Seeing dead people and killing your darlings

Revising my first kidlit novel (WHICH HAS TAKEN ME 1/8TH OF MY LIFE TO WRITE) is really hurting my brain. I'm trying to slash the manuscript from 70,000 words to 40,000 (to meet the recommended wordcount for middle grade fiction) and oh, is it painful. I'm having to kill many of my "darlings" as they saying goes.

So inspiration is most welcome these days and here's where I'm finding it.

courtesy of Whitely Center

The Whitely Center. I'd heard other Seattle writers talk about this retreat on San Juan Island for years before I finally applied (and realized how easy it was to apply). Now I've been twice in two months and I get loads of work done there. The value you get for the relatively low price is amazing. Your own beautiful college in a little grove of trees overlooking the water. Your own study in a soaring, glass-walled study center even closer to the water. It's a place of solitude and beauty, and I highly recommend it.
 



courtesy of San Juan Islands Sculpture Park

San Juan Islands Sculpture Park. I don't get out much when I'm at the Whitely Center even though it's in the scenic San Juan Islands. (Writer Lyanda Haupt calls Whitely her "beautiful writer's prison".) Partly because I haven't been there in the summer yet but mostly because I'm working my a*ss off when I'm there. But I do try to get some fresh air and this last weekend when I was there I visited an old favorite place: the San Juan Islands Sculpture Garden. It was just as awesome as I remembered, with great poetry by David Jenkins to go along with the beautiful and varied sculpture.

Write Your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell. This book was recommended to me just this morning by my great kidlit writing teacher Anastasia Suen. I told her the midpoint of my novel was sucking and voila, she told about this book and I've already devoured it. (It's short). It gave me a new way to envision the midpoint, an "internal moment" where the hero looks in the figurative mirror and reflects on where they're going and what they need to do. Expect a brilliant midpoint to be forthcoming from yours truly soon.

Save the Cat and The Third Act: Writing a Great Ending to Your Screenplay are two other books about story structure Anastasia introduced me to that have been super helpful to me. Even though they're both about screenplays, they apply equally well to novels.

Lastly but not leastly I'm re-watching some of my favorite movies to analyze how come they're so great and these include The Sixth Sense and Slingblade. (Because when you're a writer you can get away with calling watching movies and calling it "work.") These are absolutely amazing stories that blow me away each time I watch them. The writing is so perfect! With the Blake Snyder "beat sheet" in hand (see above for Save the Cat), I'm trying to look at the backend and see how these stories are structured that make them resonate so strongly.

 Finally, this January at Hugo House I'll be teaching my popular class about how to write a rough draft of your novel in only six weeks, except this year - for the very first time - we'll have eight weeks. Hoorah!