How do we do that? This week is Ground Hog Day, a silly American tradition, but one that lasts. What gives ir staying power? Writers might dig deeper to find out if it shows up in a story they’re spinning.

They would learnPennsylvania farmers brought the old holiday from Germany, where countryfolk watched for badgers or hedgehogs to come out of their burrows on Candlemas. If the animals saw their shadows, it predicted 6 weeks more wintery weather. What is candlemas? Keep digging.

On the 1st or 2nd day of February, the Roman Catholic Church blesses candles for future use at a special mass. Ah. But why that date?

Feb 2 is exactly half way between the first day of winter (Dec 21, the Solstice) and the first day of spring (Mar 21, the Equinox.) The ancients at Stonehenge and before knew this from studying the sky, naming the day Imbolc. Originally, tradition had a serpent rising from its burrow to foretell the weather.  In Celtic traditions, Imbolc is a day of fortunetellng sacred to the goddess Brigit. In her maiden form she stands for new beginnings, purification, and fire.  The Roman Catholic Church later canonized the pagan goddess as St. Brigit and renamed Imbolc, St. Brigit’s day.

At the core of the Groundhog’s tradition, then, the writer find millennia of supernatural power: Goddesses, Druidic priests, ancient ceremonies, holyness and The Roman Catholic Church. At the very heart?  The wild ache of all people for spring and the end of starvation for themselves and their children. Who knew?

Dig that deeply in your writing to find wellsprings of meaning and resonance. What does your main character’s name mean? In what culture? How could that inform who he is? What are his family’s traditions and superstitions? What are yours? Is there a history of unspeakable violence or clever invention to your chosen setting? Dig deeply to tap into ancient forces. Will today’s kids recognize every bit of allusion and history, the forces of culture and history? Not likely. But it will infuse your writing with that power and confidence, something no child will miss.

“Where are we going?” My husband asked.

I said I just wanted to show him the street of Indian restaurants, and sure enough, soon found one Indian restaurant after another. He asked if I wanted Indian food.

“Not exactly,” I said, although I supposed it would do.
Then suddenly I had a whim, a hankering for Ethiopian food.  “I wonder where an Ethiopian restaurant is,” I said.We walked, I kid you not, a few feet, and my husband chuckled.
“Right here,” he said. “How did you know that?”
And right there, was Awash, an Ethiopian restaurant where we had a delicious dinner (red honey wine is very sweet).

Back home and back at work I’ve struggled desperately to impose control on  a novel I’m revising. It’s not the first novel I’ve written, but you’d think I’d never even read a novel from how befuddled I’d become. I felt lost and went to all the rules you read about and the checklists people suggest and the “must-haves” from teachers and workshops –  in other words, I applied all the logic I could think of. In the process I became more and more confused and overwhelmed and it showed in my revision.

Finally, I had to let go of all those helpful hints and tips and tools and remember my story, trust the story, and trust someplace deep inside me, where, after all, the story came from to begin with. And I remembered the shape of my story.

I say trust your instinct when writing.
With a caveat: Trust informed instinct. Something in me knew to where head for Indian food.

But more to the point, the manuscript survived—flaws and all—some 150 years later.

Back when I started writing with an eye to professional markets, I used a computer, and took heed of the advice to back up everything. I copied my manuscripts onto the most advanced technology of the day: floppy disks.

I no longer own a machine that can read them.

Fortunately I have always had a Luddite streak, and I print out anything I really want to keep. As for what I haven’t—well, then it’s gone, or will be when the next advance in technology takes over my most recent electronic back up system.

Does it matter? I’m not Dickens, after all. Should a future generation ask me, “What did you write?”, I’ll be able to point out the books that were published on old-fashioned paper and, of course, the paper copies that I’ve kept. My archives.

Don’t get me wrong. I could pay someone to have my floppy disks converted into another format. And then arrange to have it converted to yet a newer one, when my current one becomes obsolete. Or I could invest in a cloud archive—where my information is kept by some other entity, safely I am told. Let them worry about the formats.

But that’s work, time and expense. And I am not convinced that 150 years from now any of these methods will still be in use. Paper, on the other hand, can still be read. And if it’s lost, well, I’m not Dickens, after all.

Is this true? I don’t know.
But even if hard work doesn’t make us lucky, it does make us better writers…
don’t you think?

If you could write your own fortune for 2012, what would it be?

And how will make your fortune? What’s your writing resolution for 2012?

I am asked that question fairly regularly. My answer, depending on the audience, will be a variation on, “I am inspired by the books I’ve read.” Sometimes it’s “stories I’ve heard,” or “an epic poem,” or “comic books.” But the gist is the same: I steal ideas.

Gasp!

Well. Not really.

Shakespeare’s plays came from Plautus, medieval romances, Boccaccio, contemporary novels, amongst others. Lewis Carroll parodied poetry of his time for Alice in Wonderland. The Harry Potter stories follow the mold of British boarding school stories crossed with the hero’s journey.

Even something as original as Deborah Freedman’s Blue Chicken is inspired by other sources.

“Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.”*

It’s a time-honored tradition.

* Attributed to Pablo Picasso

So a couple of months ago, I posted about how my second book was demanding a party. Well, it got one, a super wonderful “Book Birthday Party”, hosted by the literacy organization New Haven Reads. We had face painting, puppet making, birthday cake and… uh oh… what happened to the live chicken that was supposed to make a guest appearance?

This is where I must interrupt, and come back to our mantra here at the Alley, that WRITERS NEED WRITING FRIENDS. We need each other to whine to. We need each other to celebrate the good stuff. And we need each other when our special guest chicken has been “lost” to a fox.

Thank you, Cat, for coming to the rescue.

Thoreau                                                                                         

Writing for most authors, is a solitary pursuit. Most of us welcome the opportunity to write uninterrupted for hours–no phone calls, no distractions. Yet, nature lover that I am,  I could not  live like Thoreau– alone in the woods for two years with only frogs and crickets for company—not to mention no email or a Whole Foods store nearby.

Every writer has a different style, but I love writing collaboratively. I love bouncing ideas off another brain, I love intertwining other people’s ideas into my story, I love getting notes back from a critique group, I even love getting a manuscript back from my editor full of red marks. My ideal Walden Pond is two days at a retreat in the woods, another writer within shouting distance, good food to nourish the body and mind, and a poison ivy-free path to walk along for inspiration.

For those of you who don’t own a hut adjacent to a pond, there are hundreds of workshops and retreats offered in almost every corner of the world where you can recharge your battery, learn from other writers, receive advice from a mentor. You can write and surf in Hawaii, write and eat lobsters on the coast of Maine, write and drink wine in the south of France.

Here are a couple links to websites for children’s book writing workshops where you can listen and learn not only from the crickets, but from some really good authors, illustrators and editors:

  ∙ Whispering Pines: http://www.lyndamullalyhunt.com/wp_info.php

Provides the opportunity to work with others who are committed to quality children’s literature in small groups. One-on-one critiques with a mentor also available.

  ∙ The Highlights Foundation Founders Workshops:     http://www.highlightsfoundation.org/founders-workshops

Offers targeted workshops that allow you to choose the topic that exactly meets your writing needs. From sports to nature, from magazines to books, from fiction to nonfiction, and from picture books to young-adult novels—Founders Workshops give you access to publishing professionals known for their ability to help writers reach their goals.

When I first landed here in Pennsylvania and looked about at the farms and horses and stinky mushroom houses, I looked into going to a SCBWI critique group like the wonderful, open one on the CT Shoreline. There wasn’t one. Another thing that had ended. So, I got real involved in the Newcomers Club. http://www.ksanc.org/ There wasn’t any writing groups, so I joined other groups: knitting, stitching, walking, lite lunching , luncheoning, adventurer tripping, bunco, bridge (three of those), and chimes. I was filling in the empty spaces.

My writing I did in a hangar while watching three men build their three different airplanes from scratch. That is completely inspiring and amazing to me still. But now I don’t go to the hangar anymore. Tim’s Sonerai is back in his garage. Another ending.

Then one day, while searching the PA SCBWI website, I saw that new groups were being formed. I put my name in and voila! I’m in a new writing group!

Endings are just new beginnings. What is going to happen next? Who knows? But I think I want to coast on this raft a bit longer and enjoy the ride.

Is now a good time to mention that I drove by my old house a while ago and saw that they had cut down my sweet smelling viburnum bushes, rhododendron, and lilac trees? Probably not.

Leigh Ann Tyson

Thanks to Alice and the WUOA crew for giving me the space to explain exactly what a blog tour is and what part it can play in an author’s marketing plans. This post is appearing on Day 3 out of 31, so it’s too early yet to talk about whether mine has been effective or not, but I do have a few thoughts to share.

First, a definition: A blog tour is a series of guest appearances on some number of compatible blogs over a set period of time. The goal is to generate buzz and interest in a book and, as a side effect, it’s said to do wonders for your search engine rankings. The blog tour has been compared to an in-person tour of bookstores. You don’t have to leave your home but can still be in a different “place” every day.

Blog tours, sometimes also called virtual book tours, have been ongoing at least as far back as 2002, which is generations ago in Internet Years. It’s common enough that there are actually companies whose blog tour planning services run into the hundreds or thousands of dollars. In that case, what you’re paying for is organization and contacts–the blogs that host the tour don’t get paid. The fee is less than the travel and lodging expenses associated with an in-person tour, but if you can organize the tour yourself, it can be done on a shoestring budget. I went with a self-planned blog tour specifically to stretch my marketing dollars as far as they could go.

Most blog tours I’ve seen have gone for a week or two but a month-long tour like mine is not unprecedented. The length is based on how long you can keep going and how many blogs you can find that are willing to host you. I set my sights high because I have lots of old friends with blogs, some new friends with blogs, and I’ve approached other blogs written by folks I’ve admired for years. I am super grateful to everyone who has agreed to help me out with this event.

When you’re planning the tour, you will want to touch base with the marketing department at your publisher, since they will have contacts in the blogosphere and a supply of review copies. Approach the owner of each prospective blog stop personally, at least a month before the tour appearance, giving them as much information as possible about your book, your plans for the blog tour, and exactly why you think their site would be a good match. Do your research beforehand by reading through the site archives to get a feel for the subject matter and audience of the site. Your correspondence with blog hosts must always be respectful. Never forget that you are asking for a pretty big favor. You’re putting your bootprints on their blog, so be sure to wipe your feet beforehand.

Guest appearances should offer something new and different at every stop, like a guest entry, author interview, in-character interview, contest, book excerpt, deleted scenes, or whatever else you can dream up. Whatever you do should match the theme, topic, and audience of each site that is hosting you and should be planned in cooperation with your hosts. For my blog tour, I’m visiting some blogs that focus on middle-grade fiction, others that focus on speculative fiction, blogs that focus on humor, blogs that focus on books for boys, and I would have loved to find one or two that dealt with Japanese culture. A different book would need a different set of topics.

The tour can also be combined with contests and puzzles to keep readers interested, and linked in to social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Although the main purpose is to draw attention to your book, you should also do whatever you can to draw traffic, readers, and comments to your gracious hosts. For my blog tour, I’ve created a puzzle contest that puts a new puzzle piece exclusively on each new tour stop for a couple days.

It will be necessary for your blog to have a headquarters where followers can go for the latest tour updates. This may be a website or just a single page listing the tour stops, dates, and links. My tour site includes a blogroll of the entire tour on every page.

As far as book marketing tools go, the blog tour seems like a sweet spot. They’re established enough that you can find a few good examples to guide you, but still uncommon enough that they still seem fresh, new, and innovative. And if you don’t have a blog, they’re a great way to test the waters and make a few connections. If you follow my blog tour, I will update you on how effective the process is.

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Puzzle Piece #3 for the Galaxy Games tour

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Galaxy Games: The Challengers is available now from booksellers, online and off, and as an ebook. To find Greg’s next post on his tour (and much, much more), visit the Galaxy Games site, or visit his Galaxy Games page on Facebook. For more about Greg and his other writings, visit his website or his author page on Facebook.

I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Essentially, the script describes each graphic novel page. In my mind—or more often, on paper—I have created a series of scenes that fit in comic book panels. To translate that into a script, I have to be precise. Panel by panel, I place the setting, describe each person, and what single action is being depicted. I also provide the dialogue. This last may be the only piece of my writing that the reader will read, but it is only a portion of what the script holds.

When writing a regular novel, I do not need to give a comprehensive description of the setting right at the beginning. If my character will be turning on her desk lamp for the first time in chapter 5, that’s probably soon enough to mention that it’s there. Using a desk lamp is commonplace, so its existence will not surprise a reader.

With a graphic novel, however, that lamp had better be there from panel 1–as well as all the other things on her desk, behind it, around it, and populating her room (to the extent that the setting will show those portions of her room). She’ll throw a wrapper in the trash in chapter 12? A waste paper basket better be there. She’ll check herself in the mirror before leaving the room in chapter 16? It better have a place on her wall already.

Which means, of course, that the descriptions in the script are detailed. Not every panel describes every detail, but, still, for each one, I must be clear about which characters are in the scene, where they are, what they’re doing, and what their emotions express. The result? It took 14 pages of script to describe 10 comic book pages.