Yesterday, I finished Assignment 2 for my Institute of Children’s Literature advanced course. It took a lot longer than I thought. I had to write a synopsis for a story that I only had the faintest idea what was going to happen. Then I had to do character sketches for the MC and minor characters and a market justification. So, now I have a month or so to work on my other two book projects, Confessions of a Troll and Emily’s Closet. Poor Troll has been mostly languishing since Thanksgiving.
I’ve joined another critique group. This one is strictly online. It seems everyone (including myself) is having the same problem – stalled projects. There was an excellent article in December’s The Writer magazine about getting stalled projects moving again. One of the suggestions was to write a 1,500 word book review as a reviewer from the NY Times who really loved it and understood everything you were trying to get across.

Now that the holiday madness is finished, back to business…

I’m almost finished with my second assignment for the ICL Advanced course. They provide some questions to help generate a plot synopsis, then I have to do character sketches for the main character and minor characters. I have seen index card systems for cataloging characters’ information, but I think this is better. I will be very likely to use it in other projects. In answering the questions, I found out some surprising things about both the MC and minor characters, and also got some good ideas for plot and sub-plot.

In my other book project, Edward Kelley’s MySpace blog has ben languishing. I’ve go to come up wiht some juicy things for him to do. He claims one of his hobbies is skydiving. Maybe I’ll have him go on one of those nude or lingeree jumps (I know someone who did that) and land so far off target he has to hitchhike or knock on a stranger’s door.

TTFN.