Author Sarah Laurenson

Who's Got The Time?

2010-09-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm stretched too thin these days, thinner than ever before though the scale says differently (darn it). I'm cutting back temporarily and going on hiatus from this locale. You can sometimes find me where I live and on Twitter (@sarahlaurenson). There have been rare sightings on Facebook as well.

This past weekend was an awesome SCBWI-L.A. Working Writer's Retreat. As a gift, I've been granted a clear path to begin my writing career on the dark side (edgy YA). And so off I go to write my butt off (but again with no appreciable weight difference, at least not in the negative direction).

I'll be visiting your parts of the blogosphere as I can.

Garlic Synopsis Critique

2010-09-02T12:20:00.001-07:00

My The Trouble With Garlic synopsis is up for critique here. Please feel free to shred it. I welcome the blood. :-)

Vote For Me...

2010-08-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

And I'll set you free.

Yeah. Like that'll happen. I just like the song.

And okay. I'm not being original as I've stolen this post from my other blog.

Writtenwyrd's having her 4th bloggaversary flash fiction contest and I entered. Appreciate it if you stop by and vote for your favorites (even if mine isn't one of them). Voting ends this Sunday.

Episodic

2010-08-08T08:56:00.001-07:00

I'm working heavily on two projects right now, gearing up for the SCBWI-L.A. Working Writer's Retreat.

Yesterday, I spent many hours taking two episodic manuscripts and squishing them together to create a complete story. It's getting there.

The issues:
The style of each manuscript is different
The focus on each manuscript is different

And yet they do share a strong common bond. Shoving two into one is forcing me to flesh them both out to smooth the transition. Looks like they'll actually reach a respectable book length as a single entity.

On the MG side, I'm plowing through a long rewrite. More than halfway through the manuscript, but the second half requires more work.

Feeling productive this week and that feels really good.

Time Out

2010-06-23T17:39:00.000-07:00

Life has been interfering.

First 50 Words

2010-04-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd stick something light into Miss Snark's First Victim's 50 Words.

My entry

Hopefully I won't make her followers want to throw up this time.

:-)

BIC, BIC, BIC

2010-04-16T10:23:00.001-07:00

A little time off to deal with a cracked filling, the resulting infection and two root canals and now I'm ready to write (even though I feel like someone punched me in the face - again).

So it's BIC day today and tomorrow and we'll see how the productivity fares.

Shiny New Idea

2010-03-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

While walking the dog, I came up with a shiny new idea. Only it's based on the oldest idea in my idea file.

What's my idea file? Any time I get an idea, an interesting line, a crazy dream, I write about it in my idea file and save it for another time when I want to write that book.

At the bottom of this file is a one sentence quote. I've mulled this one over several times in the past and always came up with something very maudlin that did not entice me to write it. This time, the voice came to me and I wrote the first chapter. That's enough for now as I have other irons that are screaming in the fire.

But, oh, it feels good to have that started as I really, really like that first line. Really.

Revise, Revise, Revise

2010-02-28T09:34:00.000-08:00

A good blogging friend has given me great feeedback on Garlic. Some of it I really did know and didn't want to look at. *sigh*

So it's revisions time again. Not a major one like changing from 3rd person to 1st. But still - killing off a minor character and choosing one major theme to stick to and emphasize.

Still debating on which theme.

First order of business:
Time to go kill Scott. Poor kid. But that means I get to pull in stuff from the chapters I deleted when I fixed the geographic bouncing around. Never permanently delete such things. You might need them later. (Not adding back geographic bouncing - I just need a piece of this action.)

Second order of business:
Come up with one paragraph on Tommy's journey to help solidify his major theme.

February Contests

2010-02-10T08:59:00.001-08:00

I entered Miss Snark's First Victim's February Secret Agent contest.

It's my alter ego this time - dark, edgy YA.

My entry.

Then there's this one: "Dear Lucky Agent" Contest. This one needs a tag line, so I have some tinkering to do.

Hm. On second thought, this one has a lot of rules that I'm not so comfortable with. Check the comments before you enter.

Here's Another One

2010-01-17T21:11:00.000-08:00

In for a penny...

Agent Mary Kole (Andrea Brown Literary Agency) is holding a Novel Beginnings contest on the kidlit blog.

There are some interesting rules to enter. Good time to practice your paying attention to submission guidelines skill.

January Contest Entries

2010-01-15T18:19:00.000-08:00

Miss Snark's First Victim's Secret Agent Contest

Clarity of Night Short Fiction Contest

Interestingly entries 10 and 11. Would've been too weird if they wound up being the same number.

Hope to have updates on both of these soon.

Update #1: I am in the list of Notable Mentions in the Secret Agent contest and get to submit my query and first three chapters.

Update #2: Got some great feedback from Jason over at Clarity of Night. This entry had a bit of a problem with pacing - choose what information in the opening paragraph is important.
I wound up cutting one sentence from this piece as a result.

NaJaWhaWE

2010-01-10T08:56:00.000-08:00

Doesn't quite have the same ring, but I'm trying to do in one weekend what I wanted to do in the month of November - revise Garlic - completely.

Over halfway through. Only 92 more pages to go - today. Last night I hit the chapter that I forgot needed to be written. I had gutted several chapters and left notes for the information that had to be included. Got that done and I'm moving on.

Weekend, thy name is BIC.

Update: 11:11am and 43 pages done. This is looking doable.

Update to the Update: 2:30pm - DONE!

Blogcation

2009-12-13T11:48:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of an internet vacation. Taking time to write, to relax, to reorder my priorities. Unplugging has been an interesting experience.

NaNoWhaMo

2009-11-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

I did NaNoWriMo once. It was a wonderful learning experience that I thought I'd never want to repeat. I'm amazed that it's becoming a temptation once again.

That being said, I'm not at a point where I can take the month off from revising in order to write a new set of 50K words. So I have decided to set my own NaNo type goals for this month.

Garlic - revise 2 chapters per day for a total of 60 this month with the hope that the other 2 will get done somewhere in there as a bonus.

Of Mice And Little Girls - write a new chapter per day. 30 new chapters which might only be about 4K words since the first 10 chapters are only 2K words. This is my new experimental poetry/prose project.

I'm already behind. I was behind until the last week of the month back in 2005, so I'm not ready to throw in the towel.

Maybe next year, I'll try writing 50K words in a month, only I'd like to make that goal be 50K good words in an editable novel.

Inspiration

2009-10-03T22:05:00.001-07:00

Driving to dinner tonight, I decided to take the scenic route because it passes a certain rocky hill that I love. As we drove past, I got to thinking about the small mountain under the school in Garlic. I want that mountain to look like Stoney Point. And it will be so - tomorrow.

SCBWI-L.A.’s Working Writer’s Retreat Aftermath

2009-09-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

The Working Writer’s Retreat is my favorite event of the year. It’s an opportunity to read to, and get critiqued by the editors and authors facilitating the critique groups. It’s an intense creative weekend. And a group of us usually have a chocolate and karaoke party in there somewhere. For me, it means very little sleep, writing until 1 or 2 am, and sometimes getting an editor or agent request for the full manuscript (but not this year).

A good friend and fellow SCBWI’er, Chris asked if I could share critique examples from the retreat. So here goes.

Thirteen Black Cats Under A Ladder
I read the first chapter to Arthur Levine.
On the minus side – it was purposely disorienting which was not to his personal taste. The overall tone was upsetting which meant he wasn’t in the mood to laugh when he got to the funny lines. And there was only one brief mention of the curse which was confusing. He wasn’t sure this should be the first chapter. He’d like to meet the main character in a slightly more neutral way – with a little more clarity for who she is. The line: Just because Marcus broke his leg – in thirteen places – when he turned thirteen… is an ‘as you know, Bob’ statement. This chapter comes across as dark and violent and the overall tone of the book is tongue-in-cheek.

On the plus side – the writing was Gertrude Stein-esque. It effectively conveyed the insanity.

Moving on from here (includes notes from other sources during the weekend): Fixes for this chapter include: lightening it up, making the curse more prominent, rounding out the MC more with letting us get to know who she is, building on the relationship between her and her brother through more dialogue – show that things have changed between them and a hint of what it used to be like.

Garlic
I read the first two chapters to Martha Mihalick
On the minus side – The zit popping might be a little too gross. There are other spices than garlic. The second chapter needs more setting/atmosphere to ground the reader in where they are. The last line: What else did Mother not tell me? is confusing – why wouldn’t his mother tell him?

On the plus side – The characters are well rounded. The zit popping is probably spot on for the targeted reader. The garlic allergy is an interesting twist.

Moving on from here: I woke up the next morning and realized I could fix two issues. The transition from chapter one to two, and the sparse description of setting in chapter two. If I added a paragraph at the top of chapter two that showed him leaving home and how he got to the school, then I could describe what he sees and the transition from home to school is in the book rather than implied. The zits are staying as is, for now. And the last line fix came from another writer in my group who suggested What else did Mother forget to tell me?.

I’ve since gotten feedback that I need to show even more of what he’s thinking. Oy! The transition from 3rd person to 1st person fixed a lot of that, but apparently not quite enough yet.

Of course, now I think I should have switched what I read to which editor. Ah well.

Geo-bouncing

2009-09-06T08:49:00.001-07:00

I'm still slogging through the POV edits and have managed to sidetrack myself. You see, my poor Garlic MC is bouncing around a bit too much geographically. That means killing 4 chapters and replacing them with 2 or 3 new ones. And then another edit through the rest of the book to fix the references to those lost chapters. But that also means I'm almost done with major revisions. At least for now.

And no, I did not make the Labor Day deadline. I could've pushed to do it, but it would not be my best work and I'm not ready to shut down an editor by submitting this one too early (again).

Oops

2009-08-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

Just realized I only have until Labor Day to submit a revamped Garlic to a particular editor that my friends were urging me to submit to. Eight more chapters edited. Only 44 more to go. Oy!

Changing POV

2009-07-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

I started editing then realized I was spending most of my time changing 'he' to 'I', 'him' to 'my', etc. Hours of tedious Find/Replace later, I am finally into real editing. And it's better.

*sigh*

I love being a writer. I love being a writer.

Actually, I do love writing. I wouldn't be willing to do all of this work with no promise of publication otherwise.

Garlic Roasted

2009-05-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

Before the Book Roast blog went dark, our beloved Head Chef Chris asked us to roast our WIPs.

So here's Garlic.

Garlic Submissions

2009-05-27T09:07:00.001-07:00

The submissions process is off to a slow start, but a start nonetheless. It will pick up steam soon, but I need one more weekend to have this manuscript where I want it to be for this part of the writing journey.

Submissions and responses can take a long time. The longest response time I've recorded so far was over 400 days. That's more than a year to hear back on a manuscript that was requested by the editor in question. Have to admit the time between editor's request and actual submission was much longer than a year. It wasn't ready and life happened a lot in the intervening time.

Writing - excellent practice at delayed gratification.

Garlic Rewritten

2009-05-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

There comes a time when I just have to make a change that I really don't want to.

Today was the day that I chopped, hacked and otherwise dismantled 5 chapters of Garlic. After those pages were put back together, they were only 3 chapters long. And the timeframe covered shortened from 2 weeks to 2 days. Editing is still required for the whole manuscript, but at least this one issue is resolved in a way that will, hopefully, make it more palatable to a reading public (but first - the agents/editors/publishers).

Note: Revised timeframe to 4 days. Gotta have some wiggle room.

Garlic Synopsis

2009-05-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

I spent a week in boot camp. Not the military kind and this one was done on my computer while sitting at my desk. Erica Orloff ran a synopsis boot camp last week. I ended up with 1515 words of a Garlic synopsis - edited down to 1490 this week.

What I learned: A good synopsis is a short story in and of itself and not a string of "this happens" and "then this happens". Getting descriptions from your novel into the synopsis is a great way to add flavor. Synopses should not be boring.

Easier said then done, but it wasn't the impossible task I'd thought it would be.

Thirteen Black Cats - The Beginning

2009-04-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

The Book Roast hosted a 75 word lucky pitch party for St. Patrick's Day. I thought it would be fun to participate, so I wrote a pitch about luck - bad luck. Moonrat chose my pitch as one of her favorites. And Thirteen Black Cats Under A Ladder got it's first words written that day.

It's a lot darker than I expected. That always surprises me. I think I know how a story will be as it travels from my brain through my fingertips and onto the computer screen. But it's like a game of telephone - what winds up on the page is different from what was in my head.

Maybe there are editors hidden in my elbows.

And the winning pitch was:
Curses are for princesses in books, not twelve-year-olds in Cranford, NJ. In THIRTEEN BLACK CATS UNDER A LADDER, Sasha inherits her brother’s curse and the cure he never figured out. She has to step on a crack, find a black cat, walk under a ladder, break a mirror, open an umbrella indoors and spill salt – in the right order, before she turns thirteen or her party will be a catastrophe and she’ll break a leg.

Garlic Draft Done

2009-03-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

Whew! I'm finally done with my 30,000 word draft. And it's only 22,000 words over what I thought it would be. Now comes the concentrated editing time. We'll see how many words survive the cut.

How it all started:
I was sitting in a conference room at the SCBWI-L.A. Working Writer's Retreat in 2007, toying with my main character who was half-Vampire, half-Italian. He loved garlic but was allergic to it. He also had no story. The energy, the creativity flowing through those rooms that weekend sparked my imagination in just the right way and Garlic was born.

About halfway through writing it, the story line changed in a not too subtle way. My main character took off and the story went with him. Then I had to figure out how to get him back. I also realized the original idea of the main story arc would not work. It wasn't strong enough. New characters were born, a new conflict arose, and the growth of the main character took an abrupt turn.

So now I am cleaning it up, smoothing it all out and checking that the story line that came to be is clear throughout the whole manuscript. Wish me luck!

Growing The Website

2009-03-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

I finally got some time to add a few pages to my website.

http://sarahlaurenson.com

Welcome To My World

2009-02-15T16:52:00.000-08:00

I write Middle Grade fantasy that's on the light side, but the underlying theme is anything but.

Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.

Stay tuned here for publication updates and appearance schedule.

But first - off to find a publisher...