Some Old Writing, Some New Writing, and a Pitch for Homeschooling

It was dinner. I was with two of my friends on one of those high bar-style tables, enveloped by a backdrop of young adult chatter and the damp smell of steamed food, swallowing a makeshift brownie sundae and trying to remember who this girl was, this girl who sat down with me and my two guyfriends. I'd seen her before, but was wrestling with that guilty knowledge that I'd forgotten her name.

I also happened to have forgotten while writing this post what exactly she said. But I remember the gist of it: homeschooling is dumb and homeschoolers are awkward.

My one friend stiffened and grinned politely. 

"You're sitting with two of them," I said to her. 

The conversation followed the textbook course of all such conversations. The anti-homeschooling girl, after admitting my friend and I weren't awkward at all and saying we were normal, not homeschooled (whatever that means) asked what the heck we did for a social life.

"I didn't have much of one. But it was my fault. I played video games," my friend said. 

"I did. But I also wrote novels," I said. 

"Novels?" she said. 

"Yeah."

My guyfriends chuckled behind their soda-filled brown plastic cups. 

"How did you even have time for that?" she asked.

"I was homeschooled." I admit, a little bit of snark leaked past my braces and lipstick and prepackaged smile. "I didn't have hours of homework."

"That's because all you ever did was homework," said my other guyfriend teasingly.

"Oh stop." I laughed and rolled my eyes. Public schoolers. 

"But like, how long have you been doing that?" the girl asked.

I don't like answering this question because the truth always comes out conceited. But I told her.

"I've been writing in chapter form since I was seven or eight."

Which, that shouldn't really be conceited. Lots of kids can play more piano at that age than I can now. But for some reason I always feel like I'm bragging when I say that.  

So two things came out of this conversation for me. It happened a number of weeks ago but I remembered it today and the two things as well.

1. Homeschooling is awesome because it gives kids more time to pursue their talents and strengths.

2. It'd be fun if I shared some old writing sometime. 

So here's some old writing. Snippets from what seems to me forever ago but really wasn't. Merry Christmas.

Me, 14, homeschooling between writing sessions

From AXEL AND THE OBELISK ISLANDS, which I wrote in 2011, just after turning 14, for my little brothers. The intention was to give them an adventure novel on their reading level. It broke a lot of rules I didn't know existed at the time, like having an omniscient narrator, using way too many filters and instances of the word "was," but it's still special to me in its Staples plastic binding. I even illustrated it, too.

Nadja stopped her gondola and looked at the rope on its nose, unsure of what to do. She looked up at the boy. He was pretending to watch a duck float by in the street, his hands still in his pockets.

            “Signor,” said Nadja, trying out the funny Pantellerian word for the first time. It meant sir.

            “Signor,” said Nadja, “Please tie down my gondola.”

            The boy turned his head and stared at her with big blue eyes in a white face. Nadja was surprised. This boy was not a Pantellerian at all. He looked like he came from her home, Lopatka.

            “Why?” the boy asked. His voice was high for a boy’s, even for one so small.

            “Can you do it?” asked Nadja doubtfully. Maybe the boy was a visitor, too, and did not know how to tie down gondolas. But she was wrong.

            “Yes,” said the boy with a nod.

            “I can’t,” said Nadja.

            The boy looked at the small red gondola, then at Nadja, then back at the gondola again. Then he shrugged, pulled thin hands from his big pockets and quickly tied the gondola down.

Venice, inspiration for Axel's setting

            “There,” he said, fixing his hat and putting his hands back in his pockets. Nadja was so curious she forgot to say thanks.

            She climbed out onto the dock. She was taller than the boy.

            “Are you from Lopatka?” she asked him.

            “I’m from here,” the boy said, looking down.

            “No, I mean, what is your blood?” Nadja persisted. “What is your ethnicity?”

            “I don’t know what you mean,” the boy said hopelessly, kicking the deck.

            “Nadja Rachsky,” said Nadja, holding her hand out. “I’m eleven.”
            The boy looked at her hand as if he did not know what to do with it and dug his own deeper into his big pockets.

            “Axel Verslagg,” he mumbled. “They say I’m nine.”

            “Axel isn’t a Pantellerian name,” Nadja said. “Where are your parents from?”

            Axel bit his lip and stared at her out from under his hat. “I’m from here,” he said again.

******

Me, 15, typing out Shards of Tara

Here's another older excerpt, from when I was 15, out of urban fantasy THE SHARDS OF TARA (which I am currently revising into a very different story).

The truck’s driver, muttering, had climbed out. Harrison grew a little nervous at the sight of the man’s fine gray businessman suit. The man crouched on the asphalt for a moment and came back up with the box in his hand. He turned and pointed a finger at Harrison.

            “You, sir! This yours?” he demanded, extending the box and gesturing at it.

            “Yes, sir,” Harrison managed, trying not to stammer and shoving his hands in his pockets. “If I broke your, uh, truck…”

Neighborhood in Greenville, SC, setting of Shards of Tara

            “What were y’ trying to do, kid?” the man cut in. “Smash it?”

            Harrison nodded and kicked red dirt. “If I broke your truck I’ll pay for it,” he said over the vehicle’s still-operating engines. Or try. I’ve only got, like, forty dollars in my lockbox in my sock drawer. If Mackenzie wasn’t always borrowing my cash…

            “Nah, nah, it’s fine,” the man waved a hand at him. “Geez. A little… I guess this is a ring box… and it’s intact. You’d think a baby like this,” he jerked a asphalt-dusted thumb toward his precious truck, “would drive over boulders the size of Thanksgiving turkeys like in the commercials. Guess I better have my pressure checked.”

            “Yeah, guess so.” Harrison was trying not to sound sulky. He had never been so frustrated with an inanimate object in his life. Except for when he had got stuck in an elevator in a power-outage when he was four. All the same, he was going to get that box open if it killed him.

            The businessman tossed it to him. “Well, just don’t do it any more. Have you tried a hammer?”

            “Yeah.”

            The man shrugged. “Oh well. See ya, kid.”

            He drove his truck away a little more cautiously. All Harrison could do was stare at the blasted red box and think about how hungry he was.

            Suddenly the world began to fade. Harrison furrowed his brow, scrubbed his eyes. There was a cold wind from nowhere that smelled like Christmas trees, and then he was standing on the edge of a cliff by an angry gray sea.

            “Hey!” he yelled, whirling around and freezing.

            There was a woman’s silhouette standing there, watching him with eyes he could not see but were probably creepy.

            “Hello, Riordan Rose,” she said, her voice neither male nor female, reaching out a gestured arm. “This is a sign to you. Keep it. By it the United will know you.”

            “What?” said Harrison, taking a step back.

            But there was nothing there. Harrison screamed as he dropped towards snarling dark waters. He was falling, the box inches from his fingers. It snapped open, spitting out something small and bright. He grabbed it.

            Instantly his mind snapped and he was standing in his neighborhood, the open box in one hand and the small thing in the other.

            “You won’t remember,” the woman’s voice said in his head. 

And now, just for kicks, here's some fresh writing from one of my WIPs, The Waterfront Girls.

Me, now

“Hi,” said Guy Allamby Bonnet. He stood over her, his shadow tangling with the pink house’s, and offered a hand. Probably to help her up. Shalayla shook it. He pocketed his fingers awkwardly. “Um. Thanks for meeting me.”

            “No problem. Don’t know why it couldn’t be at the candy shop, though.”

            “It’d take too long.” Guy Allamby Bonnet ran a hand over his day’s worth of white man stubble. “Miss…”

            “Shalayla, but sure as heck you don’t call me Shay, Mister Bonnet.”

            “Sounds good, if you call me Guy. My grandpa’s house is not far from here, but I figured the pink house was an easy meeting place.”

            “That’s fine.” Shalayla stood, slinging her board over her shoulder and ignoring his offered white hand again. “There’s one thing you gotta know though.”

            “I’ll pay you want you want.”

            “Not that.” Shalayla flung her orange-dyed braids behind her. I’ve got friends. Four of them.”

The pink house on Rainbow Row, Charleston, SC

            “Oh, right. You mentioned Julia.”

            “They’re in on this, and they will be the whole time, or no deal.”

            Guy shifted on his leg and sampled his coffee. “Okay, deal. Now let’s go.”

            He gestured for her to go first. Her skateboard’s silhouette swayed back and forth under her sauntering feet. Together, they walked in mutual I-just-met you silence under the palmettos, past a kissing selfie couple, Confederate flags, and praline shops leaking cinnamon-sugared steam into the street. The Waterfront parted the buildings framing the streets like a curtain just ahead, but they turned into a gravel driveway.

Shalayla leaned on her skateboard as Guy fiddled with the custom iron fence, its bars a-swirl with pineapple patterns. Above them rose a Greek revivalist mansion, its white pillars and bubbling porches poised and polished.

“Ah ha.” Guy swung the gate open and let her in first. Gravel ground under Shalayla’s converses.

            “So this is your granddad’s house?” she asked. The words were half out of her wire-corested mouth when something fluttered in an upper window. A curtain. A face. Shalayla paused and Guy passed her and painted rocking chairs to the door.

            “Yeah,” he said, scrubbing his feet on a scuffed Gamecocks welcome mat. The kind one buys at Walmart in the back of the store, where everything is motor oil reek and bike racks. He dug his pockets for a key, apparently determined not to put his coffee down. “Oh, shoot, where did I put those keys? Yeah, it’s been in the family for a while now.”

            Shalayla stayed locked on the breathing window, but nothing more moved. Around her, gnats and magnolias and silence congregated along the house’s corners. She finally crossed the photoshopped lawn to the porch, where she laid her board down as Guy pushed the door open. Dusty dimness and a hallway greeted them.

            Guy closed the door and faced her, his stance closing off the space around them. “Okay, look, Shalayla. My grandpa…”

            “Is crazy, I figured. I was kind of surprised you weren’t.”

            Guy smiled ruefully. “Most people probably would think I am.”

            He led her through opulent walled halls shrouded in darkness. Most of the furniture appeared rickety and thin.

            “Your grandpa sure doesn’t spend much in the furnishing department,” Shalayla remarked in a darkness-prompted undertone as they creaked their way up a staircase.

            “Actually, that furniture is all from before the Revolutionary period.”

Shalayla stared at Guy’s swaying, jacketed shoulders just in front of her. She slid her nail into a groove in the bannister and let it drag in the wood as she climbed. “How the heck did that happen? How can you even use it?”

“We don’t.” Guy grimaced as they reached the second floor, the resulting hall tunneled with bookshelves. “We eat on the floor.”

The books framing their path asked to have their time-gnawed spines stroked. Shalayla resisted, but the worn embossed titles watched her.

The Death of Edward Teach.

The Downfall of Black Sam Bellamy.

Stede Bonnet’s Trial.

Stede Bonnet. Shalayla’s finger strayed to the bone hanging around her neck by a thread. She turned, but Guy was gone.

“Guy?” she said. Left, right, back, forth, there was no Guy. Only leering books in pressing shelves. Only dust lazing midair in the humidity. Its grains swung in and out with her accelerating breath.

Alone.

In the dark.

Somewhere in the emptiness, out of her sight and perception, there was a man who disappeared abruptly.

Shalayla took a step toward the exit. Floorboards popped under her weight as she eased her foot down, muscles rigid, eyes wide, heart hammering. The hallway yawned.

Stupid. Just run for it.

Someone grabbed her arm from behind.

So When's the Next #YayYA?

So on the side of my blog there's this contact form that is rarely used, but last week or possibly two weeks ago (sorry, time blends in college), I received an email from it.


"Dear Rachel,

When will the next #YayYA be? And do I need a Twitter to enter?


Lilly Anderson."


Dear Lilly (and everyone else who has probably been wondering this question),


Firstly, thanks for being such a loyal, interactive reader! Bloggers love that. Like, a lot.

Secondly, college does weird things to my schedule, but it's my hope to host another #YayYA sometime in December/January. I don't have an exact date yet, unfortunately, but it will be announced soon! Promise.

And thirdly, nope, you don't need a Twitter to enter. There's some chatting, questions, and entrant interaction that happens on Twitter during the rounds, but a couple of entrants in the past have been Twitterless and got as much feedback as any of the other entrants.

Also, bonus info, I've thought about maybe turning #YayYA into an agented contest, but that'll probably have to wait for next summer. Still have to figure out the hoops I'll need to jump through and how much more time that will take. So note the word "maybe."

For those of you wondering what #YayYA is, here's a link to the last round's rules: http://whatrachelwrote.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html


Yours appreciatively,

Rachel

Foolproof Tip on Writing Fantastic Narrative

"Read your work aloud."

No, that's not my foolproof tip. However, that statement, which you've probably heard before, is part of it.

I always wondered why I painstakingly agonized over word choice, and why I wanted it to "sound" just right, when most of my intended readers wouldn't be reading my work out loud. Then one day, in English, my professor tossed the textbook aside and started talking about assonance and dissonance. Another day he told me that my narrative "zipped through" until he got to one sentence he "tripped over." Why? Because my word choices suddenly flopped back and forth between ps and cs and ls. The rest of my narrative, however, was easy to read because I used steady amounts of subtle alliteration, vowel similarity, and consonant rhyme. I like my words focused in the lips and tip of the tongue. I tend to avoid words that use the back of the tongue, unless the sound is at the end of the word and flips easily to the tip of the tongue again.

It sounds super complicated and technical, and not at all conducive to sitting down and pounding out whatever comes to your head. It's not. It takes practice to develop a purposeful word and sound pattern, just like it takes time to practice developing a voice. There's a technical and mechanical side to every art. But it's not as hard as it may sound, pun totally intended.

Our brains read words the same way our mouths would. Tongue twisters are almost as hard to read as say. I don't know about you, but when I read extremely dissonant stuff, my brain stops, trips, staggers, stammers, what have you, and often times, I start reading under my breath in an attempt to clear this sewage clog of wordage.

So here's what you should do. Think about how you like your words to sound. If you haven't before, A, E, and I as opposed to O and U. As aforementioned, I also use a lot of letters and sounds focused on the tip of the tongue.  Me aside, you should't have to take to long to find your pet sounds.
then look at what you name your characters. You'll probably see some sort of pattern. I know I have pet sounds, especially with character names, and I know this because I made a master list of character names and looked for said patterns. There's a snippet in the photo on the right. The names listed are from different works-in-progress of different genres. You can see even from just these few that I gravitate toward hard constanant sounds and brighter vowels, especially long E and short A sounds.

What's the point of all this? Well, when our brains have to work less at processing the means to the end, the letters to the words to the story, it engages us more in the story and less in the text.

So there you go! It'll take practice and experimentation and a willingness to not story-vomit next time you sit down to pants, but it'll be worth it. My English professor will thank you.

Copying the Masters: Jane Austen

Ah, Jane Austen. Some of you may have seen that hilarious Buzzfeed post where Jane Austen got a modern editor's take on her work (I swear I snarfed my milk at the whole thing about Mr. Wickham being the main character). I promise we aren't going to have any of that in this post, but the truth is, while Austen has stood the test of time, largely thanks to her undying fandom following, she's probably not the greatest author role model.

Jane Austen

Some facts about Jane Austen:

1. She never married, and thanks to her sister destroying many of her letters, we will never really know if she ever had an understanding with anyone. Considering how intuitive her novels are, though, one likes to imagine.

2. Austen was terribly self-conscious about her work. She'd write alone, and insisted on keeping the door squeaky so she knew when people were coming in and she could hide her work.

3. Her debut Sense and Sensibility was originally a series of fictional letters titled Elinor and Marianne, similar to Lady Susan. It only sold about 500 copies.


Some areas where it's not a good idea to emulate Austen:

1. No critique partners?

 As aforementioned above, Austen was secretive about her writing. She would read it to her family, but before publishing Sense and Sensibility kept it otherwise private. While we can't deny that Austen's work is in many ways brilliant, this is not a wise course to follow. Find critique partners and beta readers. A second pair of non-familial eyes (and a third and fourth and fifth, even) are crucial to your story's development.


2. Set the scene

Austen does a poor job at setting her scenes. Many portions of her books are merely conversation, and we're not even told where these conversations take place, including the famous opening exchange between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet over Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice. Make sure you show us and ground us in your setting.

3. Allow the plot some drive

To quote a fellow writer, "I'm about to speak author blasphemy." Constantly we are told to have character-driven novels, but when we focus only on the characters and what they do, as opposed to giving them some plot to work with, you can end up with a story full of empty conversation, first-world problems, and a lack of conflict. There's plenty of conflict in Jane Austen's work, but putting that aside, when one takes away her satire and her goal of laying out the social traps middle-class women often found themselves in those times, we end up with a story about (yay) privileged people's social squabbles. For Austen's purpose, it works fine, but don't let your story be driven by characters alone.


Some areas where it's a good idea to emulate Austen:


1. Character development

Austen's characters are iconic for their humanity. While some might argue that Austen's characters

have petty desires compared to figures from other classic novels like Dickens, Austen's characters are so compelling with pursuing their goals that we can't help but root for them. In Austen's world, the true heroes and heroines are those that recognize their faults and, unlike most modern literature, set out to right them and improve themselves as individuals.

2. Balance your humor with genuine story

Comedy these days often gets so focused on cheap humor that it loses sight of story. Part of what makes PIXAR so great is that their animated films, unlike most in the same genre, are not purely comedic stories. They're also fully-developed stories. The same goes for romance. Romance can't just be about Hot Guy and Hot Girl falling in love. You need an actual story. Austen was brilliant at balancing humor, heartbreak, and plot.

3. Give your characters smaller goals

Most characters in today's market want to save the world from catastrophe. Austen's characters are focused on finding simple happiness for themselves and their loved ones. While the latter may seem more petty, giving your character a more personal goal makes it easier for your readers to relate to them.


To sum up, Austen, though undyingly popular, is also eccentric and unusual in her prose style. She was in her day, and she is in our day. Description of setting is entirely absent from her work, but where she fails there, she rewards patient readers with her brilliant character development and witty insight with social comedy. Creating iconic characters creates an iconic story. No one will care about your plot if you do not have relatable, three-dimensional characters. No one will appreciate your characters, three-dimensional or not, if you do not let them be honestly faulty. And Austen gently but firmly shows us her characters' faults, both men and women alike.



In the next Copying the Masters post, we'll be looking at the great Leo Tolstoy. 


Thoughts or comments? Feel free to share!