Below are the most recent 17 friends' journal entries.

Friday, December 25th, 2009
ali_wildgoose	10:54p	Two hours of sleep and the baking of several pies later... Christmas was pretty great this year, despite the little detail that I'm still finishing up my last few knit presents. I didn't really ask for much in particular, so everything was a pleasant surprise. A giant new skillet! Stripey socks! A dress that miraculously fits like a glove without my having been there to try it on! And um.... ...t-the iPod touch I'm typing this entry on? Way to make my goddamn holiday, emsariel, seriously. *____* I think my Christmas present to myself wil be to play with it a little longer and then sleep for about twelve hours. And you know...rest my poor hands a little. .....s-so much knitting... ....ANYWAY! HOPE YOU ALL ARE HAVING A PLEASANT EVENING (and btw? app recs would be super swell <3 ) (5 hours |time suck)
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
halseanderson	11:24a	It's Getting Silly Around Here & Revision Tip 23 The Creature With Fangs Elfed yesterday. My Beloved Husband Elfed yesterday. Queen Louise Elfed yesterday. And I did, too. A most merry time, indeed! Revision Tip #23 I rarely have the image systems of my books in mind when I start writing. But by the end of the first or second draft, some image (symbol for Eng lit majors) has cropped up and I realize that I can riff on that symbol throughout the book to tell the larger story. In a subtle way, I hope. In SPEAK, it was the image of the tree. There was only one mention of it in the early drafts. When I realized the power of it, I wrote in all the art class scenes, and made the tree into a year-long project for her. WINTERGIRLS was interesting. The first paragraph of the first draft of the book was this: "The crows stalk me, wings folded neatly behind them, hungry yellow weighing my soft spots. They circle around me once, twice, three times, claws scarring the stone floor of the church. I curl up on the frozen altar. They flutter close, black feathers filling my mouth and eyes and ears." I really don't know where that came from; I just wrote it down, plus a bunch of other stuff. The reference to the "frozen altar" is what got me thinking about ancient religions and mythology, which in turn led me to ponder if there was a mythological story within Lia's story. Of course there was: the story of Persephone. That became a central image system for the book, with references to pomegranate seeds and the death that is winter, along with mother/goddess figure at her wits end, trying to pull her daughter back from the grasp of hell. (For the record - that opening paragraph wound up migrating to page 264. It fits much better there.) Is there a small detail in your draft that could be expanded into a central image system? (3 hours |time suck)
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
halseanderson	7:17a	The care and feeding of julenisse & Revision Tip #22 All work in the Forest today will grind to a halt as we enjoy the ceremonial viewing of Elf. And we might even make spaghetti with maple syrup. I got to thinking about my family's tradition of setting out rice pudding for the julenisse. Nisse have been around long before Christmas celebrations. English words that describe them as elves, or gnomes; I've seen "pixie," too. If properly cared for, nisse will watch out for your farm animals, your house, and your barn. If you don't take care of them, they will cause all kinds of mischief on your property. Nisse are low-maintenance creatures. All they require is a bowl of rice pudding (risengrød) set outside your door or in your barn on Christmas Eve. We've always done this faithfully and I think our nisse appreciate it. But as the sun was setting yesterday and I was lighting candles in honor of the solstice I realized that the nisse have been around a lot longer than Christmas celebrations. Ack! Have I been disrespecting the nisse all these years? They are ancient creatures... do they wait, forlorn, on the night of the winter solstice, their tummies grumbling, while the Big People go about their ignorant business? And when the pudding FINALLY shows up on Christmas Eve, do they call up the other nisse and complain? So last night I put out rice pudding for them. And I will again on Christmas Eve. You can't be too careful with nisse. Revision Tip #22 Are you sure that you've chosen the right point of view for your novel? Take your favorite chapter and rewrite from a different POV; shift from third to first, or first to third, or if you are bold and way smarter than me, experiment with the second person POV. Or.... (and.....) fool around with the tense structure. If your story is told in present tense, rewrite that favorite chapter in past tense. If you've written the whole thing in past tense, try out that chapter in present tense. What's the point of all this mucking around? It helps you see your characters and the Story from a slightly altered perspective. (4 hours |time suck)
Monday, December 21st, 2009
gregstoll	10:24a	stuck at work links This is a 70 minute video review of "The Phantom Menace" (some NSFW language). The voice is a little weird, and there are some weird offtopic bits, but overall it's entertaining and pretty spot-on. The bit at the end of Part 1 where he asks people to describe the characters in the original trilogy vs. the prequel is pretty awesome. 'Tis the season for cable company disputes. Here's Time Warner's take on the issue versus Fox's. I find it amusing that they think that setting up websites is going to lead to consumers reading both of them, weighing the facts, and deciding who to be mad at or something. Hint: I get my cable through Time Warner, and if all of a sudden I can't see shows on Fox, I'm going to be mad at Time Warner, regardless of whose "fault" it is. I better be able to watch Lost in February! The health care bill in the Senate passed a critical test early this morning and it looks like it's going to pass on Christmas Eve. Now to the conference committee! Heading out to Houston tonight. Happy Christmas! Current Mood: chipper (3 hours |time suck)
halseanderson	7:37a	Two Tips In One Day! Good Solstice, everyone! I feel like calling your main character Rudolph today. (Humor me.) Revision Tip #20 Don’t make it too easy on Rudolph. Your story should not be a tale of the desires of Rudolph. It should be the thwarted desires of Rudolph up until the very end, when finally, FINALLY, things go right, tho' not in the way he originally thought they would. For every desire, there should be an obstacle. Every step on the path leads to another detour. Review your manuscript and make sure that poor Rudolph runs into obstacles over and over again. You fiend. Revision Tip #21 1. Record yourself reading your manuscript aloud. The whole thing. 2. Listen to it with your manuscript in front of you (I am most comfortable with the printed-out version at this point.) 3. Pause whenever necessary to make notes on what needs fixing. This is when I find repeated words, awkward phrases and dropped plot points. 4. After a marathon listening session, go back in and finish all the repair work. (3 hours |time suck)
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
halseanderson	9:26a	Revision Tip #19 Beware of echoes and doppelgängers! Maybe I am the only writer in the world who suffers from this bad habit. It makes me crazy. I do it in every blasted book, no matter how hard I try to be aware of it early in the process and avoid it. I always create characters that are identical, both in their core characteristics and the purpose they serve in the book. (I may have mentioned this earlier this month, but it is such a big pain in my writing butt, I must rant about it again.) I spent all day yesterday and the wee hours of this morning extracting one of those characters from my book, and turning over many of his scenes to a different fellow who – I can now see with the blazing clarity of humiliating hindsight – should have been driving those scenes in the first place. It was a bloodbath, I tell you. How can you perform this radical surgery in your manuscript? 1. List all the characters. 2. Define – using only a few words – that character’s relationship to the main character. Examples: comic foil, trusted friend, villain, complication, love interest. 3. If (like me) you have two or more characters that serve the same purpose, get out a magnifying glass and sharpen your scythe. Is it possible to have one of the characters take over scenes from the others? Example: in the early draft of SPEAK, the character who is now called Heather was two separate girls. Each girl was a “sort of” friend of Melinda for a few months. Each friendship died. Their personalities were a bit different, but not in a strong enough way to affect Melinda’s interactions with them. By melding them together, the story was cleaner. I am crossing my fingers that the work I am doing this weekend will have the same effect. (9 hours |time suck)
Friday, December 18th, 2009
halseanderson	8:48a	Christmas Memories & Revision Tip #18 Sometimes people forget that I wrote PROM because it is not exactly a depressing book. In fact, it's pretty funny, if I do say so myself. (If I had dread, depression and death in all of my books, I would not be a healthy person!) So it is with great joy that I announce that PROM has been nominated to the 2010 Popular Paperbacks List, in the "Change Your World or Live to Regret It" category!! School Library Journal has posted their annual collection of Christmas Memories written by children's authors and illustrators. This year's essays were written by me, my buddy Deb Heiligman, Barbara McClintock, Lauren Myracle, and our National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Jon Scieszka. Enjoy! Revision Tip #18 Are you stuck? Have you tried all my plotting tips and dialog wisdom and adverb scorn and still you are stuck? Try this. 1. Make yourself some comfort food. 2. Put on music that relaxes you. 3. Snuggle up in a warm, cozy place with a pen and a pad of paper. 4. Write a letter to your main character. Tell her everything that is worrying you about the story in general. 5. Pause to eat a bit. Make some tea or hot chocolate. 6. Pick up pen and paper again. Tell your character why you are specifically worried about her. Ask her what is going on in her life, in her relationships that you don't understand. Ask her advice about how to help her move forward. 7. Write down what she tells you. 8. If you can't hear her voice, then it is time to put that manuscript away for a while and work on a different story. But I am pretty sure you will hear the voice, so be chill and write. (9 hours |time suck)
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
ali_wildgoose	10:26p	Brief but INTENSELY WELCOME Zuko!Prequel update space_coyote (aka Nina Matsumoto, the artist) just got word that her pencils have been approved. We have to brainstorm a way to fix a clarity problem in the first couple pages, but other than that? NADA. Here's hoping it'll be smooth sailing from here on in! *____* (14 hours |time suck)
gregstoll	1:33p	are the holidays here yet? links Health care reform - is it going to happen, and is the public option-less bill even worth passing anymore? Nate Silver asks 20 questions for people who answer "no", responds to people who answered them, and explains why he thinks it's still worth passing. Meanwhile, Atul Gawande (the guy who wrote that article about the rising cost of health care in McAllen) says that having lots of pilot projects (like the Senate bill does) is a good way to go and has worked in the past for farming. For me, the holidays now have an odd association with Mythbusters since we seem to watch them when we're at my folks place a lot. Here's an old interview with the Mythbusters which I found pretty entertaining. You know those Predator drones the Army is using in Iraq to target insurgents? It turns out the video they transmit is unencrypted(!) and insurgents have been able to intercept it easily. A computer scientist looks at ICBM security. Current Mood: bored (time suck)
halseanderson	7:45a	ThinkB4YouSpeak & Revision Tip #17 - consider the reader Wonderful news of positive change from GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network)! After one year of their hard-hitting "Think Before You Speak" campaign, teens attitudes about anti-gay language have significantly shifted. From the GLSEN website: "For instance, findings from a recent survey conducted by the Ad Council in 2008 and 2009 of teens aged 13-16 suggest that a higher percentage of teens in 2009 think that people should not say "that's so gay" for any reason (38% in 2009 vs. 28% in 2008) and a higher percentage also report "never" saying "that's so gay" when something is stupid or uncool (28% in 2009 vs. 18% in 2008). "In the Ad Council's nearly 70-year history of creating campaigns to raise awareness and change public opinion and attitudes, we don't often see shifts of this magnitude in just over a year," said Peggy Conlon, president and CEO of the Ad Council. "We're looking forward to building on this success with a new series of PSAs and online tools that will help to further raise awareness and engage teens online." Here is one of the videos that made the huge impact: I adore Wanda Sykes. Just saying. GLSEN is now started their second-year of education and awareness about the devastating effects of anti-gay hatred and language. Their website has information for parents and educators, along with all kinds of stuff you can put on your blog or website, plus polls, videos and lots more. Please take the time to check it out nd pass the word. (Thanks to School Library Journal's Extra Helping for the heads-up!) Revision Tip #17 I keep thinking about the slightly different approaches Barry Lyga and I have to writing dialog. I forgot to mention one part of that. Your audience might affect your decision about how you structure dialog. Many people are not sure who their audience is when working on the early drafts of their novel. Nothing wrong with that. But as you revise, you need to know who your reader is. The way you tell a story to olders teens will be different than the way you tell it to middle grade students. At least, I hope it would be. My theory is that teen readers (ninth grade and above) have enough reading and life experience under their belts that they do not need as much visual action details accompanying dialog as younger readers do. (This could also account for part of the difference between the Lyga and the Halse Anderson Schools Of Proper Dialog; Barry only writes for teens.) The danger, of course, is that your middle grade (or younger) reader will get bored if you layer on the descriptive action with a heavy trowel. Try this: Pull out only the action words from your dialog scene. Here's an example from a page I am working on now: Character A speaks. Character B gives reader visual description of Character A. B speaks. A reaches into sack and speaks. Hands apple to B. B grabs apple, bites and speaks (note: he hasn't eaten for more than a day). Apple juice runs down his chin. A removes hat, nods and speaks (introducing self) B swallows, wipes faces on sleeve, speaks A speaks B speaks A speaks B chews and thinks A speaks I know - it's kind of boring to look at it that way, but by putting it under the microscope, I can make sure that the action details are an integral part of the story. They reinforce the fact that Character B is hungry, that he needs help, and that Character A might be a person he can turn to. It also balances a debt, because B helped A out of a bind in an earlier scene. Bonus tip: since action in dialog scenes needs to be minimal and precise, it is a great opportunity to hone in on that perfect tiny detail that says volumes about the characters, setting, or conflicts at hand. (17 hours |time suck)
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
gregstoll	4:49p	my first WebOS app published! PasswordHash is now officially available on the Palm App Catalog! After some initial hiccups I was able to install it to my Pre and it works just fine. Hopefully my other app will be approved soon... Speaking of my Pre, I had been having some problems with it lately - it thought that headphones were plugged in to the headphone jack all the time, and so I couldn't listen to music or use the phone except on speakerphone, which got annoying pretty quickly. I tried some internet-suggested remedies that worked for a little while, but this weekend even those stopped working, so I took it in to Sprint to see what they could do. I dropped my phone off at the nearest Sprint service center, got lunch and returned to have them tell me I'd be shipped a new phone and it would probably arrive the next day. And they let me keep my phone in the meantime (and ship it back when the new phone arrived). Lo and behold, yesterday it arrived, today I took it in to be activated, and it seems to work like a charm. After being careful not to nuke my existing backup (not actually sure if this is a problem anymore, but better safe than sorry!), it transferred over my contacts, apps I had installed, and even bookmarks! So +1 for Palm and Sprint for taking care of the problem. Current Mood: excited (time suck)
inhumandecency	11:33a	It's full of vectors! Oh my gosh! For the first hour, this workshop on doing scientific illustrations in Illustrator was seeming kind of worthless. The speaker's teaching a lot of valuable things that a layperson could only learn through awful, tedious experimentation with Adobe's bizarre-ass interface, but it turns out they're all the same things that I've already learned through awful, tedious experimentation with the bizarre-ass interface for Photoshop and GIMP. But then! He revealed something AMAZING that will save me hours and hours of pain! It is that the vector format of Illustrator is the same as the vector format used in PDF graphics! This means that if you want to copy a graph out of a scientific paper, you don't have to do a lousy screenshot that won't resize and can't be edited. You can open the PDF in illustrator and grab the graph in the form of its underlying graphic objects. But that is not what's so amazing. It's something way, way better and I think there are maybe two or three people here who will understand why I'm so excited. The PDF export format for Excel also uses the same underlying vector format as Illustrator! Have you ever spent hours trying to get the graph you made in Excel look right, but it won't let you have the points in the specific order you want and you can't find the hidden option to stop it from dropping the line to zero every time you have a missing data point and you want to specify a color code for the twenty bars in your chart and it means you have to open each of them individually and screw with the dialog for choosing fill and line and transparency? And then you can't get it to use the precise scale you want on the X axis? And then it crashes? If you export the document to PDF, you can open that damn graph in Illustrator and edit it in a real graphics program! This is going to be great! Hey, does anybody know if there's a free software alternative to Illustrator, the same way that GIMP is a pretty good alternative to Photoshop? I realize that others would be more likely to share my excitement if Illustrator weren't such a phenomenally expensive niche program. Of course, it's not an issue for me, since I have access to the Adobe suite via my live-in usability and graphics design consultant. Oh yeah! I didn't mention that euziere made it here and we're been hanging out all the time. That might also have something to do with my energetic mood (: (8 hours |time suck)
halseanderson	7:55a	Skipped one, sorry about that, Revision Tip # 16 Yesterday was.... let's not go into it. Today is here and that is all that matters. If you are still shopping for a winter holiday, read "Cheese and Crackers Never Changed Anyone's Life" and then finish your shopping at Indiebound. There now - wasn't that simple? Congratulations to Melissa on this WINTERGIRLS video - the project earned her a 100 in her class. Revision Tip #16 (yes, I know it should be 15, but yesterday really was something of a mess and it's easier this way. Do you remember the "Bruce" sketch of Monty Python? Remember how there was no Rule #6? This is the same thing.) Where was I? Right, Revision Tip #16 Revision is the perfect time to brainstorm. Really. Brainstorming is not a one-and-done part of the writing process. Not the way I see it. After that messy first draft, I usually have chapters that feel empty or out-of-place. I mentioned the way I use huge sheets of paper to organize my chapters. Here is another technique. 1. Identify the critical chapters in your novel. Which are the ones that contain The Really Big Stuff? The Really Big Stuff chapters will usually be separated by chapters in which the action unfolds in a slightly less intense way. Think of your novel as a wide river that your reader needs to cross. The RBS (Really Big Stuff) chapters are small islands in the river. The other chapters are either stepping stones or bridges that get the reader from one island to the next. 2. List the Stones & Bridges chapters, then prioritize them by how alive they feel. What is the chapter that feels the most flat - the chapter (or chapters!) you are secretly wondering if you should cut? 3. Don't cut them yet. 4. There is no Four. 5. Brainstorm as if you were starting from scratch. For each of the flat chapters, dream up ten different ways the action could unfold. Go ahead - be outrageous. I dare you. Sometimes thinking way outside the box is what you need to jolt your writer brain into clearer storytelling. 6. (Please note; there IS a Rule Six, Bruce!) Pick one of the ten and just freewrite the chapter over again. How does it help the reader understand the characters better? How does it move the story forward? 7. Rinse. Repeat. Send me questions. (2 hours |time suck)
Monday, December 14th, 2009
preraphaelite	2:06p	Martial Arts recommendations? Friends, I am interested in starting a martial arts class, and am looking for recommendations for both type of martial arts to try, and (most importantly) where to go! Conditions/supplemental information as follows: 1) Must be pretty close to the redline, or right downtown; 2) Should teach something relatively practical (anything that helps me win a wrestling match with my boyfriend would be a big thumbs up); 3) Should be friendly to a pretty non-athletic gal who would like to be more athletic; 4) Ideally would have classes that begin and end, and a beginner's class; 5) I love things with lots of levels, where I can feel like I'm progressing and learning things; 6) Last time I tried martial arts was in college when I took Hapkido and *loved* it. (12 hours |time suck)
halseanderson	6:20a	Monday Madness & Revision Tip #14 My local paper ran an article yesterday about my reaction to the recent book challenges. The photographer who came up here to the Forest got a great shot of the magic window. (For the record, I just turned 48 years old, not 49. Geesh.) It is rare that the part of my brain that writes for teens has a collision with the part of my brain that writes historical fiction, but the book I'm working on now, FORGE (yes, Virginia, it is the next book after CHAINS...... and you heard correct, it should be out next fall) is causing that to happen more and more. It's rather fascinating. Take the quote I stumbled upon yesterday, from the journal of Continental Army Surgeon Albigence Waldo: "Provisions and Whiskey very scarce. Were Soldiers to have plenty of Food and Rum, I believe they would Storm Tophet." Monday morning quiz: which one of my YA novels does Dr. Waldo's quote connect to? (answer is at the end of today's post) Revision Tip #14 Ever run into one of those chapters that just won't jump through the right hoops? You try cutting it out, but that doesn't work. You change the setting, the dialog, the plot points, and the character focus. You change the color of the sun. Nothing works. Try this. Back up three or four chapters. Read them very carefully. Where is the set-up to the action in your Problem Chapter? What do you mean there is no set-up? Does the action of your Problem Chapter happen like a bolt of lightning? Probably not. It needs to come inevitably from the flow of your story. Something happened earlier to trigger the Problem Chapter. The key to fixing it lies in those earlier chapters. That is what I spent the weekend doing. Chapter 18 needed to become two chapters. That was the easy part. But Chapter 19 was a big headache. I played a lot of loud music, went back to my primary sources, looked at the want ads again to see if I am qualified for any other job besides being an author, and then studied the earlier chapters. All I had to do was this: 1. Add some descriptions to the introduction of a few secondary characters in Chapter 11. 2. Pick up on those descriptions for one new paragraph in Chapter 14. (Those two changes made a bit of dialog in Chapter 17 much richer, btw. Unanticipated bonus!) 3. Now that I had planted the seeds, I could properly craft the set-up in Chapter 18. 4. And, ta-da, write the action that was so sorely needed in Chapter 19! 5. Take the stuff that Chapter 19 sets up and make sure it is dealt with in Chapters 20 - 23. Does this make sense? Today I will chase the windmill that calls itself Chapter 24. Wish me luck. ANSWER TO TODAY'S QUIZ: Dr. Waldo references Tophet in his journal entry, which means the place where children were sacrificed in ancient cultures. It is also the name of the video game that Tyler Miller plays in TWISTED. (Yes, that was deliberate on my part.) (4 hours |time suck)
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
llemma	7:14p	Meadowlands, poetry by Louise Gluck, a high school graduation present from hefty_penguin, reread often but not cover to cover between then and yesterday. Repeatedly if not constantly beautiful; makes me wish for a less theoretical relationship with poetry. (time suck)
halseanderson	6:25p	Revision Tip #13 Given how late it is right now, you might have already figured this one out. Revision Tip #13 When revising, sometimes you just need to turn the blasted Internet off. As in all the way OFF. Because when revising, you have to hold a million strands of character and story and setting and voice and everything else in your head. Some days, there just isn't room for anything else. (1 hour |time suck)