Time to get unbogged

My 12x12 Draft Mobile well and truly bogged in the mud

I knew I had left this blog without a post for a while, but I didn't realise it was quite this long!

*Blows off cobwebs*

For a very brief summary of what I have (or rather, haven't been up to), you can have a look at my very first guest blog as a recent Tuesday 12x12 author on Julie Hedlund's blog.

Thanks to Julie's prompt to submit my guest blog and the support of my fellow 12x12ers helping to push, pull or prod me out of the mud, I am looking forward to embracing a new bog-free writing experience.

Today, I decided that if I really am to catch up on the commitment I made to 12x12 in 2012, I really need to rev up the engine.  To that end, I've decided to schedule a First Draft Friday into my calendar.  If you're a fellow 12x12 laggard, feel free to jump aboard the Draft Mobile and the new  #FirstDraftFriday hash tag on Twitter and check-in with your progress.

What is First Draft Friday?  Exactly what the name implies... committing (to yourself) to get the first draft down on paper for at least one story.  And staying up as late as necessary in order to do it.

Manuscripts on display

A big thank you to Georgie at Creative Kids Tales for the honour of being selected as this month's featured emerging author.

CKT is a great initiative for Australian kidlit and I am thankful that I managed to get in on the ground floor.  The manuscript for Scruffy McPaw's Chasing Tale was my submission for the site's launch and my January effort for the 12x12 in 2012 challenge produced this manuscript for School Teacher vs Zoo Keeper, which is my latest submission to CKT.

1 down... (at least) 11 to go

So PiBoIdMo 2011 was a barrel of laughs and now it's time to roll up the sleeves and get stuck into more serious fun and possibly even <gasp> some revisions.

Thanks to Julie Hedlund for extending the picture booking writing challenge... 12 manuscripts in 12 months.

More about 12x12 in 2012 here.

I'm happy to report that month 1 has been a resounding success.  One new manuscript, built on a PiBoIdMo idea, has been drafted, reviewed, gone through critique group, tweaked a little more and securely backed up in triplicate.  Wish me luck for the other 11 months... might even run off now to get a head start on the February manuscript.

Too many email accounts?

Think you've got too many IM and twitter accounts, email and snail mailboxes?

Spare a thought for dogs. They have a pee-mail inbox at every tree, shrub, lamp post, bin, etc. etc. in a 5 block radius (plus a few stowed away at holiday destinations) and they just have to check each and every one, each and every time they go past. Not negotiable.



Checking pee-mail



Okay, so pee-mail doesn't really exist, but it makes us humans feel better to anthropomorphise their behaviour (just as we do in so many picture books) just so that we can understand it ourselves. 

If you're interested in a more scientific theory of why dogs pee on trees, I found one here:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/my-puppy-my-self/201001/why-do-dogs-mark-their-territory

Happy Christmukah

During the week, my family attended the Chanukiah lighting ceremony at our local shopping centre. This was on level 2. Directly below on level 1, Santa was posing for photos with the kiddies.

Of course, there was only one eventuality for a Jewish family in a commercial Christian society... we attended the Chanukah ceremony and gave in to our daughter's demands to say hi to Santa on the way out. 'Tis the season.

Happy Christmukah everyone.

Always be prepared

Scratching my head for this week's blog post idea, I feel deeply satisfied with my own foresight to note down a couple of bullet points on my phone last month (in the middle of PiBoIdMo).

<--- This is Carmen Miranda

Carmen is best remembered for her signature fruit hat.

Carmen was always prepared in case she was ever held to a promise of eating her hat.

Props to Carmen and props to everyone that manages to be prepared.

I don't always follow my own advice, but I'm glad that I made an exception this time around.  Phew!

What if INVISIBLE was actually...

In a recent picture book writing course, the instructor wanted us to explore how changing a characteristic of the protagonist can open up all sorts of different possibilities for the manuscript.  It could be a change of gender, personality, species, etc.  We were encouraged to take a published work and rewrite a few spreads based on the characteristic we chose.

Here's how I went with my attempt based on Possum Magic by Mem Fox.

Original text:

But the best magic of all was the magic that made Hush INVISIBLE.

What adventures Hush had!  Because she couldn’t be seen she could be squashed by koalas.

Because she couldn’t be seen she could slide down kangaroos.

Because she couldn’t be seen she was safe from snakes, which is why Grandma Poss had made her invisible in the first place.

But one day, quite unexpectedly, Hush said, “Grandma, I want to know what I look like. Please could you make me visible again?”

“Of course I can,” said Grandma Poss, and she began to look through her magic books.

Modified text:

But the best magic of all was the magic that made Hush INVINCIBLE.

What adventures Hush had!  Because she couldn’t be beat she could squash sumo wrestling koalas.

Because she couldn’t be beat she could outleap kangaroos.

Because she couldn’t be beat she was a demon at Snakes & Ladders, which is why Grandma Poss had made her invincible in the first place.

But one day, quite unexpectedly, Hush said, “Grandma, I want to know what it feels like to have my friends win once in a while.  Please could you make me vincible again?”

“Of course I can,” said Grandma Poss, and she began to look through her magic books.


Have a go at this exercise yourself and leave a comment or link to your own example.