Sorry! I said I’d post about my awesome RWA meeting yesterday, but then I had no time. I actually spent the day shopping with a friend, and then I picked up the boys and stayed busy till bedtime. And then today, I had the best of intentions, but I was called to substitute at Mother’s Day Out. A little bit tougher than I remember from last year. This was only the second day of school for the little two-year-olds, and there was a lot of crying. I also had a Kindergarten Cop moment when one little girl told me during lunch that babies come out of women’s vaginas. Good to know.

So anyway…on to the Saturday presentation. Basically it was a combination of two really interesting ideas. One was the Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson, which is basically a way of building up your story from the bottom up. Start with a single, descriptive, carefully honed sentence that describes your WIP or the book you’re wanting to write. This is your high concept to be used as a teaser for editors and agents, in promotional materials and on your website, for marketing and publicity, etc. When you’re happy with your sentence, you move on to a paragraph describing your book. Then to paragraphs describing your characters. Then take each sentence of your summary paragraph and expand it into a paragraph and when you’re through you’ll have a one page outline of your book. You get the idea… I think I’ll try this (or at least part of it) before I attempt Fast Draft on my next book.

The other part of the presentation was on screenwriter Michael Hague’s Six Stage Plot Structure, which breaks a book down into three acts, with six stages, and five turning points evenly distributed throughout the story (a big boost for a sagging middle). There’s also a rule of thumb, percentage-wise, on how far along in the story these things should happen. I’m comparing it to my current WIP and finding it a very useful way of looking at things.

So that’s it, in a nutshell. Just tools for getting started and refining what you already have.

Well I had a very full weekend. Saturday morning I got up early to hurry across town to an RWA meeting, which turned out to be VERY enlightening and informative (I’ll blog about it tomorrow). I also finally finished up Agnes and the Hitman, which I highly recommend. I liked this one much better than Don’t Look Down, the last Crusie/Mayer collaboration–very quirky, witty, and complex. Hubby and I are still working our way through Season 5 of the Gilmore Girls–I’m not really sure what to make of that Logan…
But, what I want to blog about is a new review of U.P. posted on Amazon.com.

I probably shouldn’t even mention it–because it’s a two-star review–but I want to because I was just so impressed with the way she handled her comments. She was so constructive and diplomatic that I didn’t feel bad for myself at all. Admittedly I felt bad that she hadn’t enjoyed the book, but that’s another story.

I’ll paraphrase: she thought the book was slow, with too much character introspection. But she went on to say:

“…I agree with one of the reviewers that some parts were witty and well-written, and I especially agree that Ms. Goodnight needs, without a doubt, a better editor.

I hope Ms. Goodnight does not do what I did and pay attention only to the 5-star reviews; this is just the beginning of her career and we welcome new writers and fresh ideas. I’ll be looking for new titles under her name, as many will, too. Simplify, don’t underestimate the readers’ intelligence, learn to string events in a cohesive manner, live your characters and give them depth and consistency.”

I am just so impressed with her! I love that she’s willing to give a future book of mine another read. And I wish I could tell her that I’m striving to get better with age.

We’ve got Gilmore Girls, Season 5 from the library right now and are slowly plugging our way through it. After all this time, all this build-up, all this sexual tension, it’s so hard to believe that Luke and Lorelai are finally together. It’s almost weird. I like that they’re still being so snippy with each other even though they’re in the throes of new love. Any-way…it’s kind of funny, because my husband–the one who never wanted to watch the show in the first place and then was totally gung-ho and addicted–he had a little bit of a melt-down at the end of Season 4 when Rory made some bad choices. I think it was sort of difficult for him to start watching again. Slowly, but surely though, he’s forgiving her. Hee hee hee.

As everyone knows, I’m a big, big, HUGE fan of Jenny Crusie’s, so whenever she’s working on something, I make it my business to find out what it is. That’s how I discovered BenBella Books. I read Flirting with Pride and Prejudice (edited by Jenny Crusie) and really, really enjoyed it. It’s not really my kind of thing, being a collection of essays on the classic, but it totally worked for me. (And then, coincidentally, about nine months after I’d read it, my sister called me up for the express reason of telling me about this book. She never does that).
After reading it, I looked over BenBella’s list, and they have a vast collection of books on pop culture. Now I want to read Coffee at Luke’s (also edited by Jenny Crusie, essays on, you guessed it, The Gilmore Girls) and Nepture Noir, essays on Veronica Mars, edited by the shows creator, Rob Thomas. I need to save some money, because the library doesn’t have them.