Keeping open minds

“Books open your mind, broaden your mind, and strengthen you as nothing else can.”  ~ William Feather


Susan Kaye Quinn's book Open Minds is available today, November 1 - to celebrate she is hosting a Virtual Launch Party. Leave a comment on any of her Party posts (including this one!) or tweet about #keepingOpenMinds, and you qualify to win one of several prizes.

The title, Open Minds, has a double-meaning. The main character, Kira, has a disability: she's unable to read minds or have her thoughts read by others in her world. It means she is branded as untrustworthy because she can keep her thoughts secret. She doesn't have an "open mind" - and yet she's treated with intolerance by mind-readers, who refuse to have an "open mind" or understanding of her situation.

I loved Susan's description of truly open minds:

Open minds treat you with respect, instead of snubbing you for being too strange or too new or too foreign or too shy.

Open minds are compassionate, giving you a hand up when you are down, instead of pretending they don't see your pain or piling on when the pack attacks.

Open minds accept you, treating you like the flawed, unique, wonderful person that you are, instead of judging you by your looks, skin color, or accent.

In the same post Susan also shared her own #keepingOpenMinds story - a situation where someone she least expected turned out to be open-minded and encouraging about her desire to become an astronaut. Her story inspired me to share my own #keepingOpenMinds story.

My mom comes from a large family - seven siblings who don't have the greatest reputation for getting along. Mom has always been the peace-keeper in the family. Sometimes I wonder why she keeps trying; I feel dizzy trying to keep track of who is angry at who and for what reason. There was one particular time when one of her siblings reacted in a way that upset the rest of the family, including me. But my mom remained a staunch supporter.

"How could you?" I asked her. "After what he/she did?"

"Take a moment and look at the background behind the situation," my mother told me. She explained some of the history of her sibling's marriage and some things the spouse had been through, too. This history had a lot to do with the way my mom's sibling reacted. It really opened my eyes (and my mind). 

For the first time, that old adage "don't a judge a person unless you've taken the time to walk in their shoes" sunk in with me. It stirred compassion in my heart, and helped me to listen more and judge less in many other situations since then - in my family, my husband's family, in work situations and other situations.

I also believe, like the quote at the top of this post, that reading helps develop open minds - because you are exposed to so many situations in reading (many that you encounter in real life and many you may not yet have encountered). You get to hear the characters' take on these situations, sometimes multiple characters seeing the situation from different angles, and you see why they react the way they do.

We live in a big world with so much to learn and discover. So many people and all of them unique and valuable in some way. All the differences may seem overwhelming and intimidating, but we can overcome fearfulness with compassion and with an attitude of delighting to learn more by seeing the world through other peoples' perspectives. 

Yay for #keepingOpenMinds! You can read the first chapter of Open Minds here, it's amazing and mesh. (You gotta read it to know what "mesh" means). I can't wait to read more.

Some other #keepingOpenMinds stories are shared today by:

Heather McCorkle 

S.B. Stuart-Laing (from Glasgow Scotland!)

Jemi Fraser

PK Herzo

Christine Fonseca

Katie Mills

Jessie Harrell

J.C. Martin

Denny S. Bryce

Danyelle Leafty

A quick personal note - NaNoWriMo starts today so I'll be taking a break from the blog until December. But, I got one last post in - my very first GUEST POST!!!!! - today, over at T.L. Conway's blog. I posted on why I love NaNoWriMo so much, with lots of gushy gushing and enthusing and maybe one realistic "oh what have I gotten myself into" moment too. Please stop by!

Back to #keepingOpenMinds. Have you ever been in a situation where someone could have judged you, but instead, they listened to you or encouraged you?

Blogging is not a waste of time

I do worry sometimes that my time online is not productive.

I think we should be wise how much time we spend online, especially if it has the potential to interrupt real-world relationships.

And for fiction writers, I think we should write first and blog later.

But in the end, blogging gives back more in fun, inspiration, help, camaraderie, and motivation than it takes in terms of time.

Without an online community of writers, I wouldn't have found out about NaNoWriMo a few years ago. I've never seen it mentioned yet off-line, even though it's huge, with hundreds of thousands of people participating.

I've read (and applied) more helpful advice from blogs of writing professionals and amateurs in a year than I got from reading paper publications-that-shall-not-be named for many, many years. Primarily because you can immediately respond and get responses; it's not a one-way street. That makes it more meaningful, more valuable. Not sure exactly about the economics behind that, but I believe its true.

Other bloggers share their creativity and it is so cool how it sparks creativity in me, too. How we all bounce ideas and tips and blogfests and good reads and our bad days and good days around and off each other and it ends up being more than the sum of its parts.

Thank you Sophia Richardson for mentioning your idea of 30 pitches in 30 days and then following through with lots of great tips and experiences and, of course, pitches.

Thank you Katherine Owens for sharing that Edittorrent post (yes, this one here) and its ticking clock that sparked a HUGE flood of crazy-cool ideas for the NaNoWriMo outline I'm working on right now.

Thank you T.L. Conway for inviting me to write my VERY FIRST guest post in honor of NaNoWriMo - it's not 'til next week but check out the other great guests at her blog this week and next for the "Write What You NaNo" Blog Party.

Thank you Susan Kaye Quinn for getting me to think about #keepingOpenMinds (yippee! - come back for my #keepingOpenMinds post next Tuesday, November 1st!)

T.Y. Lisa Gail Green for paranormal analogies that make me bust my gut laughing and keep me taking notes at the same time.

Thx Saumya Dave for sharing thoughts and quotes and lessons learned and Audrey Hepburn pictures.

And Thank you Stina Lindenblatt for cool links and Old Kitty for Charlie pictures and Janet Johnson for all the awesome license plates and I could go on and on and on. And thank you kind readers for coming back to visit me and leave comments. I'm always amazed.

Not quite sure what prompted all the gushing. Really, all I meant to do was share one last pitch I came up with before I end the 30 pitches in 30 days blogfest (a few days early, I'm afraid) so I can focus all brain cells fiercely on last minute prep for NaNoWriMo. (Less than a week away!)

This last pitch was inspired by a Stuart Little first reader my seven-year-old daughter picked out, with a library owl in it. A library owl! Just go and combine two of my favorite things: libraries and talking animals! Put them together and presto: happiness and inspiration. And just when I was feeling a little guilty borrowing someone else's published idea to springboard my own imagination, here's a great post from Sophia Richardson that addresses just this very issue, pretty much guilt-free. 

So here's my last pitch, way too wordy, I know, but hey - it's a work in progress.

The library has its owl, the post office its possum, and the gym its very in-shape panther, but school's about to start and its guardian fox is missing. 12 yr old book worm Branden is sure one of his four-legged friends could fill in, but the pixies in the art room and the bullies on the playground have other ideas.

Back to gushing about blogging. I missed the Pay it Forward blogfest last week, but I guess the spirit of it reached me just the same. Please tell me some of your favorite blogs that keep you coming back for tips, inspiration, fun or friends. I'd love to visit them.

The third character changes everything

I'm continuing to write pitches (one sentence loglines) for Sophia Richardson's 30 pitches in 30 days fest and discovering more pithy pitchy things and a cool character-driven plot tip. 


Last week I figured out that my ideas, if they weren't related to something I was excited about, couldn't evolve into a real pitch. They just sorta stayed in half-pitch limbo land (just like that brief and humiliating moment when my gym teacher wanted to see if I could pitch a ball).

So here's an example of a great pitch, from the movie Mrs. Doubtfire:

Crushed by a court order allowing only weekly visitation, irresponsible dad Daniel disguises himself as a nanny to spend more time with his kids. 

(Netflix is a great source of movie pitches like this one, btw. Also, google "Publishers Weekly previews" for some great one-line descriptions). 

Here's what my half-pitches were coming out like:

An impulsive girl takes on a dare to sign up for missionary boot camp and...

Fizzle.

Anyhoo.... what I've learned this week in building my pitches was actually from a random comment a very helpful soul named William Greeley left on this StoryFix post:

Here is a plotting method that I got from Bernard Grebanier’s “Playwriting.” It does not work for everyone:

A story is about the relationship between two characters, the central character and a second character. The turning point is an action the central character takes on a third character that changes his relationship with the second character.

For instance... In “Romeo and Juliet”, when Romeo kills Tybalt, his relationship with Juliet is doomed.

Eureka! The third character changes everything.

So here is one pitch attempt I came up with this week when I played around with adding a third character:

When a prodigal daughter returns to her family, her bitter older sister tries to ruin her chances of rebuilding her life and complicates a budding romance with a mutual childhood friend. 

Ye-ah. Still needs some work. Which leads me to Sophia Richardson's pitch check-in post today, and how "only lazy thinkers have bad ideas. Everyone else just has ideas that haven't been played with enough."

She also has more pitchfest-related posts, one with great a genre-flipping idea and another one that points out that a better pitch is one where your character is taking an action instead of just having things happen to him/her.

Katherine Owens also checks into today with a pitch and clues about where she gets her ideas, and why letting ideas cook for a while is important. 

One secret of successful Middle Grade fiction

Okay, it's not a secret. But I'm guessing it's not widely known. Because I'm such an expert on MG and all (not really) and I've been reviewing books/ reading reviews /reading MG/YA blogs for just barely a year and a half. But I haven't seen anyone mention this juicy little tidbit yet.

But now I'm going to be evil and insert a side note in here before spilling the juice. Oh sure, go ahead and scroll down, I'd do the same thing, but my evil insert is that I am also finally posting my first #WS4U progress report.

Sheri Larsen started the Writers Support For You group MONTHS ago with Tuesday check-ins, but y'all don't want to hear my complicated story of revision burn-out. I have a new project I'm outlining.  I will start the first draft of "Seeing Through Dreams" (update: title changed to Star Tripped) in November for NaNoWriMo, but in the meantime, I've been steadily accumulating notes, plot points, character inner conflicts, settings, and worms.

Yup, worms. Not earthworms. Another type altogether. Sort of my own very odd mythical creature invention. I promise they are not slimy.

But anyway, now that I've totally weirded you out, back to my awesome MG discovery.

So I just finished reading Holes, by Louis Sachar. Which I believe every person on the PLANET should read. Because it's just that great. (And, oh, I just realized, Holes kind of goes along with my worms idea. Worm holes.) (Sorry, I'll shut up about the worms now).

Now there are many things about Holes that are great. I could write a whole series of posts on the greatness of this book. But what I am focusing on here is what I also noticed in two other great MG books I've read recently, too:

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsberg.

The Mysterious Benedict Society,  by Trenton Lee Stuart.

What do all three great books have in common? The juicy "secret" (sort of) I discovered?

It's a variation of the plant and payoff technique that Laura Pauling clued me into a while back. Through out these stories, the author "plants" various amusing events, items, and odd but unrelated facts.

The sneakers in Holes, the peach sploosh, the onions, the yellow-spotted lizards, and even a notebook fished out of a toilet - none of these have anything to do with each other. Until the end.

And it's so cool how all the "plants" add up to a multi-faceted pay-off, like puzzle pieces suddenly fitting together. (Wow, I just outdid myself with that analogy there. Sooooo original.)

The other two books I mentioned also have delicious plant/pay-off treats. And you can't tell, until the end, what is actually a genuine "plant" versus a red-herring.

I'm sure it's not a technique limited to just MG, it's probably been adapted from the mystery genre, but there is definitely a fun MG twist to the plants and pay-off that these three books excel at (you see it a bit in the Harry Potter books, too, but not as fully realized).

I'm curious why I haven't seen this technique in the 68 YA books in my Goodreads "read" list. Yes, there are individual "plants" in YA (Across the Universe, by Beth Revis, is one I can think of right away) but nothing like this smorgasbord of plants that all tie together for a huge pay-off at the end in Holes.

Please share if you've encountered a book (any age range or genre) that has this great plant/pay-off technique! I'd love to find some more to read - they're addictive!