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My mentor says that a writer is someone who can’t not write, and I’ve certainly found that to be true. While we must write, the question always arises, “What should I write about?” As a historical novelist, I love nothing more than to find some obscure person and expose them. My first novel was about Anna Kingsley of Kingsley Plantation in Florida. No one had really told her story and she was an amazing woman, a role model of strength and inner courage for all of us. Anna was born of royal blood in 1793 in Senegal. She was captured at the age of thirteen in a tribal raid, survived the horrific Middle Passage, and was brought as a slave to Spanish East Florida. I tell her story in Freedom Bound, which won an award from the Florida First Coast Writers Association.

After releasing two more historical novels–Sisters of Valor, which won a Military Writers Society of America Award, and Beyond the Dream, based loosely on my great-grandparents, I struggled with my next book subject.

For years, the story of the hundreds of black children who left school to march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement had captured my attention. I knew that 2013 would be the 50th anniversary of their pivotal march, so I decided to write about it as a tribute to them.

As with most things, the more I delved into their stories, the more impressed I was with what they had accomplished. In the 1960s Birmingham, Alabama was considered the most racist place in the country. African-Americans were completely segregated from the white population. The schools were segregated, the churches, the clubs, the waiting rooms and water fountains–everything. Blacks could not use the downtown public library; to get food from the few restaurants they could use, they had to go in the back door to order, then take their food outside. Overseeing and enforcing all this was the ruthless “Bull” Connor, Commissioner of Public Safety.

When Dr. King entered the scene with his non-violent protest, the adults in the black community were not interested in marching with him. They had too much to lose–their jobs, their homes, maybe even their lives. But the children weren’t afraid.

On the appointed day (known to them by secret code words from the local dj) thousands– literally thousands– of children left school and flocked to the 16th Street Baptist Church to march with Dr. King. Some came from as far as eighteen miles away.

And, yes, they were arrested, some even as young as eight years old, and yes, on the second day they were hosed and had police dogs snarling at them. The pressure from those hoses could tear bark off trees, and yet the children came back and marched again and again.

How could I not write of their courage?

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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!

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from the Christmas Quiet Book

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by Lynne Garner

When teaching, I often tell students that I believe most people have a book hidden inside them. Most students are surprised to learn that I believe this book is more than likely nonfiction. When they look at me in disbelief, I often use family and friends as examples to demonstrate what I mean. At the moment these are my three favorite examples of friends (and they are real) that I use:

• Friend one owns three dogs. She enjoyed the training aspect of pet ownership so much she recently completed a professional dog-training course. I am confident she knows enough to be able to write an informative book about dogs from the owner and trainer's point of view.


• Friend two studied garden design and ran her own garden design business. She also volunteered to help at her children's school. During that time she designed a child-friendly garden and gardening projects. I'm sure she could produce a great book aimed at parents and teachers who want to encourage children to love all things that grow. I also believe she could write another aimed at adults who want to design their own dream garden.


• Friend three is extremely gifted when it comes to crafts. However, she has decided to specialize in working with porcelain. I have no doubt she could write an informative book covering porcelain techniques and designing porcelain projects readers can recreate.

I hope you can see how you can turn a hobby, knowledge you have gained from your job or lifestyle into a book others will want to read.

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Would you like to discover your hidden book? Sign up now for Lynne Garner's class,  How to Write a Hobby Based How to Book, which starts on January 5, 2013.

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"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."

~ Neil Gaiman

Character or plot? That's the writer's equivalent of the philosopher's chicken/egg dilemma, and it evokes the same questions about the beginning of life and the nature of the universe. Only instead of our--real--universe, we are pondering the universe of a story.

For me, building a novel's universe--the physical and magical laws that make it work, the landscapes within it, and the people who walk those landscapes--usually begins with an image from a dream, a moment, or a photograph. I may remember only that one visual. Nothing else. We all do that. Every person in America, in the world, has a story idea, or a script idea, or a sit com idea. Of course, some are better than others:

• Stephanie Meyer's dreamed of sparkly vampires.
• Mary Shelly dreamed of a "pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together," the thing that became Frankenstein.
• Robert Louis Stephenson dreamed up the situation for his "schilling-shocker," Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by seeing Hyde take the powder and undergo the transformation in front of witnesses.
• Sue Monk Kidd, began her SECRET LIFE OF BEES based on a single image of "bees that lived inside a bedroom wall and flew out at night."
• Jacquelyn Mitchard, Stephen King, Anne Rice, and many other writers have all described images or dreams that sparked either a first or subsequent novel.

It's what happens after that first idea that separates the writer from the hack.


The image, dream, or idea is only the beginning. Even full dream sequences make no real sense. We have to craft stories around them, populate them with living, breathing, fascinating, real characters who have unique problems that, at the same time they are fresh and different, lead with seeming, unputdownable inevitability, one misstep at a time, to an astonishing conclusion.

As Gaiman further puts it, "dream logic isn't story logic. Transcribe a dream, and you'll see. Or better yet, tell someone an important dream -'Well, I was in this house that was also my old school, and there was this nurse and she was really an old witch and then she went away but there was a leaf and I couldn't look at it and I knew if I touched it then something dreadful would happen...' - and watch their eyes glaze over." (Sort of, you know, the same look your family gets when they ask you what your story is about and you tell them.)

The magic of the writing process isn't in the first idea. It's in the sweat-making, hair-pulling, mind-bending stage where you take that single image or idea and twist it, shape it, add to it until you have a complete concept and a universe in which that concept breathes.

So what's the difference between a concept and an idea?

According to many different experts, the concept gives you the whole story recipe. Depending on who you listen to, it contains a mix of the following:

• The fascinating character
• The interesting setting
• The inherent conflict
• The inciting incident
• The high stakes
• The twist
• The coolness factor
• The hook the reader can relate to or think about
• The great title that draws the reader
  Josin L. McQuein said, on 10/11/2011 9:18:00 AM
  

  Tolkein once said that he created the Ents because he was disappointed as a child when the "moving trees" in Shakespeare turned out to be no more than an army moving through the woods, causing them to move. He'd wanted to see moving trees, so he created his own.
  
  I think that's the difference in an idea and execution. You don't stop with the idea - you have to twist it and turn it and shape it into something new.
  
  For me, the idea came with a story about army ants, and a hiker waking up to see this odd shimmer in the middle of the night that made the walls look like they were moving. It was too dark to see anything clearly, but it was enough to scare everyone in the group when they were woken up. This dark, silent army that could move through and get that close without notice just stuck in my head; the rest of the story spiraled out from that center point.
  
  I'm considering using NaNo this year to finish a couple of open stories, rather than starting a new one.

  SP Sipal said, on 10/11/2011 9:59:00 AM
  

  We are SO on the same wavelength today! :-)
  
  My stories usually start with a concept that relates to a plot. I'm more of a plot-driven writer than character, which is why I have to work extra hard on the characters. Sometimes my stories will come to me as a title that encapsulates the concept/plot. Then, if I can't get it out of my head, I know I have to write it. And sometimes I'll have the idea, but can't really get it going well until I've solidified it with just the right title.
  
  A couple of times the characters have come to me first, though. So, it's all about something that enters my mind, a what if, that excites me, that calls to me, that I know "I" can write.

  Carol Riggs said, on 10/11/2011 4:15:00 PM
  

  I love Neil Gaimon! He has great stuff to say, and I like his writing style--especially in NEVERWHERE. Hmm, the chicken or the egg. I think it varies with me--sometimes a character pops into my head, and sometimes it's a concept or unique idea.
  
  I love your description of the MC--"She acts. She becomes the story." Exciting!!

  Anita Saxena said, on 10/11/2011 4:39:00 PM
  

  My current manuscript stemmed from a desire I had, something that I really wished that I could do. And I dreamed up a girl who could do just that and a supporting cast in my favorite city, London, to do just that.
  Great post!

  Buffy Andrews said, on 10/11/2011 6:35:00 PM
  

  Excellent post. I, too, have written novels based on a dream. I woke up and the first scene was there, ready for the pickin'. But you're right when you said: The magic of the writing process isn't in the first idea. It's in the sweat-making, hair-pulling, mind-bending stage where you take that single image or idea and twist it, shape it, add to it until you have a complete concept and a universe in which that concept breathes.
  
  Keep up the great work on this blog!

  Adventures in YA and Children's Publishing said, on 10/11/2011 8:35:00 PM
  

  Josin, An army of ants? Very cool!
  
  Susan, Having just seen the list of your "ideas"? All I can say is HOLY COW I hope our minds are on the same wavelength someday. I am in awe of your creativity.
  
  Carol, Me too! He's one of my top five would-leave-me-speechless-with-awe-if-I-ever-met-him writers :D
  
  Anita, Sounds like something you are having a ton of fun writing. Good luck with it!
  
  Buffy, Thank you! The whole first scene? That's great. Wish THAT would happen to me some day.
  
  Thanks for the kind words, everyone! :D
  
  Hugs,
  
  Martina

  Ara Burklund said, on 10/11/2011 9:50:00 PM
  

  Great post, Martina! All so true!
  
  I think I start with an idea for the story, then I think about the type of person I want the story to happen to, then finally I consider the setting. Takes awhile for everything to congeal, though. All easier said than done!
  
  Not sure about NaNo. Depends on how quickly I get the revision done. Plus, November's a tough month for committing to extra writing. What about you?

  Adventures in YA and Children's Publishing said, on 10/12/2011 5:09:00 AM
  

  Hi Ara,
  
  I am doing NaNo. I have my shiny new idea, and a 30K outline, and a most of my character sheets. I'm just finishing up the character sheets and getting ready to transfer them to bios and then doing my setting sheets and GMCs for major scenes. Itching to write. It is actually fantastic that NaNo doesn't start for another two weeks because it is forcing me to do all this prep.
  
  I hope you get to do it. How is the revision going?
  
  Hugs,
  
  M.

  Suzanne Lucero said, on 10/12/2011 5:40:00 AM
  

  So, I'm wondering what happened to the comment I posted when this article came into my email last night?
  
  Oh, it doesn't matter. What matters is the paragraph that starts, "The plot sets the main character in motion, but she solves the plot problem in a way that only she can solve it." I've printed that paragraph out and am studying it point by point to help me take all the little vignettes I have and make an actual novel out of them. 2 1/2 years on and it's not finished yet. Very frustrating. OTOH, I'm learning so much about what makes a good story that I know my novel will be solid when it's finally finished.

  Beth said, on 10/12/2011 12:03:00 PM
  

  I start with either a plot idea or a story title that piques my interest. Then I let it stew in my head for awhile and see if I can flesh it out.
  
  To take it from there, I've begun using scene cards to create a stack of scenes I can build a story from. With the Nano novel for this year, since it's a sequel to my WIP, I used scene cards and created a rough outline to guide me because there's a lot of sci-fi time stuff happening. (Usually I just write like the wind and don't look back - no guidance for Nano.)
  
  : )

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Notes from the Children’s Book and Author Breakfast:

From Corey Doctorow, author of the YA novel, Little Brother, and the forthcoming, For the Game, co-editor of the site Boing Boing:

--“Being a reader and a writer are the same thing.”
--A writer reads a story or hears a story, then makes the story his/her own to communicate with a reader. (For example, after seeing Star Wars, Doctorow wrote the story out again and again in his own words).
--It’s important to know when to leave kids alone to learn. His teacher let him sit and read Alice in Wonderland for a few days, without bothering him.
--Doctorow started sending out his work at age 16-17. He sold his first story at age 26.
--“Surgeons don’t have surgeon’s block, garbagemen don’t have garbagemen’s block. If you’re a writer, you just write.”
-When an adolescent says she doesn’t like your work, that’s good—it means she wants to talk about it.
--“YA lit is the most serious literature, because it’s written for readers who want to do something, who want to make something, who want to make books part of their identity.”
--Doctorow wanted to write YA lit that would “inspire kids to live as if it were the first day of the world.”

Mitali Perkins, author of many books for children, including Rickshaw Girl and the upcoming Bamboo People:

--The theme of her talk was how books can be mirrors of our own lives, or windows into other worlds. We read both to see ourselves and to see others.
--When she was a child, she read and read, with no adult hand to guide her. The library was her favorite place.
--“If life is a narrative, seventh grade is when the plot thickens.”
--As a child, she read books with all white characters (Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, Betsy Tacey). She loved those books—they were windows into other worlds--but she also desperately needed stories as mirrors. At home, she lived in “Village Bengal,” but at school, it was “Charlie’s Angels.”
--She started out by writing books about the

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Yesterday, I attended a workshop called "Picture Books: From Idea to Printed Page" in Fairfax, Virginia. The guest speakers were both from Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. Patrick Collins is the Creative Director, working on the art and design for books, and Noa Wheeler is an Associate Editor who has worked with many well-known books. While picture books are a collaboration of the writing and the pictures working harmoniously, I thought the information was largely relevant to illustrators. Still, since we spend a lot of time on the writing aspect on our blog, I decided to take detailed notes and share what I took away that pertained to the illustration process. Forgive me, in advance, if I'm being "Captain Obvious" here, because artwork and I aren’t exactly old friends, and some of these points may be predictable for illustrators. 

• The colors being used in the images must reflect the appropriate tone of the manuscript. They used an upcoming picture book called Alligator Wedding by Nancy Jewell, illustrated by J. Rutland, to make this point. Initially, the illustrations were filled with colors that were a little too dark despite the bayou setting. The illustrator was asked to brighten them, as to more accurately convey the mood created in the text and the results are fantastic.
• There is definitely a lot of back and forth, at least at this publishing house, in the illustrating process before it seems to be just right. They try out a variety of cover images, fonts, colors, and layouts before committing to anything. I gained a whole new appreciation for their pursuit of perfection.
• The text shouldn’t hamper the image. In one of their books Life in the Boreal Forest by Brenda Z. Guiberson, illustrated by Gennady Spirin, they made the decision to move the text into a column off to the side so it was not overlapping the image at all. That way, the integrity of the image remained pure. Even on the cover, the shadowing behind the title allowed for it to pop.
• This may seem obvious, but the image should reflect the text. They mentioned in a few books that what was being said in the text was not coming through in the pictures. Sometimes objects were missing or other times, things were not drawn accurately. Revisions had to be made to fix these problems.
• The importance of the cover was emphasized heavily as being something that must draw the reader in and appeal to kids. If you provide ample images and they would like to showcase them as much as possible, they can choose to put one image on the jacket flap and an entirely different one on the hardback case itself.
• They referred to “the gutter,” or the place where a book will be physically bound in the center. They advised leaving 1/4” space in the center of the image, where if it gets slightly tucked down into the binding, the image won’t be heavily affected.
• They strongly advised against submitting as an author/illustrator. The problem is that they may like one aspect of your work over the other. You may then get a  “no” because it’s difficult for them to tell you that one aspect is okay, but other is not. Stick to your strengths.
• If you submit a dummy, they recommend including mostly sketches and maybe  one or two finished pieces to demonstrate the final products you’re capable of.
• Finally, 8 1/2” x 11” are standard trim sizes. This goes back to the all-mighty dollar and the idea that bookcases in bookstores only accommodate a certain size. Once again, don’t give them a reason to reject you that’s easy to avoid.

I’m hopeful there are some tips here that may be useful. As a picture book writer

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