Storytelling by Ellen

Have you ever stopped to think about story . . . and not what it means in literary terms like character, setting, theme, plot, climax and so forth?

We humans are wired for story. Kids, adults, it doesn’t matter, we all enjoy stories. As writers and illustrators, we know that creating stories and pictures is hard work. Our words and pictures must capture the reader. In this way, they will continue turning the pages.

Our job is to take life’s emotions, fear, worry, bravery, love, gut wrenching experiences and lesson learned, (not to mention building an imaginary place for our characters to deal with whatever we throw their way) and create a . . . story.            

One Year Later...

Mentish Retreat November 2012

It's hard to believe it's been a year since we launched Turbo Monkey Tales. So much has happened since our first blog post! In honor of our anniversary we thought we'd all take stock and offer our own personal Year in Review.
So, without further ado, here's what the Turbo Monkeys have been up to for the last twelve months!

Hazel Mitchell

• New books include: 1,2,3 BY THE SEA from Kane Miller, ONE WORD PEARL from Charlesbridge and DOUBLE CROSSED AT CACTUS FLATS from ABDO. 
• Completed illustrations for HIGHLIGHTS MAGAZINE and educational books. 
• Spoke at SCBWI conferences in Paris and New England.
• Signed with a school booking agent http://authorvisits.com
• Visited several book festivals (including Bologna Children's Book Fair, The London Book Fair and ALA Chicago), book stores and schools!
• Now working on a new book with Charlesbridge due in Fall 2014!

Amy Allgeyer Cook

It’s been a pretty exciting year for me. I (finally) finished the first draft of my young adult novel, Water for Starfish, during NaNoWriMo, then spent the next six months in revisions. 

On May 14th, I sent out my first wave of agent queries. Over the next two months, I received full requests, form rejections, more full requests, rejections on fulls, more full requests and … more rejections. Then, on July 15th, came an offer. YAY! Big squees! I let the other agents who had open queries or full manuscripts know that there was an offer on the table. And I gave them two weeks to finish reading and get back to me. Two weeks later, I had three offers of representation from three absolutely freaking amazing agents, every one of whom would have been stellar to work with. Unfortunately, I had to pick JUST ONE! 

After a very thoughtful weekend spent in Reno with some very dear writer friends, I decided to go with Danielle Chiotti of Upstart Crow Literary. I’m so excited to be a part of the Upstart Crow team and to be working with Danielle, especially!

Sarah McGuire

Last year, our blog's first day was also the first day of preservice in my school district. That seems fitting, since it was also the first year that I taught Creative Writing, which was truly an adventure.

Since then, I...

• Finished the Highlights workshop with Patti Gauch in October, which helped my jump into revisions on VALIANT
• Started submitting VALIANT on February 14
• Spent spring break angsting about VALIANT while vacationing at the oh-so-fabulous When Words Count retreat. (Yay for sweepstakes!)
• Signed with Tracey Adams of Adams Literary in April (I'm still happy dancing!)
• Finished school year and VALIANT revisions the way most teachers do– sleep deprived and somewhat incoherent
• Drove cross-country to help a friend move to Washington state. I even stopped in Reno on the way back to meet with a few of Monkey tribe! VALIANT has traveled as well- venturing out into the world as it looks for a home.

This week, it begins again. During preservice, I'll be preparing for Algebra II, College Algebra Trig, and of course, Creative Writing. 

Craig Lew

In this year of the Turbo Monkey: 

1) My movie ROCK JOCKS released in Theaters in June - Available on iTunes and Amazon http://www.rockjocksthemovie.com

2) My Augmented Reality App BPZapp became available in the iTunes App Store and Google Play 

3) My Augmented Reality graphic novel, THE GOTHS: THE HUNTRESS (available on Amazon) was a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards.

4) My latest acquisition, SMELVIN AND GOULASH BOY (written by Amy Allgeyer Cook, Edited by Lorin Oberweger, illustrated by Hazel Mitchell) will release in print, iBook and enhanced with Augmented Reality in Fall 2013.

5) Spoke at the Boise Cutters and Idaho Media Professionals Film Groups

6) I adopted Smittens, the kitten with the marshmallow mittens. 

7) Raced in the Idaho State Criterium Cycling Championships and lived

8) Met many new people and made some amazing friends.

I have two pending deals which could be huge...but I cannot talk about them yet.

Julie Dillard

Year highlights:

I feel really fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend TWO inspiring conferences this year--the Ventana Sierra Advanced Writers Workshop and SCBWI's Summer Conference in Los Angeles. I'm attacking my stories with fresher enthusiasm because of the focused time those experiences provided to hone in on craft and process. I am in a rewarding new teaching position, which means I have to draw on all the thoughtful advice I get from fellow writers to make progress in the limited time I have. One method I've adopted is getting up at 5am to sneak in an hour of writing before rushing off to work. The best side effect is having the story simmer in my head all day long! The very best part of this year has been, through conferences and great meet-ups with writer friends, abundant reminders of how very kind, funny, and compassionate--even heroic--people who write for children can be. Bring on the new year!

Kristen Crowley Held

Just a couple of days after our first blog post in 2012 I participated in the awesome online children’s writers conference WriteOnCon. This year’s conference starts tomorrow and, trust me, you won’t want to miss it! I also found inspiration at several in person SCBWI conferences and events where I reconnected with old friends and discovered new ones. By far my favorite part of this past year was attending the book launches of several writerly friends and crit buddies. I also had the pleasure of seeing my name in the acknowledgements of a real live book for the first time (if you haven’t read Katherine Longshore's TARNISH, go buy a copy right now, I’ll wait!). After much back and forthing, I broke up with my MG fantasy novel once and for all (or at least until I can figure out how to make it the wondrously magical thing I want it to be). With the help of a two week fast draft class run by Candace Havens, I wrote a “discovery draft” of the YA mystery (BLURT) I started at our mentish reunion at the fabulous St. Mary’s Art and Retreat Center in Virginia City, and next month I’m off to the Writer's Police Academy to make sure my manuscript “won’t bleed red ink later.”  I’m excited about getting BLURT to the beautiful/shiny stage and will be hopping on the query roller coaster later this year. Wish me luck!

Ellen Jellison

For the past year, I’ve been working on a middle grade historical/fantasy novel set along the Danube River in 170 AD. Ancient Roman and Germanic mythology is woven throughout the story, at times in real life, then fading back into mythology. Getting it right has been a challenge. The book is called JUSTUS, although I call it my Never Ending Revision. I’m finally on the last chapters, so yippee!  Two conferences that I recently attended and can highly recommend are the Speakeasy Literary Society’s retreat at Fallen Leaf Lake, and Terri Farley’s Ridin’ Writer’s Workshop. Both were intimate in nature, yet very powerful. I left both with new friendships, new ideas, and a rejuvenated determination in finishing JUSTUS, no matter how long the journey! My favorite word is perseverance, one familiar to all writers and illustrators . . . hang in there and keep on truckin’!

Marilyn Hilton

This has been a wonderful year with the monkeys! Although I didn't lose the 10 pounds I'd hoped to, I read lots of fabulous middle-grade and young-adult novels that have entertained, inspired, amused, educated, and enlightened me. I also attended several writers conferences and retreats, including three SCBWI regional conferences with Kristen, the Speakeasy Literary Society Retreat in April with Ellen, and the SCBWI Summer Conference in LA with Julie and Craig. It was a treat to have that time with them and so many other inspiring writers of children's literature. In October, a YA manuscript I'd been working on won the First Page contest at the SCBWI San Francisco North & East Bay conference, and I've continued working on that manuscript, along with a few others. But most of my writing time and energy this year have been spent working on revisions of my debut middle-grade novel, FOUND THINGS, which will be published by Atheneum in summer 2014. (The photo is me with my wonderful editor, Namrata Tripathi.)

I can't imagine having taken this journey so far without the monkeys, and I'm so excited to see what the next year brings for us all!

One Word Pearl and the Beautifully Full of Words Hazel Mitchell

by Amy Allgeyer Cook

Today, I'm super happy to be interviewing my dear friend and fellow Turbo Monkey Hazel Mitchell, whose latest illustrations hit the shelves last week in the darling new picture book One Word Pearl, written by Nicole Groeneweg.

So, Hazel, give us the pitch for One Word Pearl.

Pearl loves words. All kinds of words. Words make up songs, stories, poems . . . and what does a lover of words do? She collects them, of course!

But one day most of Pearl’s words are blown away, leaving her only a few which she keeps safely in her treasure chest. After that day she uses each word carefully—one at a time, until she has no words left. When her teacher asks her questions at school, she doesn’t answer. When her friend wants to know what she has for lunch, she can’t respond. What will Pearl do without her precious words? Will she ever find them?
One Word Pearl explores the power of words to transform, inspire, and cultivate imagination. This whimsical story is the winner of the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) Children’s Book Competition in the Picture Book category.

(ISBN 978-1-934133-53-8 $17.95 HC  -- Ages 5–8)

It sounds fantastic. What’s your favorite part of the story?

Playing Favorites

by Sarah McGuire

VALIANT is currently out of my hands, so I'm concentrating on what comes next and starting my next story.

That, of course, has me thinking of siblings. 

Of course. 

I haven't been teaching too long, but I've already taught siblings. Every time, someone inevitably warns me not to expect one sibling to be like the one I've already taught. 

No kidding. 

I'm the oldest of four. I get that no two kids are alike. 

Why, then, have I been comparing this infant of a story to its older sister? 

The Thing That Can't Be Named

by Marilyn Hilton

During the last session of a writer’s conference a few years ago, one of the leaders asked the attendees what topics we’d like addressed the following year. One brave person piped up. “Jealously,” she said. There was an uncomfortable silence, and then a shifting of seats, a shuffling of feet, muffled coughs. And then nodding of heads.

She had spoken it—the thing we all feel but no one wants to name. Because naming it means admitting we feel it. And admitting we feel it makes us feel ugly and ashamed.

- She signed with my dream agent.

- He signed a three-book contract.

- She won the award I wanted to/deserved to win.

- They <fill in the blank>.

We may be smiling on the outside, but inside the green-eyed monster roars. “I should have gotten that agent/contract/award/five-star review/<fill in the blank>.” “S/he’s not that awesome a writer—I saw a typo on page 11.” So begins the spiral downward. And if we give in to our jealousy, it will destroy our relationships, our spirits, and our careers.

 (Deep breath.) 

FAST DRAFTING: Wrap-Up

by Kristen Crowley Held

I did it! I finished a rough draft of my story! Okay, I didn’t write the last line until last week, but I wouldn’t have gotten there without my two weeks of fast drafting. 

As you may recall, in the blog post I wrote on Day One of my fast drafting class I said my goal was: 

“to commit to a story and vomit it on the page fast enough that I don’t have time to talk myself out of writing it. It will not be perfect. It may be total crap. I may put it directly in the bottom of a trunk once I reach 280 pages. BUT I WILL WRITE 280 PAGES!!”

Here are my stats:

I had a little bit of trouble with committing to one story (I switched stories on Day 5), but I did manage to write 20 pages every day and had a couple of glorious days where I wrote even more. 

Total number of pages written = 293 (Courier 12pt, for those of you who are curious)

Word count = 61,402

What I’ll do differently next time:

Be a Plotser. It seems I’m neither a Plotter* nor a Pantser**, but somewhere in between. I initially tried to pants a brand new story but on Day 4 I realized I had too many questions and instead of writing scenes I was brainstorming plot. The story wasn’t solid enough in my head to get it down on paper yet. My muse totally balks at plotting out an entire story ahead of time, but I need it to be at least partially defined before I try to capture it on the page. 

Why Fast Drafting worked for me:

As I said, I like challenges! And this class gave me a specific goal with a finite timeframe. 

When I hit the wall with my pantser story, instead of flailing around in despair and deciding that there were fifty million other things I should be doing instead of writing, I had a challenge to focus on. Plus I was getting daily email updates from my classmates and I did NOT want to be the person who either didn’t post their page count or had to admit they’d only written 216 words for the day. Did I mention that Candy is hardcore? When she says you get your words done no matter what, she means it. 

I couldn’t figure out how to make forward progress on my pantser story but I had two or three other ideas that I’d been mulling over before the class started so I decided to write a one paragraph synopsis for each idea and see what happened. When I got to the third story idea, one that’s been in my back pocket for over a year, I wrote the synopsis and just kept writing. And writing. And 213 pages later it was the last day of class.

Admittedly, I was still nowhere near finished with my story. So I kept writing. Not at the same 20 pages a day pace, which I’ve found is nearly impossible to maintain for more than two weeks without a great deal of advance preparation (and possibly a nanny). But without that two week promise I certainly wouldn’t have a big fat stack of manuscript pages sitting on my desk ready for me to revise. 

Revisionland, here I come!

Why I encourage you to try Fast Drafting:

It’s a huge commitment of time and energy but it’s only two weeks! Two weeks to focus in on your story and figure out very quickly what’s working and what isn’t, instead of flailing around for months, maybe even years. 

I will definitely plan on fast drafting again, but for now I've got a novel to revise!

*Plotter: one who carefully plots her book ahead of time 

**Pantser: one who writes by the seat of her pants

Summertime and the Reading's Fine

Ah, summer. The long, lazy days stretch out before me like a pristine, sun-kissed beach…nothing to do but read, nap, read some more…

The Dream

I wish.

Somehow, summer missed the memo that it ought to be utterly carefree and chore-free.

Still, I would like to live vicariously through the kids, who can log some serious reading hours.


Okay, the kids DO read--just not as much as I think they should, given the freedom of these weeks.  Books the kids are reading this month include:

And the Reality

Insurgent by Veronica Roth,

Allen Zadoff's Boy Nobody, 

The Wings of Fire series from Tui Sutherland, 

The Gregor the Overlander series from Suzanne Collins, and, of course, Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants




All worthy titles, but what books and series have got my writer pals’ underpants aflame and souls aflight during these balmy months?

 I put out the call and was rewarded with terrific ideas for summer reading.

Maybe you’ll find a new favorite among the suggestions!

Have some travelling to do with (or without) kids? My friend Vickie Smith Barrios recommends The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart This one is great for mystery-loving puzzle aficionados (not to mention fans of clever kid characters and save-the-world adventure)! We listened to this one in the car on the way to Oregon last year, and my husband and I enjoyed it (at least) as much as the kids. Vickie’s suggestion reminded me to pick up the second in the series for the next trip!

Harold Underdown recommends Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone—one I hadn’t run across yet, but with his “thumbs up” and a read of the synopsis revealing there are flesh-eating monsters in a rich, shadowy world and all depends on the heroine's confrontation with secrets of the kingdom and her own heart, I’m in.



Harold also brought up what looks to be a terrific new memoir, Rapture Practice, by Aaron Hartzler. Heartfelt and quirky? Into the stack it goes.

Donna Jeane Koepp sings the praises of Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and several friends chimed in to sing along!  The more I know, the higher this one goes on my list! A great mystery with an appealing girl sleuth? And a writer who debuted at 70? I'll take it.

Author Sonya Sones recently posted on Facebook about how she was loving Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell so much that she felt relief to be just half way through. This book is getting a lot of love--including from John Green who said in a NYT book review that “Eleanor & Park reminded [him] not just what it’s like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it’s like to be young and in love with a book.”  Swoon.

And speaking of John Green, Josh Galarza finds his The Fault in Our Stars an extraordinary, beautiful read. Be sure to make room for it if you haven't yet!

Another writer friend, Heather Petty, passionately recommends Unspoken from Sarah Rees Brennan. I just finished her Demon's Lexicon Trilogy, so am all over this.

A few Turbo Monkey suggestions for good measure:

 

Ellen Jellison, our resident lover of historical adventure, suggests The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman.

Sarah McGuire reminded me to dedicate some time to Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass from Meg Medina. 

Amy Allgeyer Cook votes for Three Times Lucky from Sheila Turnage.  

Honestly, there were so many great suggestions from an array of genres that it's "forgot to put on sunscreen" painful stopping the list.  I'm grateful for everyone's ideas! If I keep going though, I'll cut into your book hunting and reading time!

Oh, Captain Underpants

If only there were as many days of summer as there are books on my to-read list! But please, add more!  What is not-to-be-missed?