WHERE DO IDEAS COME FROM? #002, in a series

Let's say you're working on a piece of creative writing and you want to shake things up for a particular character. Where can you go? To something that's in almost every newspaper out there...

HOROSCOPES!

Horoscopes can add twists to your plot. All you have to do is think of your character, and then read ALL of the horoscopes for the day, and choose one that presents interesting possibilities. OR what if the exact OPPOSITE happened? Here are a Baker's dozen (thirteen) horoscopes, pulled from a variety of newspapers, to get you brainstorming about what fate may hold in store for those voices in your head:

1. Impulsive actions will be your demise.
2. Make plans to socialize and put a little romance in your life.
3. Attending a reunion or simply contacting someone you used to know through a social network will open a door that you should probably have never let close.
4. Don't let someone entice you into an encounter that will leave you making an uncomfortable explanation.
5. An old friend will surprise you.
6. Refuse to let someone pull you into a dispute that can cause an emotional problem with a friend, relative, or neighbor.
7. Problems at home will develop if you overspend on things you cannot really afford.
8. Plan to have some fun and to experiment with activities that interest you.
9. You will gain respect, support and help if you initiate the first move.
10. Saying too much will lead to an embarrassing blunder.
11. You show your emotions and are a master at the art of persuasion.
12. You have a vivid imagination and are a visionary with the potential to turn ideas into reality. You have a deep desire to explore.

And here's a bonus: 

There will be hidden factors that you need to flush out before you make an irreversible decision.

Now, give it a try and soon, you'll have your characters heading in directions even YOU didn't know they'd be going. Happy exploring!

WHERE DO IDEAS COME FROM? #001, in a series

I'm often asked where my ideas come from. It's not unusual for me to be working on multiple projects (while working hard to finish off one that's almost complete), and I never seem to run out of ideas. While it's easy to say, "Read widely," or "Read in areas you don't normally read," or something like that, I decided it's easier to show what I mean...

WHERE DO IDEAS COME FROM #001: THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC????

Don't knock it until you've tried it. The National Geographic is filled with exploration, precarious situations, dangerous creatures that are all too real. Overall, though, it is about people from different pockets of our planet. Here are a Baker's dozen (thirteen) lines ripped from various issues, to get your creative juices flowing:

1. It was white-knuckle time.
2. We ask about that story and are met with a stony silence.
3. The vehicles reminded me of a wolf pack, sniffing the wind for prey.
4. It all came too quickly, many say.
5. "We owe them something."
6. "This is my chance not to feel helpless," he says.
7. "No one knows why," I say. It's the only answer I can give them right now.
8. "I've been doing these things since I was 14."
9. "People love to watch this," she says. "But not many want to do it."
10. It disappeared into the thick brush on the right.
11. They come in the night.
12. "Brace yourself."

And an extra:  "The day I drove away, I peered through the dusty window of my Jeep and saw them waving."

NOW: Take action! Choose your favorite prompt from above and do some freewriting with it. See where it takes you...don't wait--do it NOW!

THE GOOD NEWS...THE BAD NEWS...THE GOOD NEWS...

Ok, so the good news is that SIWC 2011 is finally here! The bad news is that I was so fired up about it that I woke up at 2:45 a.m. The good news is that means I have a quiet house at the moment and more time to write today. The bad news is that by the time the evening meal and awards banquet roll around, I would have been up for, oh, 16 or 17 hours? I'm not sure I'll make it to the night owl session...

I'm really excited about pitching to Kaylan Adair today. She's an editor with Candlewick Press, and they handle every kind of writing I do--picture books, chapter books, and YA novels. So the good news is, this is exactly who I need to pitch my work to; the bad news is that I only have 10 minutes, which is about enough to pitch, oh, one of my six books. I'm hoping she'll agree to see me outside of the pitch times so that I can show her all that I've been working on in the past year : Joanie Ark: Dragon Slayer, and If Volcanoes Spewed Tomatoes (picture books); The Abracadabra Amulet and Galaxy Girls: Fire and Water DO Mix! (chapter books); and One-Way Ticket and Arietta: Summer of Blades (young adult novels).

Surprise...from Carmen!

My first day back at school I had a nice surprise...Carmen Ang came to visit me after her first official day at university and she brought me an autographed copy of her Chicken Soup for the Soul book! This weekend, the local newspaper wrote a story about her too, so it's nice to see her getting some attention for her writing. I'm always happy to see my students succeed...definitely a great way to start the school year!

GRASSHOPPER: Where the Student(s) Become the Teacher!

Ok, so in the past few posts, I've let you know about  a few of my students who have had works published that had some kind of connection with works I've published. But today, let me tell you about two other writers I was lucky enough to teach this year--and they've done something I haven't been able to do...

The Vancouver Readers and Writers Festival is HUGE--plenty of big name authors converge on Granville Island each year, and for a week, the place is filled with readers and writers. Their writing contests are also prestigious and highly competitive. While I was shortlisted in the poetry category for adults two years ago, I have never won. But this year, two of my students won their age groups. Grade 11 student, ROBIN GEORGE, won for her story, "A Child's World," and Grade 12 student, SALLY ARANG, won for her story, "The Boa Bandit."  Sally also won the overall youth award. Three first prizes, in one class--I was proud and jealous at the same time. In any case, here's a photo of them and the younger winners. Sally is on the extreme right, and Robin is next to her, wearing the purplish pink checked coat:

The author they're with is Sarah Leavitt, a writer they got to spend a day with in a workshop, working with their own writing, as part of the prize. I'd call them lucky, but I KNOW the hard work that went into the pieces that won it for them...! Here's a link to the page:

YOUTHWRITES WINNERS

WRITER'S DIGEST SUCCESS STORY

Ok, the previous Chicken Soup for the Soul post made me think of one of LAST year's student success stories--also tied to me in a strange way. Way back in September, 2004, I published a nonfiction article in Writer's Digest called "GET A GIMMICK." It talked about how a single headline from a previous issue a year earlier, "Get Started! Get Involved! Get Inspired!" twigged my imagination just enough to give me an idea. I would become the GET guy! Sure enough, I landed a column, GET GOD, with a religious publication, featuring articles I wrote with catchy titles like "Get a Faith Lift!" and "Get an Amazing Offer!" I followed up with GET WRITING and GET POETIC columns for a few other publications, GET HEALTHY columns for an online magazine, GET MORE BUSINESS for a California magazine...and so on and so on. Basically, that one idea led to thousands of dollars in my account--and hundreds of articles including one in WRITER'S DIGEST.

Ok, in a totally UNRELATED activity, our class took on one of the Writer's Digest writing contests as a class activity. JESSICA KRUGER, a grade twelve student won even though her work was up against more than 600 other writers, most of whom were adults! Her FICTIONAL story, "Conquered Fear," was published in the February 2010 issue. Now, if you look at the cover of that magazine, guess what the biggest headline on the top of the front cover says? "GET Creative!" These things have a way of connecting in strange ways... (Ok, I realize that the student cover is smaller again, but it's the ONLY one I could find on an image search...you just try and find a bigger one!)

CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL SUCCESS!

Ok, today I need to mention a bit of my role as a Writing Coach. Each year, I get to teach a small group (twenty-some, usually) of mostly sixteen and seventeen-year-old high school students, in a course called Writing 12. That allows me to talk about and introduce them to magazine articles, personal essays, picture books, chapter books, novels, scripts and screenplays--almost every kind of writing they won't find in an English class. It's refreshing...and rewarding, to see them succeed and see their poetry and prose get into print. It gives me great pleasure to see my work and their work published, and sometimes, we connect in unexpected ways.

Here's one. I was THRILLED when I got the acceptance from the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul : MY RESOLUTION when a personal essay I wrote, "The Write Way: Write Away," was selected for that anthology. It wasn't the money or the free books or the millions of copies they sell, it was that the essay I wrote was a special piece that explained a bit about why I became a writer and a writing teacher despite a nightmarish beginning in university. I had a writing prof who completely humiliated students (myself included) for works he considered unpublishable. I decided then and there that I would never treat my own students that way once I was a teacher.

Flash forward to July 26th, 2011--yesterday. That's the day one of my grade twelve students had a personal essay of HERS published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: JUST FOR TEENAGERS. The student, CARMEN ANG, will now receive a few hundred dollars, ten free copies of the book, and some attention for her writing--but I know her story is important to her as well--it's a piece she wrote for Writing 12! (Ok the size of the image of my book is bigger, I realize, now that I uploaded the pics, but it's not intentional, really--those were the first two images I grabbed from a Google search...really!)

NINE MONTHS OF BUILDING MY WRITING...MY BABY!

Here's what I've managed to keep track of in the past nine months...good chance of missing something, but I'll do my best not to:

• Completed the 50000-word version of my YA mystery / thriller, ONE WAY TICKET
• Joined several writing organizations--SCBWI, CAA, FEDBCW, and PNWA. Have learned a lot from them already.
• Wrote a "dissection" nonfiction book about the writing technique found in the prologue of Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting.
• Wrote a novella called DATESASTERS that I'm aiming at Orca Books hi-lo market.
• Wrote two picture books--one that I changed to a prose form instead of its original verse form, IF VOLCANOES SPEWED TOMATOES, and the other, an updated fairy tale: JOANIE ARK: DRAGON SLAYER.
• Completed NINE new poems and several original mashups of older work.
• Completed major research and the first hundred pages or so of my new novel, a medieval fantasy, ARIETTA: SUMMER OF BLADES.
• Wrote a short story, "Black and White Negatives," and completed four different versions of it--3500+ words, under 3000 words, under 2500 words, and under 2000 words--to ensure it qualified for entry into different contests. An excellent exercise in culling, to be sure.
• Did research in a way I've never before attempted for a new novel I'm planning and have banged out about 10 000 words of: GANGSTER GIRLFRIEND.
• Did research in a way I've never before attempted for a new novel I'm planning and have banged out about the first 10 000 words for... STACK THE DECK: NEW DIRECTIONS.
• Did research in a--well, you get it by now--for another new novel I've been playing with: THE PRIMORPHIANS: MILLA'S STORY.
• Completed a 10000-word chapter book, THE ABRACADABRA AMULET, which is to be the first of a series entitled The Arkymalarky Adventures of Ackamarackus Artleby (Acker, for short!).
• Planned out a girl's chapter book series which I'm calling THE GALAXY GIRLS. First book planned, and in the process of being written now. 
• Wrote a cascade poem--a new form for me--and LOVED the result!
• Created two chapbooks of poetry to enter into contests: KALEIDOSCOPE: Bright Lives Broken, and ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN.
• Took Food Network's Spice Goddess  Bal Arneson's rough notes and story and rewrote it into a compelling memoir, VILLAGE GIRL. 
• Started submitting my work more seriously--my goal in 2011 was to enter at least 12 writing contests, at a rate of one per month. By the end of July now, I've entered 14! 
• Started submitting my poetry to higher level literary journals as of June 29th. I started with four different sets of poems to four different journals I love: Fiddlehead, Event, Capilano Review, and Antigonish Review. I feel it's at a level now where it belongs...maybe those rejections won't be so automatic...maybe some published works may result from it--we'll see...
• Oh, and I have one VERY exciting piece of news, although I'm not sure if it's too early yet to tell it...