Finding a Kindred Spirit

Here's my latest post on Christine Fonseca's blog, An Intense Life

Finding a Kindred Spirit

Surviving Middle School...So Far...

Here's my post on Christine Fonseca's Blog, An Intense Life.
Wherein I pay homage to Nickelodeon's Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide.

Middle School is Real!

Here is my latest post on Christine Fonseca's An Intense Life  blog.

Back To School: In Denial

The first day of school, and the first day of Middle School for my youngest child begins in 18 days. I'm not sure if I'm ready yet!
Here's my post on Christine Fonseca's An Intense Life blog.

Intensely Inert

Here's my post on Christine Fonseca's An Intense Life:
http://christinefonseca.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/intensely-inert/

Looking back on Childhood

Here is my bi-monthly post on Christine Fonseca's An Intense Life: Looking Back on Our Youth --At Any Age.

Christine Fonseca's "Transcend" Cover Reveal

Congratulations to Christine Fonseca - Her new book Transcend, a Young Adult fiction psychological thriller, which will be available in September has a gorgeous cover which has been revealed today. You can see the widget for it over on the right (at least until September) or you can see it here on Christine's blog.

In order to help celebrate, some of Christine's blogging friends are revealing a secret about themselves, so I'm just going to cut right to the chase: One time, many years ago, I borrowed a laptop from this guy that I kind of liked to get a term paper done and formatted properly. I got bored for a bit and started going through his messages and found one from a girl he had been dating, and there was all this drama about how she had thought she was pregnant (by him) for a while, but even during that time she had slept with a Chippendale's dancer. She was all apologetic about it, but his responses were not immediately forgiving (though it did seem like he really wanted to forgive her).  

I never told him or anyone else about reading all that. I felt horrible that I had allowed myself to stumble upon it. I'm not sure how everything turned out for them, though I do think I saw them together at the store a couple of years later when I still lived in the area.

House Full O'Intensities

Here's my latest guest post on Christine Fonseca's "An Intense Life" blog: House Full O'Intensities

Emotional Intensity and Emotionally Drained

That's what I talk about today in my post in Christine Fonseca's: An Intense Life. Here's the link: http://christinefonseca.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/emotional-intensity-and-emotionally-drained/

Honor Roll Intensity...

Friday was my day to post on Christine Fonseca's blog. As is the case with most of my posts, it's about a personal experience. Here it is...

Growing Up Labeled Gifted: Vindication?

Today is my day to post on Christine Fonseca's: An Intense Life. Here it is.

Script Frenzy Day 2

Oh, don't worry, I'm not going to post a day by day accounting of my Script Frenzy writing. (Especially since I didn't bother posting a Script Frenzy Day 1) I'm just going to whine about my procrastination. In March, I was attempting to participate in NaBloPoMo. Life got in the way and I missed a day. Just one day and the participant is disqualified from "winning." Once that one day was missed, I got into the mindset of, "Why bother posting for the rest of the month?" I had intended to at least post on Wednesdays and Fridays for my Work In Progress and Finished Objects, but I guess the attitude just carried over.

I spent most of the time knitting and crocheting while catching up on every episode of a TV show I had never watched before. A TV show that began in 2005. I am now caught up to the current season. Oh, and no, to be clear, I did not begin with season one in March. I began season one sometime in December. I guess I just stepped up my episodes/per day. On the plus side, I got a lot knitting and crocheting done, and I have a new WIP and a new FO for this week.

Today, I also need to finish my Friday post for Christine Fonseca's "An Intense Life" blog. So, time to get back to that, and then on to my script....frenzy.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Something

Today, I'm guest blogging on Christine Fonseca's "An Intense Life" site. Here is my post.

My Post Over at "An Intense Life"

Today is the day I post on Christine Fonseca's blog, An Intense Life. The before last, I neglected to post the link to my previous entry on her blog, so here's that one too. Oh, and a poster of one of my most favorite parenting techniques:

My Guest Blogging...

My first guest post on Christine Fonseca's blog focusing on gifted children is today. Here it is: Dear Gifted Me: Donna Susanne

Commenting on Christine Fonseca's Blog

Today, I made a comment to Christine Fonseca's blog post. The comment turned into more of a blog post itself and in my own frenetic way, going from the topic of P.O.V. and writing tense, to Jonathan Franzen's writing style, I thought it a great example of a Manic Meandering:

When I am reading a novel I prefer past tense. Present tense to me, is for story pitches like for a screenplay or a TV script, etc. –just the pitch, mind you, not the actual material. I remember us talking about this when Temecula Valley Writer Group was more active –a lot of YA books are present tense and it has to do with building suspense because you can’t know whether the character is going to die or not since it is all happening as you read it. If the story is told in first person, I can see this, though I feel like there can still be plenty of suspense even when told in first person past tense –the reader may know that the narrator isn’t going to die (unless they are speaking from the great beyond…) but there are plenty of other characters who could die. (yay!)

However, if a story is being told third person, past tense, ANYONE can die! The main character, ANYONE! So I am still unsure why it is so popular for YA novels to be in first person present tense.
***SPOILER ALERT***
In Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Poisonwood Bible,” the story is told in first person by several different characters. ***SPOILER ALERT*** one of these characters dies, so this character is simply not a narrator anymore, and the others go on with the rest of the story.

I have no preference between first person or third person when I am reading a novel. It depends on which fits better with the story and I really have no rules about that. I don’t recall reading something and thinking, “This would have been better in third person…this would have been better in first person.” I have heard there is some “literary rule” that says that it is better to write a story in third person unless you are a very experienced writer. I’m not sure why that is (maybe if I was a more experienced writer, I would know…), but I try to follow it anyway: Perhaps because of my lack of college education, and my lack of ever getting paid for writing anything, I tend to cast aspersions on my own writing experience. Oddly enough, some of my favorite novels have either been in first person: Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and the above mentioned “Poisonwood Bible,” Or they have been in letter format: Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Everything is Illuminated” and Stephan Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” which has the feel of first person because the people in the letters ARE speaking in first person.

How do I decide whether to tell a story in first or third person? If it is my OWN story about something that happened to ME, first person (I guess that’s kind of obvious) –unless I want to fictionalize it, then third person. If I started to write a novel or short story in third person and it seemed like telling it from one or more character’s first person P.O.V. then I will go back and re-write/write it that way.

I like to tell a story in third person from the P.O.V. of many different characters. I either dedicate an entire chapter to a new P.O.V. or I will make a page break if the P.O.V. changes in the middle of a chapter. Either way, I want it to be clear –unlike Jonathan Franzen’s “The Twenty-Seventh City,” where he has character P.O.V. and location changes right in the middle of a paragraph with little to no segues! I swear, if I had been reading the paperback version and not from my Nook, I would have thrown that book across the room several times! Fortunately, (for him and for us) Franzen’s style has improved over the years.