The Secret Books of Gabendoor

I’ve been “tweaking some material I use in school workshops. I bundle a couple concepts together and put a fun name on the package. One I’m playing with now is “Don’t for get the warm-up.”

 

When a track star goes to a race, he or she doesn’t just pull on running shoes and wait for the starting gun. If they did, they would pull a muscle. The do a warm-up first. When we write, sometimes we pretend we heard the gun and start. If you have writer’s block, don’t know where the story is going or where to start, maybe you need a warm-up.

 

A writing warm-up is easy. Just start writing. Write about what happened to you that day. Write about how you feel about the weather. Write about anything, letting the writing take you wherever it wants.

 

When I do this, I notice the writing slowly changes. At about page 5 for me, I begin to shift to the story I’ve been thinking about or working on. My writing gets better, I start to focus, I get in a “writing groove.” When I’m done, I go back, cut out the “warm-up” part, and may need to edit the transition point to the important writing. It’s a lot better than staring at a blank page.

 

If you have writer’s block, try the “warm-up” technique.

 

Don’t be thinking and planning. Be in the moment. 

As a related thought, don’t be thinking about your story when you write it. An athlete or actor studies and plans before an event or filming a scene. When the athlete performs, they are in the moment. When the director says, “action,” the actor plays the role.  It’s fine to think about what you are going to write, before you create it. When you are writing, be in that moment. Be in your story.

To treat myself for my birthday I stopped at a special store. I secreted my package to my home office. At midnight, I got out of bed, poured a glass of milk and headed for my stash. In the light of my PC monitor, I ate two chocolate cupcakes, two golden cupcakes, and one Ding-dong. I couldn’t eat the second and only took two bites out of the snack pie. No I didn’t sleep well. No, I didn’t throw up. Yes, I was happy.

Write in 3D, not flat.

• This is not a pen.
• It isn’t what it is. It is what it isn’t.
• Write in 3D, not flat.
• Oh no, no oh oh. Or, oh oh, no oh no.
• Hit me with some action.
• Leave out the boring parts.
• Don’t lay an egg.
• Only include the good stuff.
• Buzz the “was.”
• Slam a book.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. What does Jack look like? What does Jill look like? Why did they need the water? Where is the hill? What does it look like?

We really don’t know anything. The story, the characters and the plot are flat. Let’s puff a little dimension into Jack. Yes, we can describe what he looks like, but let’s focus on his personality.

Jack and Jill sat at the corner table in the Wellhill coffee shop. Jack sipped on his white raspberry latte. Jill slammed down her espresso. Hot, strong and thick, It was just as she liked it.

When we insert some personality cues, they start to come alive and change from flat to 3D.

“We need to get that water, or mother will die,” Jack said and looked over his shoulder, worried someone might have heard him.

“But it’s up the hill,” Jill said, her voice loud. “Lots of people have gone up the hill, but no one has ever come down alive.”

You get the idea. Put some life in your writing. Write in 3D, not flat.

This   is not a pen.

It  isn’t what it is. It is what it isn’t.

Write  in 3D, not flat.

Oh  no, no oh oh. Or, oh oh, no oh no.

Hit  me with some action.

Leave  out the boring parts.

Don’t  lay an egg.

Only  include the good stuff.

Buzz  the “was.”

Slam  a book.

“This is not a pen,” and “It isn’t what it is. It is what it isn’t,” are much the same thing. The though is, if this isn’t a pen, then what is it? When I’m writing and need a new place, a new creature, a new character or something for the plot, I tell myself, “This is not a pen.” It’s a reminder to me to be creative and different. It’s a reminder to think about the obvious. What is it the reader would expect? If they anticipate a pen, give them something else to keep the story interesting and to hold on to the readers’ interest.

Keep your writing and ideas fresh.

This is not a pen. In my classes, I use the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill to
illustrate concepts. Let’s look at Jack and Jill now.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown. Jill came tumbling after.

This is not a pen. What was that water? Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of magic water. Magic water is a pen.  How about a pail of saliva? Or maybe an envelope of water?  Be creative.

It is what it isn’t, it isn’t what it is. They went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. They came back with what they thought was water. It did come from the well. To their shock, horror, amusement, etc. it was ?

While I was Author in Residence at

Rutherford Elementary school this year, I expanded on my small list of phrases I use to remind me of how to write well. The students liked them. The teachers started using some of them. One teacher even suggested I should use them in a workshop for teachers.

 

Friday I touched on a couple of them while teaching a workshop for students attending the Success Beyond the Classroom, Young Writers Conference held at

Bethel College. I had most of my hint phrased listed on the chalkboard. They drew a lot of interest and I promised to post them on my Blog.

 

Here is the list. I’ll start explaining them as I have time.

 

• This is not a pen.
• It isn’t what it is. It is what it isn’t.
• Write in 3D, not flat.
• Oh no, no oh oh. Or, oh oh, no oh no. (My favorite).
• Hit me with some action.
• Leave out the boring parts.
• Don’t lay an egg.
• Only include the good stuff.
• Buzz the “was.”
• Slam a book.

 

I hope they spark a bit of interest.

Thanks for your question about how I make up names for my characters. I like to pair words together. I look at last names of people I know and have noticed a lot of them have two parts or two syllables. For example, Johnson, Donner.

 

I started looking at things for the first part of a name or syllable and then different things for the second part. I ended up drawing a line down the middle of a sheet of paper.

On one side of the line I wrote the first thing that came into my head:

 

“Meat” (I was eating dinner.) So I wrote down more things that had to do with food.

I wrote:

• Meat

• Broccoli

• Pears

• Fat

• Bones

• Gristle

• Salt

 

Then on the other side of the line I wrote a starter word that was from a different category. I wrote about things you eat with. I came up with:

• Fork

• Fingers

• Chopsticks

• Teeth

• Lips

 

Then I started matching words from one side of the line to the other side of the line. I came up with things like:

• Bonetooth

• Forkfat

I combined words from the same side of the line:

• Forklips

• Chopteeth.

 

Finally I made a pair I liked; Gristleteeth

That didn’t look as good or sound as good as I wanted it and I started thinking of variations and came up with Gristletooth.

I liked it. Then I thought about the sound and decided it sounded like a male name and sounded like someone who was bad versus good. So no I had a nice character who would be an evil wizard. His name is Gristletooth.

 

I also like names that mean something. A name like Johnson, probably came from a boy named after his father. He was John’s son. So they called him George Johnson.

 

Hillary and Windslow in my book have names with meaning. They are the children of the summer wind. I looked in the dictionary and thesaurus to find words that had something to do with wind. There is a gentle breeze that blows across the meadows and hills. I liked the idea and picked the words airy and hill. I put them together and modified them to fit more like a real name and came up with Hill-ary or Hillary! Cool.

 

There was another wind I read about that was more stormy and blew low through the valleys. I thought about that. It was a wind that was low. A low wind, or wind-low. I modified it to be Windslow (wind is low).

 

So now I had Hillary and Windslow, children of the summer wind. Now I needed a last name, which is what you asked about. I wanted to keep with the “Wind” idea. I looked back at what I had read about winds and decided I liked the idea of mixed summer winds in a meadow or field. I found what I wanted. Their last name was Summerfield.

Hillary and Windslow Summerfield, children of the wind.

 

How’s that?  Just be creative and remember sometimes we just use Sally Jones or Bill Johnson for names because it’s easy to do and we’re done. As a good and interesting writer, sometimes taking the time to do a little research and a lot of daydreaming and using a lot of paper to scribble ideas on will produce something that will amaze you. Be happy and proud when that happens. It isn’t always easy or quick, but it is worth it.

 

Sometimes I just sit and try silly, goofy combinations.  Some names in my books:

• Bitterbun

• Gandersnap

• Fistlock

• Lake Shimmer Gawn

• Gippleberry plants

• Flute beans

 

I almost have as much fun thinking up names as dreaming up an adventure. 

Thanks for the question. I hope this helped. Ask more when you want some help or are just curious.

 

Mike

I’ve neglected my BLOG for a long time along with my writing. It’s time to get back in the mood. Well, it’s not so much mood as time. If we didn’t need to sleep, think of all the extra things we could accomplish. I bet if that happened, we’d eventually complain that we still didn’t have enough time—sigh.

I smile when a reader asks me about some of the symbolism beneath my stories. They ask what motivates Molly Folly Sallyforth. They wonder how Windslow feels about being wheelchair bound on earth and able to walk in Gabendoor. I smile because I don’t know. I enjoy they way I write because I experience each paragraph, each chapter, each book the way a reader must—one at a time. I never do know what will happen next. I reach a stopping point. I have a vague idea about what I think might happen next, but don’t learn the details until I actually write the chapter.

For book three, I began with Windslow’s stepmother cleaning his room. I wanted to account for some time passing between the last adventure and the new adventure. As a solution, I decided that Windslow spent several weeks at summer camp. On the day he was to return, Trish decided to clean his room. I started to chuckle when I wrote that Trish found Windslow’s dream-slip bracelet under his pillow. She absentmindedly put it on her wrist. “Oh my,” I said as I kept typing, realizing that Trish would end up in Gabendoor. Would she run into her kids or have her own adventure. I didn’t know. I finished the chapter and wished there were a couple more pages for me to read. I wanted to find out what would happen next. I went to bed, not knowing.

As I fell asleep, I imagined Trish in Gabendoor, thinking it was a natural dream. I grinned when I visualized her trying to fly, flopping on her stomach and sliding down a hill. The vision changed to Windslow and Hillary back at home with their mother. They spotted the dream-slip band. They tried their best to get the band back without raising suspicion. They failed. I could feel their worry about what would happen that night when they dream-slipped to Gabendoor. If they ran into their mother, what would they say? What would they do? About that time I fell asleep.

I thought about my semi-dreams and visions. I thought about them every night as I fell asleep. The sketchy scenes repeated with a slightly different variation each time. I started hearing bits of dialogue. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get any significant additional information.

Finally I found time to work on the next chapter. The details filled in as I typed. The dialogue flowed clearly in my mind. I had to type fast to keep up with my thoughts. After many hours, I finished two more chapters. I read over them again, enjoying the new things that took place.

I decided to keep writing. Maybe I could do another chapter. I ended up playing a solitaire card game on my PC and finally went to bed. As I fell asleep, previews of a new chapter began forming.

That’s how is works for me. Can I answer your questions about these characters of mine? Sometimes I can, but most of the time I’m just guessing like you.

I’m on some message boards and a young lady asked some questions and I responded. I though the information might be useful to others, so I put it here.

Question: Ok, so I’m 29 and I think I finally know what I want to be when I grow up-a writer. However, I have a few problems. First, I need to get a degree, since I don’t have the first clue as to how to write well, anyway. Secondly, I don’t even know if I have what it takes to be an author.

Answer: I don’t have a degree (shame on me). Short 15 credits in a foreign language back in the 70’s. Much of my life I did like to write thoughts on life, musings and ideas. About 8 years ago I decided to write a book. I had no clue how to write or even how to format things properly. I typed away until I had about half a million words and decided I had better get some help to figure out what to do with all that. The first thing I found was my word count would make about three books.

I got a couple books on writing. They said to start with a first person point of view, I was omnipotent. It was the first I heard about point of view. It said to keep it simple with one or two main characters. I had people running all over the place. The books said to have a straightforward linear plot (whatever that was). I had a multi-thread plot with subplots upon subplots.

I tossed the books out and took a class at the local

Loft Literary Center. I found the instructors a bit snooty. They told me that real people and especially characters in a story don’t talk to themselves. I do, so I dropped the class.

I joined an online writing workshop. You trade chapters and reviews. I became a prolific reviewer. I learned a bunch by looking at what other wantabees were doing. The members told me not to quit my day job. They had a ranking system with the reviews. 1 = low and 5 = high. They ranked plot, professionalism of writing, characterization and more. Because I still didn’t grasp what a comma was and where they go, among many other things, I consistently got 1’s. After six months I could squeak out a 2. I celebrated when I got a 3 in something. I forget what.

The other members still ripped my work apart and told me to give up. I stepped up my reviewing and started to see different things about point of view. In the bad writing I saw, I began to see what made a character that held my attention and why others put me to sleep.

I started another novel on a whim. I got 5’s. I reviewed more and learned more. I won an “editor’s choice” award (not worth even a cup of coffee, but a moral boost.) Other reviewers asked to see more chapters. The original group started to ignore me. The new batch of reviewers urged me to submit the novel.

Because my fingers are tired and I told myself not to be so verbose – I landed a contract for a five book young adult fantasy series, “The Secret Books of Gabendoor.”

Shameless plug. Book 1: “The Book of Second Chances, ” came out last September. Book 2: “The Book of Broken Truths, ” came out last week. Book 3: “The Book of Twisted Truths, ” is still a manuscript and at my publisher. Book 4: is on my to do list.

I teach two workshops about writing. One essentially has a theme of “Just start writing.” I talk about how not to let formal classes on writing, books on writing, friends or anyone influence you to focus on the technical or “how to” part of writing. Focus on the aspect of writing that brings you joy or some sort of satisfaction. Start writing! When you have a bunch of chapters done, then SLOWLY start learning about point of view, setting, description, characterization, dialogue, dialect, and oh, those comma things. Edit what you have each time you learn something new, like dialect. But, always, always write more with a spirit of fun, with a passion, with laughter, or drunk. Be driven by what it is you personally enjoy about writing! Join a peer review group. Grow a thick skin and go for it!

Question: lately I have been having some crazy dreams, and I’ve been meaning to write them down. Is that how these ideas start, or how do the ideas hit you? I’m waiting for that “

Eureka” moment where I sit up in the middle of the night.

Answer: My writing started with deams. I would head for bed and as I fell asleep I would visualize a scene. The scene kept repeating several times a week until I finally wrote it down.

I’ve come up with things in other ways too. I’m an “organic” writer vs. an outliner and planner. I never know what will happen next. Most of the time I dream the current situation and the characters start talking and acting as I fall asleep. They don’t always have all the details worked out, but when most of it fills in, I head for the keyboard. I can never dream ahead. As I type the story will take strange and unexpected directions.

Other times I have to work out a situation and what I do is start discarding the obvious. For example in the first chapter of The Book of Second Chances, I needed a wizard to come to earth from “someplace else.” I didn’t know where from or to yet or who they were or why they came. But…

I didn’t want them flying in on brooms—done before
No spell where they suddenly pop in—done before
No beaming like Star Trek – done before but that’s what I wanted.
It was storming out and and I got the idea of a whirlwind – but Dorothy did that in the Wizard of Oz. I took that idea. Made it a whirlwind. Renamed the whirlwind to a journy wind. They are small. I visualized it as plumped with bulging forms and off balance making it wobble so I added two more wizards for the effect. Then the journey wind burped out three forms and blew away. I decided traveling inside such a wind would mess your hair, but what else would it mess up. I decided it would mess up your clothes so bad that you might be wearing my pants and me your top, etc.

Another favorite was a shadow creature that the story didn’t really need. I was talking to my father in law, Chet. When you meet Chet he always says, “Did I tell you about the time I almost got hit by a train?” If you say, “Yes, Chet, you did.” He answers with, “Well it happened this way…” Ha! He will always tell it again. Then I thought it wasn’t his fault. He’s haunted by a shadow creature you can’t see and it makes you repeat stories. I named it the Tellagain. That got me thinking about similar creatures and came up with the scritch, the trundlewraith and many more. Now I have s section at my web site (www.gabendoor.com) that is filled with shadow creatures other people have submitted.

Creativity (and fun) comes from many places and many forms.

Some comments I made on a writing forum that I thought were worth saving. The topic was about authors making presentations at schools.

For the kindergarten kids, I turned my presentation into a game. I would ask for a volunteer. The kids already knew they got a trading card if they participated so lots of hands went up. I’d ask their name and then make up a “silly” story using them as a character and something the kids would pick out of the room as a challenge. Example: Sue & Pencil sharpener. “Sue walked to the pencil sharpener. She could hear it calling to her. She put her ear close to the …..” Improvising as I went. Something unexpected would happen, then I’d stop and ask for another volunteer and have the class pick another item.

After enough of that, we talked “briefly” about beginnings middles and ends. We talked about how exciting writing could be. The idea- You can make up fantastic adventures in your imagination and tell them to a couple friends. When you can write them down, you can share with thousands of people. We’d talk about the same concept with reading –being able to share stories.

Each small piece was short, interactive and we used silly hats, as props. I did talk about my book, but focused on a creature I have in the story, a hippograff (not a hippogriff.) A hippograff is a pigmy hippo with dragonfly wings. They have seven stomachs and eat broccoli. The broccoli ferments in their stomach and makes gas to give them lift so you can fly on them. Landings are stinky because they need to get rid of the gas. The kids love that. Sometimes we make up some creatures of our own, again a way to get them involved.

From a marketing perspective, the talks can be fun and entertaining. They can fit wit some of what the teachers are teaching, but the kindergarten kids are a little young for my book. It is a good story for parents who read to their kids, but better for a first or second grade listener.

A final thought for you teachers out there. I always visit with the teachers to learn what they are teaching about reading and writing and what they would like me to try to reinforce in my presentation. My first standing ovation was from the middle school grammar teachers. [grin].

My approach to writing comes from looking back when writing wasn’t something I thought about. It was something I did. It was fun and satisfying. Many years later (about 6 years ago) I decided to write again and started on that first novel. At first the writing was fun, like it had been when I was a kid. Then I started to learn about setting and hooks and voice and all the fun went out. I was too focused on writing well.

The self help books got me even more confused. Not really confused, but overwhelmed. I went back to just sitting down and cranking out story, that’s were the fun was. Too many times I had sat trying to get that first paragraph out with a killer hook. I found that when I put the fun back in, the hook came naturally, just not in the first paragraph. It became fairly easy to find that hook, start the story there and either discard or weave back in everything in front of it.

That’s when I decided that for me, it worked to follow a routine of write, learn, review, edit and write. Eventually the practice of reviewing and editing made the things I learned sink in. New skills became second nature after practice and new skills were always on the horizon.

Finally I got to the point where I stopped reading how-to books. The hook doesn’t hold off until page 12, but still hides until the middle of page one. Setting, dialogue, all the parts come out reasonably well the first time. Editing doesn’t make me laugh as much because most of the really stupid mistakes are long gone. I still write about three chapters before I go back and edit. The fist edit now catches almost everything but the typos.