Marking a Milestone

Last week I pressed send.

Not to an agent or an editor. 

But to 10 beta readers. 

I finally have a draft of Half-Truths, which is ready to be critiqued!

Eight years ago Joyce Hostetter challenged me to join her in NaNoWriMo. I'd been thinking about writing a novel and had a rough idea what it was going to be about, but unlike my student Sydney Kirsch, I was unprepared. 

Undaunted, I plunged in. Eventually what I wrote in November, 2008 turned into Draft #1 of Half-Truths. It was from Kate's POV and I thought it was terrific.

I wrote slowly back then. Labored over word choices.  Experimented with tenses and had A LOT of false starts as I couldn't figure out where to begin the story. I edited as I went. Did I say slowly? I finished that draft on New Year's Eve 2010. I spent the next eight months honing and perfecting and thought it was "done." (How naive could I have been?)

I attended the 2011 SCBWI-Carolinas conference and was blown away. My work was critiqued by Mary Cate Castellani who suggested I write the novel from two points of view. Re-vision began and Draft #2 was born.

My first attempt at outlining chapters
from alternating POV. Index cards circle
my dining room table.

During that time I read books about the experience of being bi-racial, books about Charlotte, and interviewed experts. For more on these books and my interviews click on the Half-Truths tab. 

One of my favorite experts. Price Davis, constantly reminded me to make my story authentic.
He's standing in front of his childhood home in Cherry, NC where my character, Lillie lives.
Price passed away in December, 2016. 

The second draft turned out to be my kitchen sink draft. I wanted to put in everything that I found. How African American funeral homes used hearses for ambulances because the white ambulances wouldn't transport blacks. The poor care blacks received at Good Samaritan Hospital. Police brutality. The one drop rule. 

I sent Rebecca Petruck that draft in July, 2013. (The scene I shared in that blog post is still in my story, but stronger.) 

After receiving Rebecca's editorial input, Draft #3 was conceived in August, 2013. I worked on character arcs, rearranged plot points, and eliminated some of the extraneous events. 

Draft #4 deepened the characters. But I strayed from my pitch which, I had written in 2012: 

"In Charlotte in 1950, two teenage girls--one black and one white-- break racial restrictions, uncover family secrets, and discover they are second cousins."
  
I made a BIG mistake. I added boys. Oey Vey!

When I turned Draft #4 over to Rebecca in the fall of 2015, she wrote a great--but difficult editorial letter. You can read her feedback here. 

I dug in. Re-outlined. Took out the boys and several historically correct settings that I LOVED but which, took away from the story. Sent it to Rebecca. Got her approval! 

Draft #5 was born January, 2015.  

Besides saying goodbye to each girl's love interest, I gave the girls more opportunities to connect with each other and I stayed faithful to my current pitch:

"In 1950, two teenagers discover family ties that intertwine like deep roots under their city's sidewalk. One girl is black. The other is white."

For the last four months (in between moving out of an apartment, more road trips than I care to count, and teaching a writing class) I've been in a different type of revision mode. I had a draft that I liked, but following Kathy Erskine's advice at Highlights Summer Camp, I needed to cut to the chase in each chapter and needed to show, not tell in each scene. 

With Kathy Erskine at Highlights Camp

I worked hard and then printed out 320 pages. Only to discover the manuscript was 94,600 words--14,600 over my target of 80,000 words (which is the high end for a young adult novel). 

I began to hunt and destroy. 

Working at home, in hotels, and libraries,
I had  my laptop, my pages, and pink post-its.
If I found a story thread I wasn't sure I'd completed,
I stuck a note inside the lid of my travel companion:
an Adidas shoebox.

Having a deadline helped. Several of my beta readers wanted to read it during winter break. Holing up in a NC condo without a 9-hole golf course nearby also helped.

Chocolate, caffeine, and watching the "deleted words" add up helped too. 

After combing through the manuscript and following Janice Hardy's advice about revision and editing, I killed:

141- "Just"
106- "about"
36- "I think"
34- "I wonder"
34- "start"
15- "almost"
11- "nod"
 8-  "I shrug"

I discovered that my writing was stronger without qualifiers. 

All together, I expunged 11,146 words. That means I still have 3,454 words to delete. I'm counting on my beta readers to help me continue this tightening process. I haven't searched for "but," "and," or "that." There's probably a few hundred more useless words which may kick the dust!

While I'm waiting to receive feedback from my beta readers, I'm tackling the Author's Notes, Bibliography, and creating a spreadsheet on agents. 

I'm hopeful and excited. 

Stay tuned!

¡Hola! Let's Learn Spanish: A Review

Judy Martialay has a passion for languages.  Specifically, she has a passion to teach children from ages 6-10 that learning Spanish is fun and rewarding.

¡HOLA!, Martialay’s first book, includes a fun story written in English with key words in Spanish, a song, a skit, background information about the cultural context, an art activity, and a dictionary.  The material is supplemented by an audio version which parents and educators can download online. Simple, colorful illustrations by the author amplify the content and engage readers in the story. The combination of these activities makes this an attractive classroom or homeschool book.

When I received my review copy, I first thought I’d pass the book along to my daughter, Lisa Edgar, who teaches middle and high school Spanish. I envisioned she would eventually use it to introduce Eleanor, my youngest granddaughter, to Spanish. 

But when my seven-year-old granddaughter, Caitlin Kasten, announced she loved Spanish, I thought ¡HOLA! might supplement her introduction to the language. 

Caitlin is reading above her second grade level so I let her try reading the book herself. Unfortunately, that was frustrating since she’s only just begun to learn Spanish. She enjoyed listening to me read (although Lisa later told me my accent was awful), was disappointed that there wasn’t a second story in the book, and wanted to make the mask. Her four-year-old sister was drawn in by the illustrations and listened attentively while we waited to be served at a favorite restaurant. 

Libbie and Caitlin enjoyed the story of Panchito, the Mexican jumping bean. 

After showing the book to Libbie and Caitlin, I next asked Lisa for her impressions. She said it would be a cool book for students at the elementary school level. She liked how the reader was introduced to the meanings of different vocabulary words and how Spanish words replaced the English in the text and was bolded to further capture the student's attention. “The repetition of Spanish helps a child remember the words. The multiple opportunities for kids to see words in context is also good,” Lisa said.  As a teacher, she thought that using words found at home or in the supermarket was attractive. 

Eleanor listening to ¡HOLA! for the first time.

I finally decided that the book is making it’s first home with Caitlin. I asked her to share it with her Spanish teacher and I'm sure she'll soon learn to read the story on her own. ¡HOLA! will get passed down to Libbie and  since it is part of the Cousins Club collection, it’ll eventually be back in Eleanor’s hands. 

And who knows? If her mommy starts talking Spanish to her soon, she’ll be reading it to her grandmother one day—with a better accent than I can ever manage!

Judy is working on a book to introduce children to French, BONJOUR! LET'S LEARN FRENCH, featuring Louis l'escargot, France's favorite snail. Like ¡HOLA! it will include a story, activities, culture, song, and craft: How to make an impressionist style painting/picture. She also hopes to publish similiar books in Chinese, Arabic, and Italian. 

*******

Sydney Kirsch, last week's blog guest, agreed to keep us posted on the progress of her NaNoWriMo book. Here is her conclusion from last week:

"Awful writing can be fixed... nonexistent writing can't."

Word count as of 12:08 AM November 13, 2016: 30,091.