Shana Norris
Wednesday – THE SECRET LIFE OF A TEENAGE SIREN, by Wendy Toliver
Thursday – THE BOYFRIEND LIST, by E. Lockhart
Friday – LOST IT, by Kristen Tracy

The giveaway starts Monday, February 12th!  Pay them a visit to see how to win. Pay them a visit anyway, to read all about the various stages and emotions of writing and publishing, plus daily tips!

Finally, if you've noticed how slow the blogosphere gets on weekends, here's a Sunday feature you can count on: Quoteskimming over at Kelly Fineman's Writing and Ruminating.   In the interests of full disclosure, I will tell you she skimmed me this week, but I recommend the Quoteskimming feature (and Kelly's whole blog) regardless.  Today's gems include a link between writing and yoga, and the spirit of Jane Austen generally makes an appearance.

Once upon a time, I wrote poetry. First I was a child writing verses about the cuteness of kittens; then I was an adolescent dripping angst and dark imagery. Even after discovering the joys of prose, I still wrote poems. Especially when I was breaking up with someone. There's nothing quite as satisfying for a bruised heart as ripping a good, gut-twisting clot of poetry out of your soul.

Then something happened. Although I loved the short stories in literary quarterlies, I could no longer make sense of the poems. Three words in, I would flounder, clueless. I concluded there had been a revolution in poetry, a revolution that had left me behind. Unlocking poetry now seemed to require a password I didn't possess. So I dove deeper into prose, and reveled there for years.

I skipped over the poems in my literary journals. I never picked up a book of poems. Although I still jotted down poems during stressful times in my life--"therapeutic" poems fit for nobody's eyes but my own--I had officially given up on the form. My serious writing, the writing I polished and sent out, was all prose.

My reawakening happened gradually. After reading the works of Jack Kerouac, I was willing to try his friend Gary Snyder, who lit a spark with the poems of THE BACK COUNTRY. Those poems are like a good hike through a Northwestern forest.

Marge Piercy lit another spark. In her book, PARTI-COLORED BLOCKS FOR A QUILT, she discusses the craft of poetry, the elements of sound and meter and rhyme and imagery and how they work together. She shows drafts and revisions of poems, so the reader can see poems being "built." (I plan to discuss this book at greater length in a future post, because it's so chock full o' great stuff.)

I began to find poems I could understand. I began to appreciate the richness of poetic language. By this time, I had achieved a certain competence with prose; I needed to stretch a little, to keep myself fresh. So I took night classes in poetry at my local adult school. I approached poetry as a playful novice, an experimenter. I gave myself license to write poetry that was awkward and unpolished and amateurish, in the service of learning something. I was fortunate in my supportive teachers, Lynn Levin and Deborah Fries, who helped continue the demystification of poetry. I went to my local bookstore's poetry group. I started to use poetic elements in my prose.

My education continues via writer/blogger/poetry-guru Kelly Fineman, whose Poetry Friday posts are tutorials on the art, each lesson opening another door in the wall of the once-inaccessible castle. Best of all, her posts make poetry seem exciting and essential. It was her blog that introduced me to the whole concept of Poetry Friday, a weekly cyberspace festival that I've never joined until now, because I still consider myself "poetically challenged." But at least nowadays, I'm open to learning.

Next weekend is the Rutgers University Council on Children's Literature's annual One-on-One Plus conference. Though nostalgic for my own trip to this conference a couple of years ago, I am excited for my talented friends who were accepted this year: Colleen Rowan Kosinski, who writes contemporary YA novels with a supernatural twist, Jessica DiMuzio (accepted for the second time!), who writes nonfiction books based on her experiences in Africa, and Kelly Fineman, who's been working on picture books and poetry.

Applications are usually opened in late spring/early summer for this fall conference. If your application is accepted, you get to meet one-on-one with an agent, editor, or author who critiques your manuscript and talks with you about your career. Then you meet in small groups with other writers, agents, and editors for Q&A and discussion. But wait, there's more! Speakers on various aspects of the writing process, lunch and networking time . . . Truly one of the best conferences I've ever attended.

The mentor I had that year talked with me about developing the voice of my main character (among other things, he suggested keeping a diary in that character's voice . . . not to appear in the book, of course, but as a tool for me), and sharpening one of the conflicts in the book. All of which I did, and which made it a better book. In addition, I got to chat with other writers, editors, and agents, and picked up a lot of information about the publishing industry and the requirements of specific houses. And that year, we wrapped up with one of the most inspirational keynotes I've ever heard, courtesy of Joan Bauer , about lighting that fire and not letting rejection stand in your way.

So have fun, everybody!