oh, the early work: a contest/blogfest!

Back in February, I put myself out there and started making blog friends. I wanted to throw a party, but felt kind of dumb doing so.

In April, I had my first blogaversary, or however you spell that made-up word. I didn't say anything, because, well, who would notice? I wasn't very prolific, which embarrassed me. A bunch of blogs I read had garnered huge followings before the end of six months. I kept my mouth shut, when I should have danced in the streets. Go me!

In May, I finished my first draft of my first novel, which I did announce, but never really celebrated here. I wanted to, though! It was the best feeling in the world.

In August, I joined the Campaign, which was a huge step, also deserving of a party that had yet to come {insert obligatory "please vote for my flash fiction piece, if you feel inclined and have not done so already! #141, yeah yeah!"}.

And then, this week, I finally made it to 100 followers, and I realized,

Yep. The time has come.

Time for presents.

source, yo.

The truth is, as I've blabbed about a million times before, this blogging journey has truly blessed me. If you would like to hear me gush further, read this post about skunks and crit partners.

So, hey. Let's not just have presents, let's have a contest!

During Christine Tyler's Sparkfest, an idea struck me. I would be really, intensely interested to hear about the "early work" of my fellow writers, and I'd love to share my own.

I'll just tell you know.

My first story ever was about two sad dinosaurs who fell in love and weren't sad anymore.

hey.

         

aw, and now they're happy! yay!

It was awesome. I was six.

In middle school, I filled up a notebook--in stylish burgundy ink--with a story about a girl whose best friends were the wolves behind her house. Sound familiar? It was TERRIBLE. And terribly amusing. Not surprisingly, I giggled through the whole first half of this book.

you can't fight the wolf shirt.
{but it wouldn't hurt to think twice before wearing it to church.}

Are you as excited as I am to hear what crazy/hilarious/embarrassing/possibly disturbing things your fellow bloggers thought up as children? I should hope so, or no one's going to have fun with this. Ha.

A few requirements, to get us started. Please follow me, if you haven't done so already. I want to make sure you'll see the announcement if you win! Let me know in the comments if you tweet/FB/blog about this contest, and I'll give you an extra entry {for each platform} for the random drawing. I don't have a nifty jpeg for this contest/blogfest, so if you include an image of a wolf or a dinosaur, or both, I'll give you another extra entry.

There will be three winners.

Update: more info on the prizes (a copy of Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone, for example) can be found in this post.

Enter your link on the list below-- after you've written your post {please pretty please}-- between now and October 14th 28th. Winners will be announced the next day! {Or maybe the day after that, depending on the level of sanity around here.} The line at the bottom says to comment after you've left a link, but feel free to do so beforehand. I'm not that picky.

Thanks, everyone! See you in the funny pages.

Oh, P.S, this is open internationally. Postage, schmostage.

{Thanks to everyone who participated!}

spark #3: learning to let it happen.

It's the last day! Let's get our Spark on! (hurry, quick before midnight--blaaagh!)

My freshman year in college, I had this English professor. His first name was Byron, and he was obsessed with Lord Byron (I remember wondering which had come first). He liked to assign research papers; I was not a fan. I enjoyed the writing, sure. But the researching? The figuring it all out and putting it back together again? All the while freaking out over whether or not I was plagiarizing? Ungh. So not my thing. (This is probably something I don't have in common with other writers, and that's okay, right?)

Anywho, after giving back papers one day, Lord Byron took me aside.
"Have you declared a major?" he asked.
I told him I was a theatre kid.
"Well, do you have a minor?"
I did, I told him.
"Well, I think you would do really well in English. You write a strong paragraph. The way the paragraphs fit together doesn't always make sense..."
I laughed. I knew it was true. I told him thanks and I would think about it.

It took me a long time to realize how cool this was. The next semester, when my minor fell through, I didn't have to look far for a new one. It seems sort of duh, Julie, especially after blogging about my sparks all week, but it really hadn't occurred to me that I was ALLOWED to write. To study writing, even! That was the last major step for me: just letting it happen.

This is the interior cover.
My hardback has big
embossed lettering on the side
that says, "hold me," so
sometimes I just call this book
"Hold Me."

By the end of my college career, I was burnt out on everything. It happens, you know. One day, at a local bookshop in Louisville, I found this weird little gem:      

I learned a lot from Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things... I learned that short stories are truly awesome, and that's there's actually a corner in publishing for quirky--who knew?

But the most important thing I gained from this odd book was my introduction to Kelly Link. Her contribution, "Monster" (also found in her book, Pretty Monsters), is one of my favorite things EVER. It's deliciously bizarre and brave and funny, not to mention horrifying. And it was written in a way that made perfect sense to me. With every word, I saw that I could write in whatever voice came to me--something I had not done in class, out of fear.

Overcome with joy, I emailed my creative writing professor about the contest in the back of the book. Good gracious, I was a little motorboat about it. I'll never forget his response: "See, now this is the kind of voice I want to hear from you." I finally understood what that meant!

I never did enter that contest, though. Truth be told, it would still be several years before I'd start writing seriously. However! It was the summer after I read Noisy Outlaws that I first got The Idea. Major spark points.

All right. One last thing. You want to know the spark that finally got me to put fingers to keyboard?

Reading writers' blogs. When I discovered this, it was like a whole new education opened up for me. I didn't know one thing or the other about publishing, which was my own fault for not being more dedicated to my classes in college (plays take a lot of time and I was LAZY). I let myself think it was over for a long time. I told myself I could just write for me and it wouldn't ever have to be perfect (lies!). But then, slowly, I realized, I can do this. I can do this without going back to school! And I won't be alone, and I won't be judged, and I won't feel guilty for trying.

So, this is for the friends who told me I should blog (and followed me from the very beginning), the friends I've made--and continue to make--on the blog (yeah, I'm talking to you. :B), and the writers, published and unpublished, who've taught me more than I ever realized I would need to learn.

Thank you thank you thank you.

Sparks to all!

source?
( See? I'm still a worried mess when it comes to plagiarizing.)

spark #2: things i read in school.

Hop on over to Christine Tyler's The Writer Coaster if you want to join in the Sparkfest fun. It's not over yet, my friends!

I have a confession to make: I was never a very strong student. Even with reading. I could devour books at home, but what about school? What about being "forced" to read? I had a hard time getting things done, but I did find myself... kind of not hating everything we read as much as my classmates. Like how I inexplicably loved Moby Dick at age 10.

Of all the books I read in school, though, there are three that really stick out as sparks of the writer I would eventually become.

The first was Shiloh, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I read it in fifth grade (same year as Moby Dick... weird). I loved that dog (we had a beagle, too).

Reading Shiloh truly spurned me to add "author" to the List of Things I Wanted to be When I Grew Up. Other notable contenders: veterinarian (short lived once I realized what it would involve), actor (still working on that one), doctor or nurse (see vet, above), and, "anything but a teacher" (but perhaps I was just being rebellious).

The summer between my eighth and ninth grade years, I read To Kill a Mockingbird. It changed my life. What fascinated me even more than the voice and the story and the world and Boo Radley, though, was learning about Harper Lee. The fact that she published only one book, that it was the only story she felt she had to tell, exhilarated me.* I knew then that I, too, had at least one story inside me I would have to tell, even if I didn't know what it was yet (I do now, though--and I just got cold chills). And if it was only one story, just one book? All the more beautiful, in my fourteen-year-old eyes.

*(Of course, that's the romanticized version.)

The best English class I ever had was my junior year in high school. I could devote an entire post to this one class. The teacher, Mrs. S, was one of the best of my entire education. She was devoted to making us passionate about literature, and it worked. Because of her, I did not hate The Scarlet Letter as much as I would have, otherwise. Ha. But Mrs. S didn't just teach us the state curriculum. She had a way of sneaking in her personal favorites, and books she deemed important. One of these was The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Oh my gosh, talk about changing my life. This was the first book I ever thought of as "grabbing me and not letting me go." (It also kick-started a fascination/slight obsession with the Vietnam War that lasted well into college.) And, in the vein of Harper Lee, Tim O'Brien fascinated me. Hearing his story made me think of writing in a whole new way--again. I saw the healing it could bring, the connections it could make. And I wanted to be able to do that, too.


Tune in next time for the sparks that finally--and officially--got me to write my first novel.

Oh, that first novel.

spark #1: that american girl thing.

Well, now that it's halfway through the week of Christine Tyler's Spark Blogfest (or Sparkfest, if you will), I figure I'd better bring my belated A-game and put something out there.

Looking back on my early childhood, it's obvious (my poor parents) that I was two things:
1. A rampant story-teller at home.
2. Not very social or motivated in school.

At age 8, I was diagnosed with ADD. And my ADD, as a little kid, was about the opposite of what you think of when you hear ADD. I definitely did not have that extra H everyone's always talking about. I could barely handle activity, let alone hyper-activity. I never got distracted by squirrels or planes or other kids. What took my attention away was my own imagination. Just thinking. I was ALWAYS thinking. At school, even though I was never so shy that I hid behind things or constantly took refuge in the gym (my mom was the PE teacher), I did live on my own planet, and rarely spoke to others. I think a lot of introverts can attest to the fact that the inside world felt a lot safer than the outside one, as a child... if not now, as well.

And so, the making-up-of-stuff began early. I got all my creative energy out after school, where I was home and safe and had friends who wanted to act out stories with me, and parents and grandparents who encouraged it. That is, until I held onto whichever unlucky adult was trying to tuck me in, as long as I possibly could, to "tell them a story." It was a cheap guise to not have to face the alone-in-my-room-in-the-dark bedtime monsters. But my grandmother ate it up and still talks about it. A huge catalyst, I think (of the making-up-of-stuff, not the nightmares), was a collection of books about this young lady right here:

Oh my gosh, don't look at me. I loved Felicity Merriman (and American Girl, in general) so much, I'm crying just thinking about her. Here, have some more pictures while I try to compose myself.

Oh man, you guys. One of these days, I'm going to find/share the Olan-Mills pictures
 of me in my pink Felicity birthday dress, with matching doll, reading matching book.
It happend.

The Felicity books also got me started riding horses.
It didn't stick quite as much as the love of reading.

And of course, I adore my Felicity doll.
In a fit of nostalgia during middle school, when I was sad
about getting "too old," (puh) I signed my name on her chest.
It was special.

Okay, I think I'm back together, again.

I can credit American Girl books with a couple of things, actually. They also spurned my long-standing obsession with history, specifically American history, specifically the Revolutionary War, specifically Colonial Williamsburg. Which brings us back to Felicity.

She was my first (and, perhaps, truest) geek-out, and it spanned several years. I mentioned earlier that I had a matching dress. Oh yes. There was also a nightgown, and one fateful trip to Colonial Williamsburg... in costume. It was the one-girl Comic-Con of my early youth (a tradition that died fast). And, last fall, when Joshua and I went to a Revolutionary War reenactment in Louisville, I may or may not have ogled at the costumes for sale, gotten a-little-more-than choked up, and begged him to let me get one next year (we're still waiting on the verdict). So, I guess that means the geek-out is still happening. I don't even get this crazy about Harry Potter.

She was not the only character I read, either. I read Molly books and Kirsten books and Addy books... heck, who am I kidding, I read all of them. But Felicity was My Favorite. The doll was my velveteen rabbit, and the books were my first spark. I remember seeing Valerie Tripp interviewed in AG Magazine (to which I subscribed until I was 15, because you can't fight what you love), and thinking, "Wow, I could do that!" But then, when that same AG Magazine would hold their annual writing contest, I was WAY to scared to join.

But! I still wrote stuff! Oh, how I wrote stuff. Terrible, unintentionally funny stuff.

Because I wanted to really have my own stories. I wanted my own Felicity, if that makes sense. In short, I wanted to be like Valerie Tripp, the first author I ever idealized.

(And, speaking of me getting choked up, that's exactly what happened when I read this article.)

updates: chattanooga/sparkfest/campaign edition.

Boy howdy. If I wasn't averse to cleaning before, I most certainly am now. On the upside, there's this neat little city in southeast Tennessee, practically (in fact, partly) in Georgia, and I live there now. It's called Chattanooga. Maybe you've heard of it.

There's this thing called the Choo Choo, and it sure was the swizz in 1941.

Dang. (This was also my only association with Chattanooga as a little kid. LITTLE DID I KNOW, HUH?)

Anyway, I hope you all are excited, because it's Sparkfest week! Meaning, pretty much, that a bunch of cool folks are going to spend a lot of time in the next several days telling other cool folks about the books that got them hooked on the notion of... all this. Stay tuned!

Here are some other important things:

1. The Chattanooga Library is HUGE. It's not quite as quaint/bright/user-friendly as my beloved Blount County, but it takes a close second. Definitely better than downtown Knoxville. Anyway, the point in all this: it's only about a block from where my husband works, as well as within a few blocks of both a local coffee joint and a Starbucks, and a park with free wifi (where I am right now). So, pretty much, I'm set.

2. This city is so... spacious. It's really not any smaller or bigger than Knoxville (not including their respective universities), but it's so much nicer. I could really get used to these wide, wide streets (you can always see the sky! Even in the middle of downtown!), this plaza, that place over there with really good coffee and super-nice baristas, not to mention the gorgeous library (complete with book sculpture/fountain*), and all the awesome things that aren't even in this little chunk of the city.

*a fountain that is a huge, metal sculpture of a pile of books-- but could also be read as books flowing out onto more books, which is a less organized version of what's going on inside, anyway.

3. I am going to gush about Chattanooga for a long, long time, so buckle up. You will want to visit, I am determined.

4. I did the two CRAZIEST things just now:
   4a. I signed up for Rachel Harrie's Third Writers' Platform-Building Campaign. It's like I suddenly grew a spine or something. I'm excited to meet other bloggers, for sure. I'm not as excited about/actually terrified of participating in the challenges, because, in case you haven't noticed, I don't really share what I write online. Too many eyes! Not enough clever! Oh the well. Can't hurt to stretch (my camp counselor is showing, isn't it?)!
   4b. I signed up (I think?) for NaNoWriMo. We shall see where this leads. It kind of doesn't make any sense, being as in-the-middle of a WIP (oh yeah, I started New Draft, finally) as I am, but I figured, What the hey? I need to write something other than this one story, over and over again, anyway. I'm thinking female MC. First person*. You know, something normal.

Ha.

*I actually did just throw down a bit of New Draft in first person, just for fun, just to see what it was like, and, uh, yeah. So much better. Surprise!

5. Because of all this, I've found myself staring down some new goals.
A of all: diligent, daily work on--and hopefully the completion of--New Draft, from now until October 31.
B: I'm shrinking my Booksplurge 2011 goal to 50, instead of 60. Bummer, I know, but I think it just has to be this way. And it will still be the most books I've read in one calendar year, if I get there (pretty shallow claim, since I've never kept track before. OH WELL).
And C: Um, the Campaign and NaNo.

So... wwwwwish me luck.

Okay!

(Edited to add: this isn't in English, is it? Ha!
Well, that's trying to watch youtube outside in the city without headphones, for ya.)

See you next time! We'll talk about my favorite book in 5th grade! And then my favorite book in high school! And then, you know, college, and why I started writing, for reals. And then maybe we can eat pizza, because Chattanooga has really great pizza (it matches all the other really great stuff). Ooh! And we can go to the Tennessee Aquarium, because it's awesome and I could walk there right now. (!)

Oh, wait, I did what? Set a ton of unreasonable, unattainable goals for myself that will pretty much take up the rest of the year?

Really?

Okay. We can go to the Aquarium in January, then. HAAAAAAA. (oh boy.)