Kindle Edition Finished!

Tears were shed.

About halfway through the process of reformatting the print version of Super Power of the Day: Origins of a Sixth Grade Superhero to create a Kindle-friendly file, I thought I was done. I tried a test version of my text in the Kindle previewer and found that only two chapters looked the way I expected them to look. I wanted single spacing, with extra breaks in the same places as the print version. But most of the chapters were not listening to the laboriously entered manual formatting I'd just spent two full days entering into the doc.

I fiddled with the text. No luck. I fiddled some more. No luck. I just couldn't see where my formatting was wrong.

For some reason, perhaps because so many online bloggers and guides recommend formatting the htm version of a text, I finally decided to search the code for a reason my formatting was so off. Mind you, I don't code. But I can look at code and WYSIWYG side by side and understand/read the code. After all, two chapters formatted themselves correctly. All I had to do was compare the proper sections to the messed up ones and see what was different. So I saved a copy in htm, turned on Dreamweaver, and went on a hunt.

The answer was way at the top of the coding, in the definition of normal style. It would take more time, but I knew how to fix that.

The tears dried up.

In retrospect, the tears probably happened half because of my frustration and half because I went camping this week.

Our site (tipi #6) at Upper Sioux Agency State Park

The camping itself was wonderful. My attempts to sleep while camping in the extreme heat and humidity we've been enjoying? Not so wonderful.

By the way, the kindle version of the book will be available shortly. I'll let you know.

A Puzzle of Words

I finished the final edit of volume 2 in my Super Power of the Day series about an hour ago. (Fingers crossed.)


Whew!


It's astonishing to me that I can find genuine mistakes after so many read throughs. A Sunday that I called a Saturday. A sentence missing the word "of." A logical place for an emotional moment that I breezed past. These have been fixed.


Of course I found myself tinkering and tinkering with words as I puzzled out the perfect sentences. One hang up I have is accidental repetition of particular words on a given page. Another is compound words. And I'm always testing the feel of the words for elementary level speaking (my main character's voice) and reading (my audience) levels. 


Whenever I was unsure of my word choice and a suitable alternative didn't pop into my head, I switched from InDesign to Word, typed up the offending word, and right clicked for synonyms. By the end of my edit, I had a fun list of typical words, some kept and some changed, from The Hero Chronicle Continues. Reading them is like peeking into the text...


Here they are:

rustle hand me down spray paint spider web tackle box viscera crow bar mine find shove push shuffle stride move alive axel axle venue awe indelibly offer wonder if consider look gradually carefully cut gash unison malfunction problem issue evil brokenness emerge carcass videogame make force tell order 

See if you can puzzle out the plot!

Throw it all out!

I'm back to work finishing Super Power of the Day: The Hero Chronicle Continues after a lovely vacation to Ireland, Scotland, and England. These first pictures are indelibly tied to craft for me.

One of my mentors, author Sandra Scofield, once told an entire class of aspiring authors who were finishing their (our) first novels, "Throw it all out! Start from scratch!"

I sat up. What? You can't possibly mean me? My work is wonderful! I may need a tweak here or there, but it's working. Who would toss out all their hours of attentively worked prose in one fell swoop?

Sandra would.

Oh.

Still. I scoffed.

John Lennon did.

Huh?

Loads of canonized writers did, habitually.

Wow.

And Sandra was right.

One of the most fun parts of this particular trip to the British Isles was visiting...

The Dublin Writers Museum

The Writers' Museum (Edinburgh, Scotland)

and

The British Library, with their exhibit...

Wastelands to Wonderlands

Each venue displayed original manuscripts and first edition copies of seminal English literary texts, edit marks often included. Joyce, Shaw, Yeats, Swift, Stevenson, Burns, Austen, Dickens, the Brontes, Hardy, Wordsworth, Wilde, Blake, Eliot, Coleridge, Keats, Forster, Kipling, Conan Doyle, Milne, Auden, Orwell, Conrad, Woolf, Tolkein, du Maurier, Lewis Carroll, Ishiguro, Kureishi, Ted Hughes, Plath, John Lennon, Gaiman, and J. K. Rowling.

Pardon my name dropping. I spent a lot of time gasping in awe. Literally, I would walk up to a displayed text and let out a gasp of recognition and astonishment.

While some authors did indeed tweak a word or two here or there, quite a few squiggled lines through and crossed out entire pages of text, sometimes leaving a mere sentence for the final draft. Sentences I know by heart, having read and studied them with admiration and, quite often, love.

While I refuse to toss out an entire draft of a piece and start over with a blank doc, when I have a paragraph or section that just refuses to come together, the solution is usually to throw it all out. To start from scratch.

Case in point, my revising this morning. I'm about a third of the way through the 7th or 8th edit of volume 2, an edit I originally thought would be a final proofing as the design work has been done. But fresh eyes are picky eyes, and fresh ears hear glitches well. I thought I was done "writing," yet this is typical:

The last paragraph of page 54 wasn't working. I tossed it. I started over. It's working now.

I've learned my lesson.

Skype-tastic!

This week I Skyped as a "visiting author" for the first time. It was with a class of YME fifth graders whose wonderful teacher was my wonderful student teacher last fall. The kids were full of excellent questions. Questions, I might add, that were asked between licks on their last-day-of-school lollipops.

Carrie reports they were all abuzz for the rest of the day over seeing the cover of volume #2.

Unfortunately, I was having such a great time engaging with the kids, I forgot to take any screen shots. You'll just have to imagine the moment. It looked a little like this, only without the Star Wars tee shirt and freshly scrubbed face.

Also, this week I ran into a few of the Monte kids with whom I'd visited face to face a few weeks ago. There was recognition. There were waves. And there was one joyous, running across the entire gymnasium to give me a waist hug moment.

I think I like this rock star treatment!

Classroom Visit Success!

I received this amazing letter from teacher Karinda Groothuis (multiage grades 1-3 teacher) a while ago:

Dear Ann,
     In the beginning, I was a little worried -- Bloody Mary and bra descriptions seemed a little more mature than what first graders should hear. I kept reading and the children kept listening. With each super power, more predicting took place. The students were as curious as Kat and Johnny. They even learned the meaning of serendipity.
     Something amazing happened after I read the last page and closed the book. The children applauded! That has never happened before. They loved your book Ann, and they want to read more.
     I know your schedule is busy, but we would love to have you visit us. Let me know if it is ever possible.

Your friend, Karinda

Well, today was the day.

Ann Wachtler and Super Teacher Karinda Groothuis

While my own dear ones were rocking the Advanced Placement Literature and Composition Exam, I jumped buildings and had my first classroom visit for Super Power of the Day. It was wonderful. What great kids!

Except for the burning pain in my quads from squatting down to get to elementary kid level, I could get used to this visiting author gig.

Check Me Out

Super Power of the Day: Origins of a Sixth Grade Superhero is now available through the Pioneerland Library System. How cool is that?

I recently watched YA novelists John Green and Maureen Johnson discuss used bookstores and libraries. I am in complete agreement with them -- I'd much rather have an audience than "countless riches." Or even hundreds of dollars. Although I do appreciate the hundreds, as they are currently funding the cover art and design costs for the next two books in the series.

An Excellent Question

I've been answering questions for hours.


Kris Quinn Christopherson has graciously offered to interview me for a feature in an upcoming Stories for Children ezine article (sfcmagazine.com). I'm glad I said yes. Her questions are thought provoking in the best way.


I find it especially enjoyable to reflect on the writing process and to share my love of stories, especially my love for middle grade and young adult fiction, with others.


Here's one of her clever questions along with my response.

Q: When growing up, did you have a favorite author, book series, or book?

As a young reader, I found a shelf at the library that held chapter books that were fictionalized biographies of great Americans. I’m pretty sure I read them all. 

End papers for an Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators mystery.

I loved the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series and saved my money to buy them one by one at a local bookshop called Boreen Books. 

I borrowed The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys books from friends. And of course we all checked out Judy Blume novels, though that meant waiting patiently for our turn at the school library. 

There were three adventure books that I reread often: Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain, Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, and David Kherdian’s It Started with Old Man Bean. I hadn't realized until now that these three novels are adventure stories where the heroes survive in the wild on their own. 

I'll probably contribute to the genre myself someday. Possibly soon.

Then in sixth grade I found Stephen King and J.R.R. Tolkein, and that was pretty much the end of my children’s lit days.