Mr. Hillyer And Blueboards

Here's the deal. I have been writing and writing and writing most of my life. I went to a teeny tiny school for the last of my elementary years and then what we at that time called junior high. There was a teacher at that school, Mr. Hillyer, who saved every Friday for creative writing. We listened to cool and hip music and wrote stories for an hour. He'd give us lists of items or a story beginning or several names or something and we were to create a story around it. He'd read them, critique them and pass them back to us. I LOVED this class and Mr. Hillyer will forever have a place on my best teacher shelf because of it. So, fast forward to today, I've been writing ever since and now have one complete manuscript, several half finished ones and have signed up to write one in the month of November. All this on my own with no help or organization or buddy system. I am alone, or so I thought. One day, cruising the web because I was tired of my whining sniveling self, I ran across what is affectionately called the Blueboards by its members. It is a writers'/illustrators' heaven. I joined and have been talking and learning from a whole community of people just like me. See, I'm not completely crazy. There are others out there with my same disease. It has given me a thirst for writing that had been gone for a long time. So, I just want to say, thank you Mr. Hillyer for starting it all and thank you to everyone on the blueboards who are facilitators of my writing illness. Hopefully, I'll learn enough to write something worthy of publication.

Critiques and Merit

I've been editing my manuscript like crazy. I joined the blue boards which is a writers' and illustrators' haven and have gotten motivated beyond belief. I started a new work but put it on hold when I found a place on the boards where people were asking for critique partners. I've answered the call of a couple of them and have been kindly turned down because I didn't act fast enough. One of the writers, however, offered to read a couple of chapters for me and send me a quick critique. You can probably just picture me pouncing upon that offer. I went after it like a rabid dog goes after fresh meat. There was even drool and foam to be had. A bath was in order afterwards due to the amounts of drool slung onto my clothes and the poor computer may never be the same after its drool bath. But I digress. I very calmly copied the first two chapters of my lovely little story and pasted them in a new file. I attached the file to the email and sent them away to be perused by foreign eyes. A few days later, I have the answer and the critique. Someone, finally, who understands writing for children and the whole writing process has read the poor little story and says it has merit. OMG!!!! It lives. There were some really good suggestions that I need to go back to the beginning and follow up on. These will probably change how I view the whole rest of the story but for now, I'm trying to get all the typos and punctuation done, which is almost at the end. I'm also almost half way through editing for story flow and then I will begin again and do some really technical work like point of view and tense but I won't bore you with that. I am so excited. I don't think this work is really sellable but hey, it has merit. Woohoo.

Naked Guitars And Spanish

I've decided to take the plunge and try to write a novel in November at the NaNoWriMo site online. It will be interesting to see if I can do it. I wrote one in three weeks about two years ago but that was before I realized how bad I was at writing. Believe me, when you start editing what you've written you become quite amazed at your inability to write anything worth reading. I was telling the Mom that in revising my manuscript I found out I had people getting out of a chair two to five times that they had only sat down in once. If you don't think that's a neat trick, well, just try it sometime. You'll see it isn't so easy as it sounds. Speaking of neat tricks, CG1 learned one last Wednesday. He now has the wonderful ability of stringing his guitar. The poor thing was stringless for about two days. I imagine that's about the same as running around naked for a human. Poor thing. It's a wonder it didn't catch cold. However, you'll all be glad to know it is in good health and making good sounds now that it is restrung. Hooray for music lessons and awesome teachers. Speaking of teachers, CG1 is being taught Spanish this year. It is most interesting to listen to his progress. He comes home from school, I come home from work and we look at each other and say hello. I ask how school was and I get the response, "It's school, Mom." as if that adequately answers my question. Then, at some random time in the evening I'll be having a conversation with some other member of the family and the boy will walk by and spout something in another language that I cannot understand. I vaguely recognize it as Spanish but because he mumbles so badly I cannot hear what he is actually saying. English mumbling can at least be deciphered. Spanish mumbling is much more scary. The last time I spoke Spanish, I was in high school and I wasn't very good at it then. I've digressed somewhat in my language skills since then and I do not trust the boy not to be telling me off in his Spanish undertone. I look at it this way, he may not tell me how school is going but if he can inject Spanish into everyday speech, he must be learning something, right? Just agree. It makes me feel better.