I was asked to join this blog hop about the "writing process" by my FB friend and fellow writer Kristin Butcher whom I admire for a lot of reasons. Kristin appears to have more energy in her little finger than most people have in their entire bodies!

Kristin and I have a number of things in common. One is writing, of course. We also hail originally from Winnipeg. She lives in BC and I still live here, in my home town. We both love to paint and draw. Kristin's terrific blog about this topic can be found at www.kristinbutcher.com.

To quote Kristin, "I feel like I have a foot in two canoes. I’m a prairie girl and a BCer in equal doses."

What is interesting for me about doing this particular blog tour on "process" is I get to recognize similarities in how other writers work, and yet also get to see how very different we are, too!


What am I working on? 

For my eleventh novel, I am working on something close to my heart.

I have spent many many years trying to find out where my Buffi/Buffie family came from. Thirty years at it, in fact.

During the reformation -  as protestants -  my Buffi family were forced out of Italy. They moved to the Rhineland Pfalz area (Germany). They lived there for generations assimilating with the local population. In the late 1700's the Austrian government promised free land in Galicia to skilled German farmers and artisans. Galicia was made up of Ukraine and Poland (as we now know them). 

The Kolonists' "job" was to help build up that area's badly weakened resources on behalf of the Austrian Empire. So off my family went again. They lived hard lives in Polish Galicia, but they built their farms, villages and many churches, as well as schools to educate their children. 

The next biggest move occurred the late 19th C and early 20th Century, when my family and other families in the German Galician villages lost their land and livelihoods because of Poland's determination to be autonomous. The Germans either went back to Germany or on to Canada. Because of religious and economic pressures from the new Polish government, my family sailed for Canada and ended up in Manitoba. 

My research into immigration in Manitoba was a lot of work, but fascinating. With the help of Manitoba newspapers, archives, letters, personal written accounts (in Gothic German!) I was able to build up an in-depth view of German immigrants in Manitoba.

My story is a fast paced novel about one family facing poverty, slum conditions, prejudice, disease, untimely deaths, hard graft, and in this family's case - even a murder. But like so many immigrant families, I discovered, they brought with them a strong work ethic, as well as devout religious beliefs and a tremendous drive to succeed.

Many cards are stacked against this nearly shattered fictional family. For me, it is a very compelling place in which to be immersed every day.


How does my work differ from others of its genre?

And why do I write what I do?

I have written, I suppose, in most "genres" for young people. I write the story that I feel compelled to write, and never pay much attention to genre. 

My ten novels, go from the supernatural, as in Who is Frances Rain? or The Dark Garden; to fantasies like The Warnings; and the more classic fantasy (I have been told!) of The Watcher's Quest Trilogy; on to hard reality as in Out of Focus; and then onto a complete departure in my last book, Winter Shadows ... the historical setting of the Red River Settlement in 1857 (although there is a time travel/ghostly theme in there as well!) 

My novels are really about young people living on the borderline between childhood and adulthood - a very potent place for a writer to explore. That borderline, which often determines when and how a child will become an adult, has always held a great fascination for me. 

My sisters and I lost our father to cancer just when I turned twelve. I went through a lot of chaotic anxieties ... with a rather - um - noisy family dynamic going on at times! ... and a wonderful mother doing her best for us by holding down two jobs. My memories between ages 12 and 18 are still vivid, confused, introspective, miserable, determined, studded with flashes of transient joy, but always charged with questions, and the fearfulness of constant change, change, change.

For an introvert, this was hard going, but it left me as an adult (of sorts!) with a rich vein of story telling to dig into!

It has also given me a deep understanding of that universal search for independence that young people face; that search for self; for the pondering of what will become of me? .... what do I have in me to be? What will help me decide my own future? This is always my main focus is in every book I write. And it is why I write as I do.

How does my writing process work?

As an painter, I always work first with a broad sketch in pencil on the canvas and my first layer of color is done in large free wheeling sections.

I become more and more detailed as I work.

In many ways, that's how I write. I get an idea - I work it out in my mind and on scraps of paper. I think  about it all the time, obsessively really, until I sense something intensely interesting is forming. When I sit down to begin, I am usually ready to get right into the first lines and the first few chapters.

Once those are written, I usually grind to a halt - and sit down and seriously begin to think and ask myself : where I am going with this story?

That is when I make an outline - of sorts - to take the jumbled ideas and possibilities in my head; and try and make some kind of organized sense of them. I know this outline will change - that it is always a fluid, movable  changeable feast (or beast! ... depending on my mood). I rarely know the ending until it happens, but I definitely need some pathways cleared of brush and tangled vines, so that I can see a few clear ways that just might get me to the end!

Once the line outline is done(ish!), and before I start writing again, I always set up a block outline of penciled empty spaces on joined pages. As I finish each chapter, I put into each "box" what characters are in that scene, the day, time, weather, the setting and of course major points of the action. These notes that I can spread out and look at as a whole, often help me see where the story should be headed.

I am probably one of the slowest writers on earth. I do rewrite as I go along, mainly to make sure it is making sense, and that I am building characters and settings, creating mood and tension, and correcting obvious mistakes. But, as with my paintings, I know the important details will be added when the major story line, tension etc are placed and the characters are really living in that story. I love that final rewrite. It takes me a while (or as my old editor used to say, "It will take as long as it takes!"), but I love the process. Fine tuning, for me, is a completely separate creative process. And it allows me the freedom to pull in details that will bring the story, setting and characters even more alive.

Margaret is an artist and writer who has written ten novels for young adults published in eleven countries around the world. Her books have won many awards and honors, including The Vicky Metcalf Award for Body of Work (Inspirational to Canadian Youth); The Canadian Library Assoc.’s Young Adult Book Award; The Silver Nautilus Award (USA); First Runner up in the CLA’s Book of the Year Award; a nomination for the Governor General's Award; and two awards for The McNally Robinson Book for Young People, among other honours. Her first novel, the bestselling Who is Frances Rain? - is still used in many classrooms across Canada and the USA. It is still actively in print and is now available as an e-book. 

Margaret's blog has a blog (Home page), and tabs that allow to you learn more about her and all her books. For a list of her awards and honours click on the tab "About me".
                                      
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My fellow writers, who will be involved in the next phase of The Writing Process Blog Hop, are from Manitoba! We have some really terrific writers in Manitoba!


Brenda Hasiuk

Brenda is a life-long Winnipegger whose award-winning short stories have appeared in some of Canada’s top literary journals.  Books in Canada called her first novel, Where the Rocks Say Your Name…(Thistledown Press, 2006) a “taught psychological drama that readers will find impossible to put down.” Though marketed as an adult title, it was taught in a number of high school and college classrooms throughout Canada and was nominated for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year. Her second novel, Your Constant Star (Orca, 2014), was recently heralded by Kirkus Reviews as “a superb novel by a rising Canadian literary star.” A collection of her short fiction, Back Lane Lullaby, is coming out with Turnstone Press this fall (September 2014).She has a day job in communications with Manitoba’s largest union, and lives with fellow author, Duncan Thornton, and their two school-aged kids. 

You can learn more about Brenda by going to: brendahasiuk@wordpress.com. 

Susan Rocan

Susan is a Manitoba author with two teen novels published by Great Plains Publications. ‘Withershins’ explores pioneer life in the mid-eighteen hundreds and how a modern girl copes with the hardships; while ‘Spirit Quest’ explores the same character’s search for self-identity after discovering her First Nations roots.
 
‘Withershins’ was on the MYRCA list in 2009 and has been widely read by Manitoba’s student population. Susan has been asked to speak to numerous groups of students, both in the city and nearby towns, from grades four to twelve.


Susan has two Bachelor of Education degrees, majoring in Speech Pathology & Audiology as well as Elementary Education. She works part time with Special Needs students, often employing Sign Language techniques with non-verbal students.


Her blog is aimed towards other writers and readers, including book reviews and author interviews. She's also a scrapbook fanatic, which reveals itself mostly in the form of handmade cards which she likes to brag about on her blog, too. 

You can learn more about Susan at her blog at by going to:  http://mywithershins.wordpress.com

Why the first lines in your story should grip the reader....

"The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first."

Blaise Pascal 1623-1662

  

 Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father in Rouen.

And he clearly knew that with writing, it is important to make sure you put the right things first!     

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                                                          Jane Austen's desk
Once a upon a time, long before computers, television, social networks, e-books, cell phones, and other distracting technology were even imagined, storytellers like Jane Austen, George Elliot and other famous writers of the times could craft a story slowly, building the plot as they wrote. People who could afford books, often had the leisure to spend time reading and rereading them, talking about them and sharing them. 

With so much technology in our lives now, and vast numbers of books to choose from, a lot of readers, today, browsing bookstores and libraries looking for a "new" writer will often choose a book to consider based on the book's cover. And when they open it, they will read the first few lines, see if it grabs their interest, and if it doesn't .... they move on to the next book. I confess I do this... ahem.

What publishers want (even demand now) is for the writer to start at a place of "grabability" (my own word, I think!) with the screech of brakes and metal against metal ... or a few intriguing or beguiling few words spoken by a character or narrator.

Or at the very least, to have the first few sentences promise something that makes a potential reader want to read more. I happen to agree with this. 

If I have any advice to give, I would say, always start your story in the middle of "something" - never at the "beginning". No one wants your character to wake up on a normal morning and then spend four pages talking about their morning ablutions. 

That's not to say that writers long ago missed this "grab the reader point" entirely. After all, many good storytellers like Dickens instinctively knew that an engaging story should start with a pop of interest for the reader! 

Mind you, a good story has to follow those first few lines with a substantial cord of energy that takes the reader through the entire book!

One of the first and arguably most recognizable lines in writing history is:
"Call me Ishmael" from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Not my favourite book but it is a good opening line. Or at least a memorable one. And short!

And here's another very recognizable first line from Charles Dickens', "A Tale of Two Cities": "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,(but there is much more more to it that that - and it carries on!) ..... it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."

Wonderful opening. But nowadays, one would be advised by an editor not to go on for too long with the first line. Relaxed, introspective reading has changed in the past few hundred years. Sadly. A sharp, short and enticing introduction is the best idea to grab distracted readers!

I didn't take writing classes when I started writing, but I was an avid reader of all forms of fiction and read writers who wrote the first early popular novels and enjoyed seeing the changes over the years. Writers of all eras are great teachers. Now I sound like I am 250 years old. Just feels that way.....

I have always kept a list of favorite first lines in notebooks -- beside the titles and authors of those books. I transferred some of my most-liked to my computer a while ago for this blog. I had to decide as I copied them, why each of them drew me into each book - all so different from each another.

I decided it is the promise those first few lines offer to the reader. The promise of something unknown and compelling.

Here are some of my favourite first lines by some well-known writers.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

(Who wouldn't be intrigued by that first line!)

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." 

―The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.C Lewis, 

(This quote always makes me laugh!)

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." 
― 1984, George Orwell

                                       (Why didn't I think of that line first!)

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

― David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

(I used this quote in The Watcher, when Emma Sweeney is reading to the huge old man in the strangely decorated farmhouse in Bruide.)

“The note said, SOMEONE IN THE CLASS IS A WITCH.”

― Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones, 

(It is said that this novel, of all she wrote, was Wynne Jones' favorite book. You may recognize another series written some years later which took a number of ideas from Wynne Jones' series ;-)



“Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, when the battle 's lost and won.That will be ere the set of sun. Where the place? Upon the heath. There to meet with Macbeth. I come, graymalkin! Paddock calls. Anon! Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover the fog and filthy air." 

― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

(Love that word "graymalkin". I found out it means gray cat!)

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person."

― Back When We Were Grownups, Anne Tyler

(I have lived the experience of that first line . Many of us have. It says so much.)

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." 

― I Capture the Castle,  Dodie Smith

(I was instantly hooked when I read this first line. The narrator of this book is wonderful.)

"There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden."

― A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L'Engle

(What a first line! Dragons will do it every time!)

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

—  2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke 

(A book that was made into a movie that had me mesmerized, while people all around me walked out of the theater in confusion and disgust. A watershed book -  and movie  - for sure.)

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.  

— The Go-Between, L. P. Hartley, 

(Hartley's is one of my favorite quotes. As a researcher into my family's past as well as deep into past times for my novels, it is a very true and witty observation.)

"Art Mathews shot himself, loudly and messily, in the center of the parade ring at Dunstable races." 
— Dick Francis, Nerve 

(The photo  is Dick Frances when he was a champion jockey. He went on to become a best selling mystery writer around the world. I have all of his books.)

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." 
— Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 

(Couldn't leave that one out, could I? It is my daughter's favorite first line - and one of mine!)

"All children, except one, grow up."

— Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie 

(All the photos I have seen of Barrie appear to be gloomy and he always looks ill. This is one of the few pieces of art/photos I have found that has a lighter feeling to it. This is a great first line, but we all know there are many many Peter Pans still going strong out there! ;-)

"Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." 
— The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macaulay 

(I read this book years ago and enjoyed it a lot according to my notes ...and this line still tickles my fancy. I must read it again.)

The New York Times wrote at the time it was published: "Fantasy, farce, high comedy, lively travel material, delicious japes at many aspects of the frenzied modern world, and a succession of illuminating thoughts about love, sex, life, organized churches and religion are all tossed together with enchanting results."

"There are various ways of mending a broken heart, but perhaps going to a learned conference is one of the more unusual."  

— No Fond Return of Love, Barbara Pym

(One of my top ten writers. I love every sentence of her work. Her wit is clear in this first line.) 

Note: The young man in the photo is  Henry Harvey, the exasperating object of Pym's own unrequited love while in her twenties. I read her letters and diaries in a book edited by Hazel Holt "A Very Private Eye". A friend bought for it me in New York many years ago. I treasure it!

"Last night I dreamed I went to Manderly again." 
— Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier 

(I had to include this one, because that first line attracted me to this book in my teens. I loved it and reread it many times over.)

"The frog's legs were less appalling then the children had expected. They slid out of the tin with a plop...."
— The Whispering Knights, Penelope Lively

(Penelope Lively is one of my favorite writers. She has written brilliant short stories and novels for young readers; and brought her thoughtful insightful artistry to her books for adult readers. One of my most liked of her books is "Passing On". The story is about middle aged and unmarried siblings Helen and Edward, who, on the death of their domineering mother must face the consequence of their mother's hold on their lives for so many years. Helen and Edward slowly learn to accept what has been lost for so long and learn to embrace what can be retrieved.)


"The coffin stuck fast at the angle of the garden path and the gateway out to the road. The undertaker's men shunted to and fro, their hats knocked askew by low branches, their topcoats showered with raindrops from the hedge."
— Passing On, Penelope Lively

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Now .... arguably, one of the best last lines of a novel......

‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’
— A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

There will be more of "first lines" posts, I hope. If you have a compelling first line from a well known writer feel free to post it! 

Sore in doubt concerning spring....

Aaaah, spring, where are you? Tomorrow, March 20th,  Spring begins the vernal equinox at 12:57 in the afternoon ... and my garden is still filled with 8 foot high snow banks. The streets are hidden under many layers of pressed snow; dark brown, dirty white, dull mud gray, pebbled, and crackling with rot - like we see the earth in archaeological digs. Spring? Is this spring?  Can't be!

I was reading Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market and Other Poems" again last night and came upon the same poem I wrote about last year. 

The impatient hope for changes in weather often leads me back to Rossetti. 

Portrait of Christina Rossetti 1830-1894 by Dante Charles Gabriel Rossetti  

 "The First Spring Day"

"I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,

If wintery birds are dreaming of a mate,

If frozen snow drops feel as yet the sun

And crocus fires are kindling one by one:

Sing, robin, sing;
I am sore in doubt concerning spring."

"Spring"

Arthur Herbert Buckland, 1896

"Spring"
Walter Crane 1844-45

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I wonder if the springtide of this year

Will bring another Spring both lost and dear;

If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,

Or if the world alone will bud and sing:    

Sing, hope, to me;

Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.

"The Soul of the Rose" 

John William Waterhouse, 1908

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The sap will surely quicken soon or late,

The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;

So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,

Or in this world, or in the world to come:    

Sing, voice of Spring,

Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing.


 
"Love's Messenger"
Marie Spartelli Stillman 1844-1927 

"Bird's Nest" William Henry Hunt  1855-1860