The Bouncy Castle in Space

MsJudy

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Yes, Yay for summer!

Hopefully this year my son won't declare me Most Annoying Person on the Planet again, like he did last summer.

Ah, hormones.

But before that, I have to finish testing my kids, then do their report cards, plus their permanent record folders, plus Sports Day, the Volunteer Tea, end-of-the-year picnic... and I did sort of promise them a Reader's Theater version of Tacky the Penguin.

So...pardon me if I get goo on the computer when my brain explodes.
 

Morrell

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Wow--amazing story about the kiddo saving her dad's life! Good for her for making a smart decision all on her own.

Today was my last day. My brain is goo already. My students were as awful as they could possibly be, as if to make sure I would not get all weepy and sentimental. Of course, I did anyway. I kept trying to say meaningful goodbyes and impart words of wisdom; they kept whining, kicking over the dividers, throwing Legos, and tearing posters off the wall. My kids + changes = not a good mix.

I still have to get my files in order, close down my classroom, and write one more IEP. And I'm going to visit my new school tomorrow!
 

Kitty Pryde

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Wow--amazing story about the kiddo saving her dad's life! Good for her for making a smart decision all on her own.

Today was my last day. My brain is goo already. My students were as awful as they could possibly be, as if to make sure I would not get all weepy and sentimental. Of course, I did anyway. I kept trying to say meaningful goodbyes and impart words of wisdom; they kept whining, kicking over the dividers, throwing Legos, and tearing posters off the wall. My kids + changes = not a good mix.

I still have to get my files in order, close down my classroom, and write one more IEP. And I'm going to visit my new school tomorrow!

Congrats! I had to LOL a little bit at your efforts to be profound and touching being met with stomping and crying. I know the feeling! :D

I've got three weeks left. This week has been highly dramatic and I am well ready for a long weekend.
 

Kitty Pryde

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Any good adventures going on this lovely long weekend? Any good MG novels being read or written? Inquiring kittehs want to know!

I'm grilling, doing schoolwork, and sleeping as much as humanly possible!
 

JoyMC

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No adventures here, while I fight off a cold and stare longingly out the window and the crazy gorgeous weather we're having. I'm trying to get into Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and doing a ton of writing. Every day I plow through my allotted 1200 words/day on my work for hire middle grade, and use whatever time I have left for my personal WIP. No idea if it's working, not really caring, just trying to get a first draft out there and not think about the fulls I have out on my active manuscript.

Hope all you teachers have a great wrapping up of your school years!
 

playground

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Any good adventures going on this lovely long weekend? Any good MG novels being read or written? Inquiring kittehs want to know!

I'm grilling, doing schoolwork, and sleeping as much as humanly possible!


I'm almost done with my latest novel. Plan to have it finished by Sunday.
 

Britwriter

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I had planned to work on my MG rewrite, but need to stop this weekend and write some info for the publisher of my picture books. It's very cool that although I'm mentally absorbed with my MG right now, the moment I open the documents and re-enter that picture book world, I love it.

I'm so excited that they are going to be published, and the illustrations are just so gorgeous I have to keep opening the files to look at them again!

I'm happy that it's a holiday weekend, so I can hopefully get some writing done on the MG on Monday. I've reached the stage of telling my kids I'll pay them to go play and let me work for a day without interruptions.....

How blessed I am to love my work so much that I would pay to be allowed to do it. :)
 

MsJudy

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That's great news, Britwriter! Can't wait to hear more about those PBs.

I am also very grateful for 3-day weekends. I spent much of it weeding, cleaning, knitting, etc., while I let my mind pick at the puzzle of how to end The Book. Then, suddenly, the answer was right there in front of me, looking inevitable and oh-so-obvious. I just knocked out the last chapter in about 2 hours, and the first draft is done!

And I totally know what you mean about the kids. Mine are currently playing video games and online games and totally being couch potatoes. I know I should feel guilty, but it's so nice when they ignore me!
 

Kitty Pryde

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I am also very grateful for 3-day weekends. I spent much of it weeding, cleaning, knitting, etc., while I let my mind pick at the puzzle of how to end The Book. Then, suddenly, the answer was right there in front of me, looking inevitable and oh-so-obvious. I just knocked out the last chapter in about 2 hours, and the first draft is done!

:hooray: Woo-hoo! I toast you with my yummiest cupcakes!
 

playground

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That's great news, Britwriter! Can't wait to hear more about those PBs.

I am also very grateful for 3-day weekends. I spent much of it weeding, cleaning, knitting, etc., while I let my mind pick at the puzzle of how to end The Book. Then, suddenly, the answer was right there in front of me, looking inevitable and oh-so-obvious. I just knocked out the last chapter in about 2 hours, and the first draft is done!

And I totally know what you mean about the kids. Mine are currently playing video games and online games and totally being couch potatoes. I know I should feel guilty, but it's so nice when they ignore me!


Congrats on finishing your book. It's such a great feeling getting the first draft done.
 

Britwriter

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That's great news, Britwriter! Can't wait to hear more about those PBs.

I am also very grateful for 3-day weekends. I spent much of it weeding, cleaning, knitting, etc., while I let my mind pick at the puzzle of how to end The Book. Then, suddenly, the answer was right there in front of me, looking inevitable and oh-so-obvious. I just knocked out the last chapter in about 2 hours, and the first draft is done!

And I totally know what you mean about the kids. Mine are currently playing video games and online games and totally being couch potatoes. I know I should feel guilty, but it's so nice when they ignore me!

Yay for your final chapter! Isn't it cool how those answers come to you while you're doing something else? If you ask me, every weekend should be a three day weekend!

That makes me feel better that your kids are also being couch potatoes. :) Two of mine did their schoolwork independently this morning and are now doing their own thing. The third? I was deep in thought at the computer, when a sound entered my consciousness and I realized it was the sound of someone sawing through wood out on the drive. Fortunately I got there before blood was spilled, but the saw was twice the size of my youngest kidlet. And very sharp. Oh my.

I wish he'd come indoors and watch TV while I work, where at least I'd know he was safe!
 

Kitty Pryde

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It's a good day when you get a check in the mail for writing, even if it's only ten bucks! I was a runner-up in the super teacher worksheets holiday poem contest. Here's my groundhog day poem, and here are the winner and runners-up.

Yay! Well done! :D

I did my first official observed student teacher lesson today and all the kids were well-mannered and smart and made me look competent. Huzzah!
 

sissybaby

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Yay, Ruth! I really liked your groundhog poem. I liked the others, too, so I guess it was a difficult decision for the judges.
 

MJWare

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Hi all,

I'm deep in revisions, but wanted to stop by and see how everyone was doing!
I hope all of the educators enjoy summer and get some good writing done.

Ruth and Kitty,

Big Congratulations. The most I've ever been paid for a story was $2--but I didn't cash the check (I was going to hang it up, but it never made it to the wall).
 

playground

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Two questions for you Judy.

First: could you possibly tell us what your new story is about by chance?

Second: with taking what you learned from writing this book, do you plan to go back and change Agatha to try and get it published?
 

MsJudy

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Congrats, Ruth! Buy yourself something nice with that check.

I sold an essay on teaching many, many moons ago. I spent the money on yarn, and I still wear the sweater all the time. It seemed like a good use for it!

Kitty, of course they made you look brilliant. You are brilliant! They couldn't help themselves.

playground king, it's a Gothic Victorian fantasy about a young housemaid who always does what she's told. The heirs to the estate order her to help them murder the old lady of the house, and she has to 1) resist them and 2) stop them.

My plan is to query this book and then go back to revise Agatha. She's going to end up with a completely different story, actually, so it's rather more than a revision.
 

playground

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Warning, I'm taking a moment to reflect on my past year-and-a-half.


A year-and-a-half ago I was 20 and a junior in college. Up until that point in life I wrote all the time on the side for fun. Nothing ever real serious, just online and little stories here and there I never finished. Then the movie trailer for Inception came out and I got an idea to write a novel based on dreams.

So I sat down and got to 5,000 words where I hit writers block (something I was all to used to at this point in my life) and decided to just "sit on it." Fast forward a week and an idea pops into my head (Playground King) and I tell my girlfriend about it who encourages me to write it.

So I sit down and I start writing, and 6 months later I finished the 90,000 word novel. The feeling the moment I wrote that last word is something that I will remember for the rest of my life. It's something all of you know, something I don't think a writer can really express. The joy of actually finishing it, seeing the damn thing complete.

I then queried around and got 3 rejections where I came here and learned what I did wrong with my query. While I was mulling over fixing my Playground King query another idea popped in my head. So while I was working on my query I started another story.

Fast forward 6 months and I completed my second novel, this one much shorter thankfully, at 53,000 words. I go through the same process, this time I get a few requests and I send them out and here I sit waiting on them.

In that time of waiting I started three novels, two of which are sitting at 10,000 words and the other which I just finished today at a grand total of 35,000 words. In the span of about a year and a half I have written just under 200,000 words (before edits of course, since I cut a good 20,000 words from Playground King).

Stephen King has a famous quote (well, famous might be an overstatement, I should state it is a quote that sticks with me) in which he said "the first million words were just practice."

I look back at the last year-and-a-half and at the amount of words I have not only written, but deleted, tweaked, thrown out, thrown back in, and more, and I feel that while his quote holds true (as it is staggering the change in one's writing from novel to novel) I feel in my experience the words hold this to me: "the first million was fun, the next million was a dream come true."

It's amazing when talking to people before I graduated from college (I was a journalism major) and how many of them wanted to write a novel. It was my last semester of my senior year when I finished my first draft of Playground King, and word spread around in some of my classes. Some asked about my book, which I was more than happy to talk about, but many asked for the advice, or the most common one:

"How'd you do it?"

"I wrote," I would jokingly remark.

They'd laugh, get the gist of my answer and ask me other stuff like what I was going to do next. Why do I bring this up? I don't know, but I hope it means something. Because as I look back at myself from barely under two years ago, I never though I'd finish a novel in two years, let alone three novels in under that time frame.

If anything this has taught just how much I truly love writing. How much of a passion it is. As I wrote the last word to my most recent novel, I didn't feel relieved, like I had finally finished this gauntlet. The first thing that popped into my mind was this other story I've been thinking about and how excited I am to start it.

My girlfriend and her father always joke with me saying how I have to actually try to sell a book instead of keep writing. But I think there is something special in that. To be able to love something so much that you'd do it for free in your pass time, I think that is something many people would love to have.

Obviously, I want to make a career out of this so I can continue doing this. But I wrote all of this because writing is something special to me as I know it is to all of you. If anything I want to share this bounce with every writer here that understands how crazy we are to chizzle away at our words everyday just because we love to do it.

So this bounce is for everyone here, and I hope to have many more with all of you.
 
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JoyMC

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It's amazing when talking to people before I graduated from college (I was a journalism major) and how many of them wanted to write a novel. It was my last semester of my senior year when I finished my first draft of Playground King, and word spread around in some of my classes. Some asked about my book, which I was more than happy to talk about, but many asked for the advice, or the most common one:

"How'd you do it?"

My college playwriting professor told me he'd had countless students who wanted to be writers, but I was the only one he'd ever had who actually wanted to write.

Good for you, playground king, on all you've written and learned in the last couple years. It sounds like you've got a great attitude.
 

Morrell

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Thanks for sharing your journey, PK. I started writing seriously when I was your age. I took a creative writing class in college, did the ICL course, read the how-to books, and subbed a bunch of stories to magazines, but got only Rs. Back then, we didn't have this enormous wealth of online resources and support. I didn't know any other writers. Writing seemed pretty "iffy" as a career choice.

So then ... life happened. A teaching career, a husband, three kids, aging parents with health problems ... I didn't write much for years, other than the occasional letter to the editor and little stories for my own kids. In 2004 - 05 when I got my masters in elementary ed/reading, I realized once again how much I loved children's literature, and how much I still wanted to write. I started jotting down notes and ideas, wrote a picture book that went nowhere, and then found out about NaNoWriMo. In November 2007 I wrote my first novel, and I've been writing like a fiend ever since. I had a story accepted by an e-zine in 2008, which gave me the encouragement to continue. I made my first "real" sale to Highlights in 2010, and signed with my agent in 2011, at age 52.

If I could do it over, I wouldn't take such a ridiculously long break from doing what I love. I hope you younger folks will keep on with your writing and not allow other things (no matter how important) to get in the way!
 

MJWare

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Same thing here, took too long to realize I wanted to write kids books. But, better late than never.

PK, I wish I would have started when I was your age--keep it up!
 

MsJudy

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Count me as another who didn't get very far while I was young, then life intervened, and now I'm back.

But I don't actually regret it. First, because I wouldn't trade any of the experiences that got in the way of writing (my kids, my teaching career). And second, because I don't think a million words, or even 10 million words, would have made me the writer I am now. Those life lessons that got in the way also made me the wiser person I am now. And wiser people can write deeper, smarter stories.
 

sissybaby

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Great stories, everyone. Thanks so much for sharing. I admire any young person who will take his/her writing seriously. And I have great respect for any less young person who remains young at heart and doesn't give up.

I just wrote the acknowledgments page for Michaela's Gift today since it's coming out in a couple of weeks. You're all there, just not in name. I don't think they would have given me enough pages for everyone I owe so much to.
 

Kitty Pryde

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I have had an attack of crabbiness after being the unexpected recipient of outlandish rudeness from a friend. I'm trying to tell myself she is in a state of temporary insanity over trying to plan her kid's bar mitzvah but dang.

On the plus side, my coworker wants all the staff to put on a skit for the kids. She has put me in charge of writing it MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA I mean, what a fun opportunity, I'm sure I would not use my powers for evil.