Cover for "Growing Up Ivy"

The cover illustration for Growing Up Ivy has arrived. The book, due to be released in June, 2010 is my latest novel for readers 10 years and over. I love the illustration Dundurn has chosen for its cover.

As soon as I received it, I shared it with all the usual suspects: my family and the members of my writers' group.
Here are some of their opinions.

Pat called it wonderful, said there was a mysterious turbulence about it. Linda thought it was excellent, dramatic and striking, and said it spoke to her of loneliness. Myself, I found it elegant in its simplicity. Carolyn called it intriguing, mentioning again the sense of mystery and loss. Its simplicity set up a whole set of questions for her: Where is/who is/what happened to the bike rider? "I want to read the story for the answers," she said.

And that's the whole idea. I hope you will look for Growing Up Ivy late next spring.

Happy New Year to all. And happy writing!

Visiting Schools & Libraries

"Dear Mrs. Peggy Dymond Leavey,
My name is . . . I go to . . . Middle School. I read Trouble at Turtle Narrows at school. It is the best book I have ever read. Joel Osler is so cool. He has the same life as me. You are my favourite author. Would you please come to my school?
Your biggest fan."

We all love to get fan mail like this, and I make it a point to answer each one I receive. Because I hate to disappoint a child, I explain that, although I'd love to come to his school, his teacher would need to invite me.

I always welcome the opportunity to talk to the kids who are reading my books. I have a general presentation on file, but I re-work it to meet the occasion or the expectations of the teacher.

Most writers depend on giving talks and readings to supplement their incomes, and therefore, we set fees to cover our time and transportation expenses. I try to make it as inexpensive as possible for the schools and have actually lowered my fees in the past year.

Fortunately, there is money available to help with the cost of having an author visit your school. Through the Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program, the Writers' Union of Canada provides funds to subsidize the cost of an author visit, providing the author is a union member.

Public libraries can also apply for funds from the Writers' Union through the Canada Council for the Arts. These readings must be open to the public, and the author must be a member of the Writers' Union of Canada.

Teachers can find out more about my presentations (talks & readings, or writing workshops) and my fees by visiting my website, or by contacting the Authors' Booking Service: abs@authorsbooking.com.

I'd love to visit your school!

What Works For Me

I create my first drafts in longhand. They are, afterall, extensions of the "free writing" method I use for generating ideas. When I reach the end of the story, I transcribe it, chapter by chapter, onto the computer.

I don't hurry this step. I am revising as I go. This is the stage I'm at now with my new novel. I hope to finish this step by the end of the year, but there's something to be said for moving slowly. I like to hold each chapter in my head overnight, to listen to the voices of the characters. It's surprising how little inconsistencies will reveal themselves, or new plot twists spring, unexpected, to mind.

Eventually, I will make a hard copy of this second draft and make further revisions to it in pencil, which is erasable. This may sound cumbersome to you. But although the word processor is wonderful for giving a writer the ability to move whole paragraphs around or delete them altogether, I still like the heft of manuscript pages.

When my hard copy becomes so cluttered with edits that I can hardly find my way through it, I'll transcribe this third draft onto the computer and, from that point, all the editing will be done there.

It works for me.

Cheers!

Advertising for "Growing Up Ivy"

I discovered an advertising blurb for my upcoming novel on the website of a major on-line bookseller. I thought the blurb captured the essence of the story so well that I wanted to share it on my blog (with only a few minor tweaks).

Living in grim Depression-era Toronto with her actress mother, Frannie, Ivy Chalmers has never met her father. In 1931, Frannie sends 12-year-old Ivy to stay with her paternal grandmother in Larkin, Ontario, while she seeks stardom in New York City.

When Ivy's father, Alva, arrives unexpectedly in Larkin, he turns out not to be the Prince Charming she imagined, but an illiterate peddler. Rescuing Ivy from her uncompromising grandmother, Alva takes her with him for the summer, wandering the countryside by horse-drawn caravan, selling shoes.



Back at her grandmother's, at summer's end, Ivy meets teenager Charlie Bayliss, orphaned as an infant and raised by his aunt on a farm outside Larkin.


Ivy has a flair for writing and boundless imagination; Charlie loves baseball and loathes farming. Unknown to both of them, though, is a secret connection they share. When the final pieces of the puzzle of their lives fall into place, nothing will ever be the same.



Intrigued? I couldn't have written it better myself. I hope you'll look for Growing Up Ivy late next spring.

My Daily Writing Routine

When I was working (read: employed) I used to write on my days off. The people around me knew that Tuesday was writing day. After I retired I gradually became less disciplined. There was more time -- too much, perhaps. I became easily distracted. If I was writing and I thought of something that needed attention, I'd go look after it. It could be as trivial as adding an item to the weekly shopping list, or checking to see if I should water my houseplants.

Finally, I realized that if I wanted to be more productive, I needed a regular routine. Besides, the muse has to have a way to reach me, and with my mind running all over the place, she wasn't having much luck.

I made the decision that I must be ready to go to work every morning at 9. I must have had breakfast and be dressed for the day. No more writing in my PJs. I keep a pad beside me as I write, and if something off-topic comes to mind, I write it down. It can be looked after when my work day is done.

Now, I have to confess that I had let email become 'way too important to my day. I had to make a new rule for myself: NO CHECKING EMAIL UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO BE DISTRACTED. Reading email early in the day, which is when I happen to be at my creative best, has been totally distruptive for me. If I didn't reply to it immediately, I'd be thinking about my responses. Or I might read an email that unsettled me, got my mind going in another direction entirely. That's the kiss of death for me!

It's not a hard schedule to follow. I take a short break at 10:30, the same as one does at a regular job. Then I go back to work till 12 noon. I have lunch, check my email and go for my walk. The afternoon is when I look after any household chores and prepare the evening meal. But I find that after an uninterrupted morning of writing, my mind is still so absorbed with the story that I return to the manuscript frequently during the rest of the day. And this is good. Because much of the preparation for writing takes place in my head.

A writer needs self-discipline, and this is the routine that works for me. I'd love to hear how you schedule your writing day.

Write on!

Thinking Time

The hardest part of writing a story, for me, is the second draft. I write the first draft with abandon, recklessly. Having fun, in other words. But then comes the excruciating part as I try to get the story to make sense, get those elegant, unruly characters into line.

I look for excuses at this stage to avoid it. I pick up the phone, check my email (again), sort my bills. I even have to trick myself, by leaving the manuscript on the kitchen table where I usually write, and where I'm confronted by its unresolved bulk at least three times a day.

Brenda Ueland, author of If You Want to Write: a Book About Art, Independence & Spirit (first published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1938), suggests that if you're having trouble at this stage it could be because your story is not yet well-enough "imagined." It needs more time, more thinking time.

She says, "Try to see the people better . . . See them-- just what they did and how they looked and felt. Then write it. If you can at last see it clearly the writing is easy."

I think I knew this already; sometimes I just need a little reminder. So, today I'll spend time with my characters. Perhaps they'd like to help me clean up the flowerbeds?

"A Passion for Narrative"

One of the favourite books on my resource shelf is A Passion for Narrative, by Jack Hodgins. Subtitled, A Guide for Writing Fiction, it was published by McClelland & Stewart in 1993.
Although I read it years ago, today I still dive into it for help with certain aspects of my story. Lately, I've been re-reading the chapter on plots.

The chapter details a wide variety of plot categories--something I find rather daunting--from one Professor Norman Friedman. I love Hodgins' conclusion to all this.

He writes, "Rather than think of plot as a prescribed formula (or choice of formulae) to which you must make your material "fit," I suggest you think of it as a general pattern floating somewhere in the back of your consciousness as you write . . . Let the combination of your material and your hopes for it, rather than anyone's list of characteristics, guide your story's progress."

I find that comforting.

Most helpful to me, at the end of the chapter Hodgins provides some questions to ask myself about the plot, now that I've reached the first-draft stage. These thoughtful questions give me an idea of why it might not be working.

Write on!