Monday at the Movies: NOT a rerun!

Welcome to Monday at the Movies! This is not a rerun but a wonderful interview with two of the most acclaimed YA writers in the world, Katherine Paterson and Kate DiCamillo. (Patti here: I adore them!)

They talk about what a writer is, and it's amusingly honest. You won't hear any must-dos from these ladies. You will hear that writing is hard work. Sorry, no magic pills!

If I were to recommend two books, one from each of these ladies, I would have to suggest The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by DiCamillo and The Day of the Pelican (because you've all read The Bridge to Terebithia, and if you haven't then pity your deprived reader's soul).

Without further ado, here's the interview:

The Care and Feeding of Metaphors

We have a winner! Laura Davis wins a 5-page weeding of her manuscript by Patti Hill. Thanks to all who commented. We enjoyed the conversation very much!

When sweet Patti and I were at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, MI in April, we heard the astounding story of Kate DiCamillo, who began her writing career as a 29-year-old working in a book warehouse in the children’s section. This award-winning author of Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread related that by reading the books she stocked, she began to have some ideas about what makes good writing. But Kate soon discovered that exposure to good writing was not enough, talent was not enough, and even hard work was not enough (though she says it is a major part of her success.)

DiCamillo said that while people can teach others many writing skills (and Patti’s post on Monday brought out some marvelous techniques for identifying and pruning extraneous language, for instance), no one can teach metaphor. You either have the skill of creating it or you don’t. This isn’t exactly news: Aristotle who lived over 2000 years ago said

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblance. –Aristotle, Poetics

I … dunno about that genius bit. But I know that my mind has been percolating as I finish a novel (my regular thinking is Mr. Coffee ™ drip system; when I’m writing I’m a Bunn ™ pourover coffee dispenser with the water always boiling ready to spill into brew.) Yep, I’m full of metaphors.

Well, most everyone who reads this blog is a writer. Do you think in metaphors? I bet you do. I’m going to get you started with a list of writing metaphors from my hot little carafe, so to speak.

• Last week I referred to the oft-quoted saying that writing is easy, all you do is sit in front of a keyboard and open a vein. Writing my present WIP is more like doing your own bone marrow extraction.
• If I’m successful in luring readers into my literary world, it will be by slathering them with an emollient atmosphere until they feel so weightless in it that I can pull them along with invisible spider threads.
• Rewriting feels like a heifer chewing cud: I do it because of my faith that the result will be great; but if I have to be involved with the process one more time I fear I may regurgitate and not be able to swallow it again.

Come on! What does writing feel like to you?

Start Flapping!

I read Ariel's and Latayne's posts on why they don't read certain books--and all of your comments--with a mix of delight and terror. On one hand, I cheered what we all find annoying--clumsiness, predictability, and weather reports. My personal dis-qualifier is clutter. Superfluous words are like fingernails on the chalkboard to me.

On the other hand, I held your comments up to my work in progress like a template and found myself swimming in a sea of self-doubt.

Oh dear, I write in first person.



Is there enough rising antagonism to hold a reader?



Why are there so many characters in this story? Could some of you please go home?

It's a miracle, really, that we connect with readers at all.

Rather than slump into depression, I gave myself a pep talk: You can't please everyone, Miss Patti! You will not sell your books to every English-speaker in the world. But you will find an audience, albeit a small one, if you write to please yourself. (This sounds selfish, but it is writing to what God created me to write.)

Wait! My self-lecture isn't over until I recite these words from Henry James:

"Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions."

I have a particular example for what James is talking about that delights me. After hearing Kate DiCamillo speak at the Festival of Faith and Writing, I bought her novel, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane to read on the plane. DiCamillo writes young adult fiction brilliantly. You may know her from The Tale of Despereaux and Because of Winn-Dixie.


I'm so glad she ignored one of the golden nuggets of fiction writing: Avoid passive characters like the plague. They're boring, the worst kind of insult an author can inflict on a reader.

In DiCamillo's story, Edward is a china rabbit. He can't move or speak. He is hopelessly subject to the whims of a succession of owners. He spends a good deal of time on the bottom of the ocean and under increasing loads of trash in a dump. He is an observer of life.

And yet, once I started reading, I couldn't stop. DiCamillo takes a china rabbit on an adventure that transforms him, and me, forever.

All we said this week about what we didn't want to read has spurred me on to tighten my craft while flapping my wings with the goal of shattering presumptions.

Please, please, please share any works of fiction you believe fly in the face of presumption and do it so beautifully that they have become a favorite.