The Book Review Club - Goblin Secrets

Goblin Secrets
William Alexander
middle grade

It's been a while since I've really sunk by teeth into the craft of a book, partly because I listen to so many audio books and it really is a different experience. However, I read Goblin Secrets out loud to my eleven year-old. It was our evening reading book. I will readily admit that my craft feelers were more fine-tuned than when I read a book that hasn't won The National Book Award. Spoiler alert - my expectations are higher for award winners.

Very briefly, the story is about an orphaned boy, Rownie, living in a magical world that includes goblins, who were once humans who have changed, machines that use the hearts of anything from fish to humans as fuel, and mechanical creatures that are also part organic.

Rownie wants to find his brother, we discover somewhat into the story. He starts out the "grandchild" of a witch but runs away and joins a troupe of goblins, who, it turns out, are also looking for Rownie's brother. They eventually find him. He's been turned into a puppet, i.e. his heart has been removed and with it, his will. Rownie, however, saves his brother and keeps the river from flooding the city of Zombay.

This story is packed with creative imagination in a wholly invented world like nothing I've ever experienced before. For exactly that reason, I would have loved a little more world-building. I was left wondering about the shape and breadth of this particular world. Tolkien set the bar so high when it comes to world-building. In this book, world-building was more of a sketch. We are left with many incomplete ideas. How does a person become a goblin? Why is acting outlawed? How do the hearts fuel stuff? Who is the mayor? How did this world come to be? Why are the goblins looking for Rownie's brother? What are dust fish? How do they exist? Can you eat them? Are there other magical creatures, or just goblins? Why goblins?

Does it really matter?  My eleven year-old didn't worry about all this. She was perfectly content with the world as it stands.

Desire lines were there, but also a little under-developed. For instance, Graba craves power so she dislikes the goblins, who have their own kind of power. This could be developed more. As it stands, it's very archetypal. It works, but there isn't much meat there. This is typical of many desire lines, including Rownie's. He wants to find his brother, but that doesn't come out until a few chapters into the story, and as such doesn't feel like THE heart's desire of the book exactly.

Of course, as with any good story, weaknesses are easily forgiven if we're swept into the fictional dream and stay their voluntarily. I was and I did. This book deserves to be read not just because it sweeps the reader into that dream but because there is enough, both good and bad, crafting to make the writer think and learn.

For other great winter treats, slide over to Barrie Summy's website!

Unexpected Side Effects

Since my last year has been filled with intense reading, analyzing and writing, I have wondered what, if any, the effects have been on my world outside of writing. As always, the side effects appear least where I expect them.

The movies.

My husband and I decided to catch up on actual movie-going since the kids are in Germany this month. When we were young and poor graduate students and living in Germany ourselves, every Wednesday night was movie night because the theaters had half-price tickets. There was hardly ever a lack of things to see. Sure, there were lulls, but for the most part, Wednesday night was a night away from reality in someone else's enchanting story. 

This last week has not been as enchanting. We went to see Killers with Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutscher, Sex and the City 2, and Letters to Juliet. You can guess who was picking the movies. But even if my husband had had more of a say, the only one we'd have added to the mix is Iron Man 2. Without having seen the last one, still, of the other three, the only one that held my attention was Letters to Juliet. I knew Sex and the City 2 would be a walk down memory lane, but I was actually checking my watch during the movie! Me. A diehard Sex and the City fan. During Killers, I checked my watch, too. I have never checked my watch in a movie. What is wrong with me? Have I studied plot so much that now I cannot get lost even a little bit in a mediocre film?

I think maybe. 

The upside is that I've seen Letters to Juliet twice, and would see it a third time. The writing is smart, the acting good, the storyline plausible, with good A and B arc-ing stories. But why is there only one such movie out there at the height of summer? Granted, I'm waiting for the kids to come back before I go see Karate Kid, but that's got to be good. The original was already super and the new actors should spice up the latest version. I do not think there will be any watch checking. 

However, if there is any truth to the adage that there are no new stories, only new ways of telling them, then I am worried about the movies. Of the movies listed above, only 2 are originals. Of those, I only got caught up in one. I know the movie industry is suffering, but there is good writing out there. Remakes are fun, but the real rush (and dollars) comes from fresh, innovative, exciting writing combined with sharp acting.

Now if I can just apply what I've learned to my own writing!

Growing Pains

Summer has arrived in Oklahoma, which means my two girls left a week and a half ago to attend school in Germany for the month of June. Last year was the first time they went, and there was lots of nervous uncertainty attached with the going. This year, there were less tears...on their side. I have a deep dark confession to make. I don't like being an empty-nester with an 11 year old and an 8 year old.

That is the selfish part of me coming out. I know this is so great for them. They're German gets sooooooooo much better during the month. They have new friends their age in a German school. The family that they stay with is phenomenal. My husband and I have been friends with the parents since graduate school (which is starting to make me feel old!). So they are in good hands, having great experiences, and doing things I, as a kid, would have given just about anything to do. But I miss my babies.

I know you can get used to just about anything. I'm not sure I'll totally get used to this, so I've decided to cope by burying myself in my WIP and rewriting until the cows come home. Literally. Since I don't have to take off to run carpool, gymnastics, swimming, and a million other errands, there is nothing stopping me from obsessing until those tinkling bells start a'ringin' (which actually sounds a lot more like a garage door opening when my husband comes home).

There is something to be said for obsessing now and again. I've learned a lot about my writing just from simply not having to stop mid-thought and fly out of the door. How this will translate into regular life once the girls come back, I have no idea. But, it is a journey, right? I'm on the road to somewhere...it'll be interesting to find out where that is.

You Might be a writer if...pain is inevitable

It's been a while since I've gotten to reflect on the ins and outs of writerdom, mostly because I've been hanging on by the skin of my teeth in my MFA program. There are just not enough hours in the day.

A few emails ago, however, one of my advisors put me onto a short tome written by a fellow traveler in the writing lane,  Haruki Murakami's  What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

I am a dedicated runner, which this advisor knows as we've crossed paths in the wee hours of the morn running during residencies. Although the reading tower is approaching critical heights in my office, I got the book (downloaded it to my Kindle, actually, thus not adding to the teetering tower).

Murakami hooked me right away with these words--"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."

It is?

It is.

In this life, if you live it even a little, pain is inevitable. Doesn't matter if you're running, swimming, have kids, are married, or, god forbid, decide to try art for a living. Pain is inevitable.

That's a liberating thought. I'm not alone. Everybody suffers! Don't get me wrong, I'm so not taking joy in somebody else's pain. Far from it. I'm just relieved that, well, the pain thing, it's...dare I say it, normal.

Yippee! I'm normal! (Have I been waiting an eternity to say that).

Suffering however...

Well, I can either fall into it, or accept the pain and move through it.

Which gets back to the running thing. In running, at least, the longer I work through the pain, the greater the reward when I finish. All I need to do is juxtapose my running attitude to my writing. There will be pain. There is pain. What I do with it, that's the true test.

There is No Secret Handshake

The jig is up. There is no secret handshake. No magic formula. No deus ex machina for writers.

Aghast?

I was. Next thing you know, they'll be telling us there is no Santa Claus. Yeesh.

Leaving the big red guy out of it for a moment, I have to admit, when I started out writing, I was certain there was a secret formula. All I had to do was figure it out and the bestsellers would flow from my pen. I mean, honestly, it wasn't the craziest idea I've ever had (there have been crazier, like the time I decided I could prove girls are every bit as good as guys and jumped from a bridge into a river after a guy. Don't ask.) So what was it for writing? Writing for exactly two hours each day? Or writing nonstop, foregoing sleep, until I'd birthed my idea? Or if that wasn't working out, how about writing standing up, like Hemingway. Or drunk?

I will shamefacedly admit, I've tried all of these "formulas" out and then some. None of them worked. So finally, I resigned myself to the fact that I'm not clever enough to decode the secret handshake and will have to plug along writing as best I can.

It wasn't until I read Stephen King's On Writing a few weeks back (after four picture books and a middle grade novel, hundreds of school visits, and I don't know how many conference speeches) that I had my "Eureka!" moment. There is no secret formula to writing.

Not, at least, in the way I was thinking. I mean, the big secret is, to write. That's it. Everything else is fluff.

What King showed in his book was enlightening for me, or maybe I really had finally hit that "clever enough" to understand it point. His journey to authorhood, i.e. the early years of his life and what prompted him to want to write, couldn't be more different than mine, or thousands of other writers. It's eclectic, unique, what makes Stephen King, Stephen King and not Stacy Nyikos. His candid, tell all approach to describing his life as a writer made that clearer than anything I'd ever read before.

The thing that separated him from thousands of other writers is stubbornness. He plugged away at writing, day after day, year after year, rejection after rejection, until he had honed his skills - his, not Charles Dickens's or John Grisham's or anybody else's - to the point that he had mastered them.

And then he kept writing.

The best piece of advice he ever got in all those years of struggling and writing was a line scrawled at the bottom of a rejection letter from an unknown editor: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.

Okay, so there is a formula.

But that's for revisions.

Wayward No More

Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been way too long since my last post. I have a couple of good excuses...I think. First, without my husband, I spent the latter half of June in Germany picking up my kids. They were going to school there with the children of friends of ours. They got a real taste of German elementary school, and loved it! When school was over, we toured Germany. We went to Bremen to see the Stadtmusikanten (pictured left), then to Kiel for the huge regatta held there every year, and finally to Berlin where a friend of mine lives. We even made it to Frederick the Great's Sans Souci. Awesome awesome trip.

Only to be followed by a 10-day residency in Montpelier at Vermont College. I decided to take the plunge and applied to their MFA in Writing for Children. Even more amazing, I was accepted. It is a two year program. Each semester begins with an on-campus residency during the summer months.

How can I describe that experience? Eye-opening. Elevating. Chocolate-craving stressful. Enriching. Writer's mecca. Those days were packed with more kernels of ideas and thought on craft than the last six months of my life. I'll need another six months to process it all.

If you are thinking about honing your writing skills, man, Vermont College is the place to go. I learned so much, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I'll be spending the next two years writing critical papers, reading way more than I already do, and rolling up my sleeves and learning how to use a few more tools of the trade. POV, metaphor, prologues here I come!

Seriously, Vermont College is a writer's dream. I got to talk shop with people as interested in writing as me. A writer can really let her hair down and wax on about the finer points of writing in this program (or the stuff you just hate, can't understand, want to change!). It's awesome.

If that wasn't enough, I got to revisit dorm living. Not that I was missing it. Still, it turned out to be pretty fun. I lucked out and got an amazingly wonderful dorm roommate. We bemoaned and celebrated together. And hey, this time, I was old enough to buy my own beer. What's more, I could afford the good kind.

I'm psyched to get going on my first packet. Can't wait to dive in and try my hand at critical papers on craft.

Of course, after I get that first packet back, I may be groaning a little more than usual because I'll probably have loads of revisions to do, but growth is painful, any kind of growth, right?

You Might Be a Writer If...

There is nothing scarier to a writer than an empty page and an incessant, blinking cursor. Well, except maybe one-upping yourself.

You're only as good as your last book, after all.

Yet, how far will a writer go to improve? We all go to conferences, sign up for workshops, even take online courses to refresh, renew and reinvigorate. But what about the mother of all honing exercises. What about (gulp) school?

You might be a writer if...you go back to school to become a better writer.

Now this probably gets at what kind of writer you want to be. Do you want to earn a million bucks for your work (popular), or do you want to be read in one hundred years (literary)? It seems like, although by no means is this an all-or-nothing scenario, but it seems like those who are more literary in focus are the ones who end up in school. I mean, it's not the best place to practice or win popularity, at least it wasn't for me, which really outs me, but then I'm 40 and I'm going back to school. Maybe the second time around I'll be popular? I've lost the glasses, but I still play violin. I'm doomed, aren't I?

Sigh.

Nonetheless, I applied to the Vermont College MFA in Writing for Children and got in!! Very exciting. I know, I know, not very exciting for everybody. I mean, I'm going back to homework, reading assignments, deadlines for papers, papers!, lectures, etc, etc, etc. Then again, I really did love college. A lot.

My reasons for going back to school to get this MFA are pretty simple. I want to be the best writer I can be. I'm intent, driven - maybe even a little obsessed - with getting better. This is the first thing I've worked at where I don't feel like there's a limit on "better." As a runner, I know my legs are only so long. My lungs can only process so much oxygen. My muscles can only contract and expand so much. (And I'm not getting any younger, but let's not talk about that) I'm limited physically in what I can do as a runner.

But as a writer? We apparently only use 10% of our brains. That means, 90% is just languishing there, waiting for someone to find the key and unlock it. 90% Think about that. Could be lots and lots and lots of brainpower just waiting to be harnessed and put to good work. I know, I know, I could be way off. Nobody really knows what that 90% is all about. I may only be unlocking, say, defunct, primitive programming that has to be stored somewhere, or storage space, or gobbly gook, but I'm being optimistic and hoping it's extra brain power.

I'll find out come, July 9, when I'm off to Montpelier, Vermont, to start an MFA in Writing for Children. I'm still very bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about it. Excited to say the least. After that 8th think piece, I may be singing a different tune, but growing is hard work. Nobody said it would be fun. Then again, I'm going to be hanging out with authors, talking books, dissecting and understanding how some of the great pieces of literature were put together, and then using that knowledge to bring my own ideas to life. Just thinking about it makes me want to rub my hands together and break out into deep, effusive, Mad Scientist laughter.

Bauhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Me thinks, I'm going to have fun...but what about my teachers???