This and That About My Writing

First up, here's the most current version of the excerpt I posted from my manuscript a couple of posts ago, after a few people gave me some good feedback:

It was warm inside the Training House. The room was large, with tables and chairs against one wall. A stone fireplace crackled with life at the far end of the room. The three children walked into the changing rooms at the back of the building where they put their training gear on. Their uniforms were white, but Chihiro’s uniform had a golden insignia of an Evergreen Tree sewn into its back and on its breast, signifying that she was a Master of the Arts, just like Master Yuusan. Her siblings were still only students. The last parts of their uniforms were their belts: all black.

Feel free to give me more feedback!

Question: Should I workshop snippets of my manuscript on my blog again? What do you all think?

In other news, I won a free signed book, which I think is pretty cool: Love-Shy, by Lili Wilkinson. I read a snippet of it on her blog which I enjoyed and I am looking forward to reading more!

Last up, I finally finished reading The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman, which I am studying in English this term. And I am now a quarter of the way through a screenplay which I am studying in literature: Bastard Boys by Sue Smith.

And just because I managed to edit another three pages of my manuscript since the last blog post (good effort, I know right?), here are the last few characters who I managed to visually create using THIS programme.

Madam Koi: This is the closest I could make her. Her hair is meant to be really crazy! But otherwise, this is pretty cool. I love the way I was able to make her eyes.

The Witch of the White Lands: Again, best impression, but I'm quite pleased with it. The programme didn't offer black lips though.

The Witch of Thorns: I can't complain that much about this one. She's not that big of a character in A Fallen Star, but I do plan on making a sequel in which she plays a much bigger role. I just thought I'd make her too because the programme wouldn't let me make male characters and I was really bored.







Enjoy!

- Bonnee.

Trump Cards of the Slack

Happy Easter, folks!

So I managed to go from following 60 blogs to following 89 in the space of an hour on Good Friday. Damn you Jane Friedman for posting so many good links... The number of blogs I follow has since increased. I have probably just signed myself up for a suicide mission, as I wasn't reading all of the new posts from blogs I was already following... and I've just increased my list by half. Oh well! The more resources the merrier! :)

In other news, I have been such a slack writer/editor person and hardly touched my manuscript whatsoever since before the Easter school holidays, except from the little workshop I did on the short passage I posted last blog entry. And now we are more than half way through those two weeks of freedom from school. I'd like to blame the amount of holiday homework which was mercilessly dumped on me, but in all honestly, I've hardly touched that either. Oops...

So here is my blog-worthy trump card. A few years ago, during the inception/first draft of Evergreen: A Fallen Star, I stumbled upon a female anime creator on deviantART which I can no longer find the link to (if anyone recognizes the programme and knows where I can find it, a link would be lovely), and so I created some of the female characters from Evergreen to the best of the programme's and my own combined ability. Here are the results.

Chihiro: I could only find long hair which was straight in this programme, so this is as close as I could get. I would have liked to make her hair a bit wavier, curlier, crazier... not over the top, but with a little bit more life. Now that I look at it, her eyes and eyebrows are not right. At least not this combination. Her eyebrows should be more raised; she's supposed to be a confident character. This picture highlights her motherly/gentle side more than her overall personality does. The smile is right though, and I can't complain about the rest.

Sakura: This is probably the best visual recreation of any of the characters that I could generate. Her hair should be perhaps a touch darker, and I wrote it as braided, not like this. Otherwise she is perfect and I lover her too much for words.








That's all for now! Tell me what you think of these characters and I will get back to you soon (either next post or the one after that) with a few more visual recreations of my characters.

- Bonnee.

Edit: Thank you to Giora for helping me find the programme which I used to create the visual images of these characters. Please click here to check it out! 

Apparent Link and the Lucky 7 Game

First of all, this is the link I was given for my short story 'Walking to the Shop', which was recently published in an online magazine (see previous blog entry for more details):  http://digital.spineout.com.au/#folio=5

For some reason, the 5 keeps changing to a 1 when I open the link and I keep getting a message saying 'Undefined'. When I try accessing it through the spineout.com.au site, it comes up with a message saying 'Your session has expired. Please login.' I wouldn't mind so much if there was a login/create account page. If anyone can figure this out for me with some mad computer or hacking skills (or skillz, whichever you dawgs prefer) that would be great :) 

IN OTHER NEWS! I was just reading from Elizabeth Norris's blog where she talks about the Lucky 7 Game, which is apparently going around writer circles at the moment. I thought I'd try it out for myself :) 

What to do: 

1. Go to the seventh or seventy-seventh page of your WIP.
2. Count down seven lines.
3. Copy the seven sentences that follow and post them.
4. Tag seven other authors.  (I don't think there are 7 authors who come to this blog often enough for me to do this part, so whoever wants to try it can try it!) 

This excerpt is from page 7 of Evergreen: A Fallen Star, which I still consider a WIP because it's still being edited. Please note that this passage may be subject to change. 

It was warm inside the Training House. The room they stood in was large and had only a few tables lined up against one of the walls and some chairs stacked beside them. A stone fireplace crackled with life at the far end of the room. The three children walked into the changing rooms at the back of the building where they put their training gear on. Their uniforms were white, but Chihiro’s uniform had a golden insignia of an Evergreen Tree sewn into its back and on its breast, signifying that she was a Master of the Arts, just like Master Yuusan. Her siblings were still only students. The last part of their uniforms were their belts; all black. 

I'll admit now that this was originally one of the passages I liked least, and although I've done lots of work on it (it was a lot longer than this at first) I'm still not 100% satisfied with it. I'd love to hear your opinions here, any criticism is more than welcome. Just to show you what I'm talking about, here is the same passage from the first draft (yes, I still have the first draft which was completed in 2009. What of it?)

It was toasty inside the Training House. The room they stood in was large and had only a few tables lined up against one of the walls and some chairs folded up beside them. A fire place with a safety guard crackled with life at the far end of the room, keeping it warm. There was a door on either side of the back wall, leading into change-rooms. The teenagers and their little sister headed for those doors, Chihiro and Sakura to the left door and Zutto to the right, crossing the smooth wooden floor as they went.
Inside the change-rooms, they all went to their lockers. Chihiro was locker number four. Sakura had the twelfth locker and in the boys change room, Zutto had the ninth. A uniform for each of them was locked inside their locker, shirt and pants of orange with blue collars. Well, Sakura and Zutto had a blue collar, but Chihiro’s collar was golden. A gold collar symbolized that they were Master Students of the Training House – a Master of Kung Fu. Sakura and Zutto were not yet Masters. When they became Masters, they would be presented with a new shirt with a golden collar.
Quickly, the three of them got changed from their day clothes into their uniforms. The last thing they pulled out of their lockers was their belts – all black.

Your thoughts? Which version did YOU like better? What should I still be changing? Would you guys be interested in seeing some more old draft/current draft comparisons like this? Because I might be interested in doing it.

Once again, CRITIQUE PLEASE!

- Bonnee.

Walking to the Shop - PUBLISHED!

So the good news is, I AM OFFICIALLY PUBLISHED!

By this I mean that someone at SpineOut magazine decided that a short story I had submitted to them, 'Walking to the Shop' was good enough to go into the latest edition. I am so excited by this... and it still doesn't quite feel real.

The bad news is, I have been unable to access it. Why? SpineOut is an ONLINE magazine, right? Well...

Let's start at the start. When I went to submit this story, I had to fill out a form, and some of the required information was which school I am from. I submitted this short story some time in December, if my memory serves me right. I hadn't heard back so I'd accepted that it hadn't been good enough. Today - three months later - one of my school teachers walked past me during one of my study periods and said:

Miss D: Hey Bonnee, I just read that story you got published online.

Me: Yeah? Which one? (this is me thinking that she had found my FictionPress or Wattpad account...)

Miss D: Oh the one about the kites and the homeless man.

Me: Wait... WHAT?!

She showed me the email with the link, and opened the link up for me, and there was my name and my story on the latest online edition of SpineOut magazine. I jumped on a computer and tried to access it myself... which failed. I couldn't get to it. So my teacher sent me the link. And it's not working.

So here is the flood of emotions: Overjoyed, because, hey, I just got published, this is brilliant! I want to cry, because I cannot for the life of me access it! And I'll admit I'm a little confused... why didn't they email me to say that they were publishing me? What was the point of asking for my email address in the submission form if they weren't going to use it? I found out through a teacher; they emailed the school. I didn't give them the school's email, I gave them mine... they only had the school's name... hey, I'm not complaining by any means, I'm just confused... and so excited... my head hurts... gah...

If anyone knows how I can access this stuff, please let me know, I want to be able to share a link that works with the world!

Lots of love and I'll let you know if I find access to it myself.
- Bonnee.

Wonderful Words - Cellar Door

Cellar door is often used as an example of a phrase in the English language which sounds beautiful, with no regards to it's actual meaning. I'm not completely sure why this is, but I agree that the phrase does sound lovely. It's something about the way it rolls of the tongue.

But why this phrase, of all phrases?

What makes these two words so phonetically pleasing when they are put together and spoken?

I first heard this phrase when I watched the movie Donnie Darko. It is an excellent movie and please do watch it if you ever get the chance. I didn't understand what the characters were on about when I first watched it. My initial thoughts were, "How random can you get?" and I probably disagreed with it being a beautiful phrase at the time.

What are your thoughts on these words?

Is 'cellar door' beautiful to you? And if so, why?

- Bonnee

My Canon of Literature

After reading a blog by The Bookshelf Muse last night, about 'canon of literature' I had a bit of a think about it. The blog entry I read explains that your canon of literature is a list of books out of all that you've read which touched you so deeply that you still go back to them years later. The Bookshelf Muse blog explains that it is important to identify your own canon; it shows where you came from and what you value as a writer.

So today, I thought I'd share my little list. I'm only 17 and was not a big reader as a child, so it's not an extensive list at this point. But here it is.

Jenny Angel by Margaret Wild. Yes, it's a picture-story book, wow! This was illustrated by Anna Spudvilas and I remember first reading it in yr 2... well, I remember my teacher reading it to the class. And I remember thinking that it was beautiful. After I moved schools and began to hang out in the library a lot, I remember seeing it when I was in yr 7 and picking it up to read it, because of all the books from my childhood, I remembered it. Since finding it in my school library, I have returned for the pleasure of reading that book over and over and over again. It's a sad story about a girl who's little brother is sick, and she believes that she is his guardian angel and can save him. Now I see that I value sibling relationships in my writing, which is very evident in my novel Evergreen: A Fallen Star, where the three protagonists are brothers and sisters, yet best friends all the way. I will eventually obtain my own copy of Jenny Angel... it's been a whole 10 years since I first read it and I'm still in love with it.

Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke. I read this for the first time in yr 6, so I was about 12. How many times did I read it? At least 5 in that one year. It's by the same author who wrote the Inkworld trilogy (Inkheart, which I also loved, and Inkspell and Inkdeath which I am yet to read). This story is about a silver dragon and his brownie friend who are on a mission to find a new place for the other silver dragons to live safely, because humans are invading their home. On an epic journey to the Himalayas, they befriend a human and a manikin worker of their enemy; a gold dragon, who's diet had consisted of silver dragons until they had disappeared. Obviously fantasy and friendship; topics which I love to write. The idea of the epic journey to an unknown place, and an enemy who remains unknown to the protagonists for a long while, is found in Evergreen: A Fallen Star. I will admit now that the copy of Dragon Rider I own is actually my mothers, but she's never read it and never will, and I doubt she'll notice it's absence now that I've abducted it from her bookshelf and placed it on my own.

Hitler's Daughter by Jackie French. I read this first in yr 5 (so I was 11 yrs old) and I didn't understand much of it at all. But what I did understand, I enjoyed, and I fell in love with it completely two years later, when I had to study it for English at school, and understood it better. A girl tells her friend a story as they wait for their bus to take them to school; the story of Hitler's daughter. As far as her friends are concerned, it's just that; a story. But one boy is suspicious and curious and wants to know more, undecided on whether he believes the story to be true or not. All the while, the story is told beautifully to the readers as they flash-back through time to World War II. The end of the story has that good old sting-in-the-tail effect and leaves the readers unsure of how fictional the story is too. I can't think of any examples where this books has been reflected in Evergreen: A Fallen Star, except that on more than one occasion, stories are told between the characters. I did have a copy of this book at some point, but it's disappeared off the face of the earth. I'm pretty sure I gave it to my best friend's little brother when he had to study it for English a few years later, and I never got it back because the friendship fell apart and I am no longer on speaking terms with that family. Damn...

So that's my short list of canon literature, and my little rant about it. Has anyone else read any of these books? What about you guys, what do your canon lists consist of and why? I hope to add more titles to this list in due time.

- Bonnee.

21

I have now edited 21 out of 37 chapters in Evergreen: A Fallen Star and man do I love/hate this book. There has been so much re-writing and shortening and taking away of fluffy, pointless, good-for-nothing sentences, scenes, moments and the like. I cannot believe I thought the book was so much as 'good enough' not to mention 'publishable' in September last year, and I'm so glad I've decided to look over it again.

With more than half the chapters edited, and important plot and character development dead ahead, I can't say that I'm not excited to edit more, more and more. It's gotten to the point where I'm editing when I should be studying. No, that's a lie; it was already at that point. Maybe it's because I'm thinking about it more that I deceived myself into thinking otherwise. Either way, I'm too keen for life right now and I cannot wait for people to be reading it and giving me feedback.

I wonder if there are a few people I actually personally know who would be interested in giving Evergreen: A Fallen Star a read. I already gave last draft to one of my teachers (kudos to Mr Gorton), but I've ordered him to delete the file after I got to about chapter 12 of editing. And my beautiful friend Rachelle has also offered to read it, but once again, she has the old draft, which I have told her she shouldn't bother with. I'll definitely have to ask!

- Bonnee.