Dear NEVЯLANDers and Those Who are NEVЯLAND Curious:
Chad Chapman, Jr., who took over publication of the Junebug Journal when his father (Chad Chapman, Sr.) disappeared along with the other adults, has announced that Special Edition Issue #02 (AR) will be published this Saturday evening, 29 May 2010--which is Monday, 13 May 2013, in the NEVЯLAND time line.
You'll be able to read the Special Edition Issue #02 (AR) at http://nevrland.info/journal.html
This issue, which is labeled Junebug Journal, Special Edition Issue #02 (AR), will feature interviews with several of the remaining Children--what they think happened, where they think their parents and the other adults went, why only Children 17 and under were left behind, and what they think will happen next.
Imagine watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel, starting with the blank ceiling, adding the outline to the figures of God and Adam at the moment of Human creation, and then as he slowly added hue and texture to each scene until he produced one of the greatest works of art in history—the story of Human creation and even destruction in one tiny space in the Universe.
Imagine listening to the first version of “Please, Please Me”, the Beatles first big hit. I’ve heard it. The original is slow, lumbering through a maudlin strain of boy-loves-girl teenage angst. It wasn’t very good until they sped it up and added tonal color to produce a celebration of boy-girl teenage love.
Or, imagine watching a building go up, from ground breaking through foundation laying to framing, and then finally the building is finished. We’re doing that now at Altus High School as we witness a nearly 80-year-old building being transformed to meet the needs of 21st Century students.
And when the project is done—whether the Sistine Chapel, a great hit song, or a new building—it all looks like magic.
That’s what writing is—hard work that looks like magic in the end. Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
And how many of us have read a good book and said, “That’s easy. I can do that.”
Lebron James makes “easy” clutch shots, eh?
Most readers don’t get the inside look at the making of a novel.
Maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe making a novel, like making sausage, isn’t something people should witness. I love sausage, but I really don’t want to see the butchering, the skinning, the gutting, hack-hack-hacking, and then the squeezing into the casings.
It’s not a pretty sight.
That’s what this is: NEVЯLAND—The Making of Literary Sausage.
I know what you're thinking: Wow! This guy is something else. He's comparing himself to Michelangelo, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
No. I'm just using those greats as examples to get your attention, to help those of you who are not writers better understand that no finished work of art or craft comes easily or appears as if by magic, that even the great artists and artisans start from a spark of an idea and go through the phases of butchering, skinning, hack-hack-hacking, and then squeezing into the casing to produce their best work..
Yes, I'm confident in my story—my characters, my plot, my conflicts, my over all scheme—enough so to share it with anyone who wishes to witness the making of NEVЯLAND from the beginning.
And I realize that others look at this confidence as arrogance or even conceit. So be it.
This is new to me, too. I'll stumble in the process. Unlike others, I'm stubborn enough to get up and keep troupering on until I reach the end, one way or another.
Will you like the story? Reading is subjective. Either you will like it or you won't. Or, you'll be stuck between liking and disliking. Maybe you won't like the way it is told. Maybe I use too many adjectives. Maybe I don't use enough adjectives. Maybe I don't show enough or I tell too much. We'll see.
Let me know what you think. You won't hurt my feelings. Well, maybe just a little, but I opened myself up to the slings and arrows.
Even cooks at five-star restaurants have their critics and detractors. I'm no different.
In my previous publications, I've received raves, and I've received rants. It happens. I live with the fact that not everybody will like me, like what I do, like what I create. And this gives me the freedom to go ahead and create freely without the fetters or manacles of popular opinion.
I do welcome feedback—both praise and problems. Something you may not know is that writers don't write in a vacuum. They workshop their tales, letting others read bits and pieces and wholes, receiving feedback, changing and shaping their tales until it's «readable».
While a writer writes first to please himself, he writes secondly (more importantly) to please the reader. A writer without a reader is like an ocean without a shore upon which to crash it's mighty waves majestically.
I was meditating about a story idea. A story that involved a 12-year-old protagonist in a post-apocalyptic setting.
I wanted to write a Middle Grade transitional to Young Adult end-of-the-world thriller that didn't involve genetic mutation and zombies.
I asked myself two questions:
1. What do teens, especially young teens, want more than anything else?
2. What do teens, especially young teens, fear more than anything else?
The answers to those two questions is exactly the same answer:
The disappearance of Parents and Adults.
I read once that when God wants to punish us, He answers our prayers.
What would the world be like if all the adults disappeared?
Lord of the Flies meets Home Alone meets Animal Farm jumped to mind as the comparable story lines, motifs, and themes.
First, I had to decide on the age of those who would disappear.
Of course, legal Adulthood--18-years-old.
That means the world is full of newborns through 17-years-old.
But, wait. The world is too big.
Let's make it one small town.
A small town in Southwest Oklahoma.
Junebug, Oklahoma.
Junebug, Oklahoma, is my fictional town for nearly all my stories loosely based on Altus, Oklahoma.
Like William Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County is based on his beloved Oxford, Mississippi.
And the kids left in Junebug really are the last people left on of Earth.
Only those between newborn and 17 living in Junebug have survived what the kids label the Rapture.
Laynie entrapped by the violence and hysteria of NEVЯLAND and by her own fear of helplessness and being alone.
What would happen?
How would the kids react?
How would the various age levels react?
Who would go crazy--insane?
Who would commit suicide?
Who would be in charge, try to take over, try to be a dictator?
Would the racial and ethnic make-up of the remaining kids be a factor? Of course, they would! People naturally seek safety not only in numbers but in numbers of their own kind--especially children.
Fear is a great motivator for story.
And what about the newborns? What would happen to them? Who would take care of them?
This applies to the infants and toddlers as well.
Not only that, the Rapture has not stopped. Any 17-year-old who turns 18 also disappears.
By Sunday, 25 April 2010, I had a 20,000 word single spaced outline of the first book.
There will be five books.
Because the protagonist is 13-years-old, each book covers a year in her life from the morning of the Rapture in the First Book to the day before her own 18th birthday in the Fifth Book--the next day she turns 18 and disappears.
I don't know why, but from the beginning my protagonist was female. At first she was 12, and then she aged one year by the time the First Book outline was complete.
This is how the idea moved from Mediation to What If Question to Outline to Story and is now proceeding full steam into Novel.
Everyone loves a winner, and everyone loves to win!
To promote NEVЯLAND--The Novel WIP, I'm having a series of contests.
Here's the first contest I'm having:
The first person to refer ten of his/her Facebook friends to NEVЯLAND--The (WordPress) Blog or NEVЯLAND--The (Facebook) Group will get a signed hardcopy of the first draft of NEVЯLAND--The Novel WIP!
This is an actual draft with editing marks, margin notes, changes, coffee stains et cetera.
You'll have a copy of NEVЯLAND in its raw form.
You'll have to keep track of which of your FB Friends join The Group or The Blog and send me their names when you reach ten.
When you notice that ten of your Facebook Friends have joined The Blog or The Group, email me with their names, and I'll confirm you as a winner.
Check back often for updates for other NEVЯLAND--The Novel WIP Contests!
I´ve been told since day one of the first creative writing class I took and I pay many dollars a year to attend (and I´ve been paid many dollars to present at) conferences where I am reminded (and I remind others) ad naseum to write in scenes.
When I write a scene, do I view the scene as though I am writing a textbook or putting on a stage play?
Some tales I´ve read lately go into great protracted descriptive verbiage as though we, the readers, were sitting in our comfy chairs in our parlors in the 19th Century with no other distractions other than the occasional whippoorwill outside our collective windows and little more to do with our time except read long-winded descriptions of the setting, the characters, the time, et cetera.
I know. I wrote such a scene in my YA fantasy tale “Barmaglot”.
Worse yet, it was the opening nine pages!
My eagle-eyed critique partner pointed that out to me. I had written fine protracted purple prose. I was quite proud of my wordmanship and expertise with broadsword sentences and extravagant razor-sharp adjectives.
I should have used a dagger instead—quick, simple, efficient, to the point, and much more deadly, as well as (often) unseen until it’s too late.
I thought I had learned my lesson.
In NEVЯLAND (a WIP I’m slicing out now), I had what I thought was a strong, well-written paragraph, but something about it bothered me. I showed it to my teaching partner at school, and she was frustrated with the long paragraph, actually a single 60-word sentence broken up by a serious of commas.
All the commas were used properly and sitting in their proper places.
But the scene was exhausting to read.
“Break it up,” she said.
“You don’t like it? I think it conveys the idea nicely.”
“Well, obviously you think something is wrong with it, or you wouldn’t have shown it to me.”
She was right, of course, as usual.
I went back and broke up the long single 60-word sentence into several short, choppy sentences, and the scene tightened up immediately. It gave the reader a sense of hurried walking, which is what I was trying to do with the elongated sentence.
I love the theatre and acting and plays. I’ve written a couple of one-act dramas and still envision a play I’ve written being performed in regional theatre and then on off-off Broadway and then off Broadway and, finally, on Broadway! (Dream big or don’t dream at all.)
After the experiences of my critique partner and my teaching partner, I realized I needed to approach a scene in my novels and short stories the way I would approach a scene in a stage play—action and dialogue to move the story forward and avoid long rambling description, prolonged narrative, and extensive character exposition.
If the scene doesn´t play out on stage, it doesn´t play out on paper.
Description is necessary in telling a story in written form as a reader only views the setting, characters, and actions through the written word, unlike a stage play or movie.
However, the 19th and early 20th Centuries are long gone and buried with them are the multitude of paragraphs and proliferation of pages of protracted descriptive prose.
Today’s readers just won’t sit through such verbiage. Unless they are being held hostage on the tarmac of a shut-down airport or spending a very long two-day weekend with in-laws, they prefer to see as victims of a major crime.
Perhaps if I wrote my scenes the way artists painted Good Girl Art covers for those steamy potboiler pulp novels of the 1950s, I´d be able to quit my day job, eh?
I’m striving to achieve a happy medium: description with an emphasis on scenework rather than description apart from scenework. The two must be imbued as much as possible if the story is to move along and keep the reader engrossed and entertained and turning those pages and buying my next Great American Novel.
From now on, I´m using a dagger when I write my scenes rather than a broadsword. Using a dagger rather than a broadsword when writing scenes allows me to sneak in the bladed information before my victim (my reader) knows what has happened.
You'll have to keep track of which of your FB Friends join The Group or The Blog and send me their names when you reach ten.
