Cave of Forgotten Dreams: A Found Poetry Adventure

Hey readers!  As some of you know, I'm in between drafts.  Yep, draft II is done and is somewhere out there being looked at by various powers that be.  This is exciting.  This is intense.  Life hangs in a balance. I have left my fate temporarily in the hands of others! AAAAH.

Anyhow, to maintain sanity and also keep the creative juices flowing, I went on a Found Poetry Adventure today.  For those of you who are new to found poetry, this is basically the art of finding words/phrases in the world (on signs, in advertisements, in books, in somebody else's poetry, etc. - anywhere really!) and rearranging them to make a poem.  I walked from Hampstead to Camden and made a note of different words/phrases that caught my eye.  Once I got home, I rearranged the words until they seemed to tell a story/make some kind of sense.  I'm no poet by any stretch of the imagination, but it was great fun to play with language in a way that I'm not used to.  I'd highly recommend this practice to anyone looking for a short, fun creative project to fill the space between larger writing projects (or even if you just need a small brain break from your MS).

Here's the result (and I'd love to see your results if you do this, too!):

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

The void
A wall of glass separated me                                    from the rest of the world*

Harmony - receive your free bottle at the edge of tomorrow!

For access to the elephant house, 

ring with two tings

I ran reading:

L'art de vivre en remontant la rivière** - 
Be careful at bends and entrances
Jam with the maniacs
Adopt an object
Get rich or try sharing the world's end

The wound is the place where the light enters you***
Nothing ever stays the same****



*/**** These phrases both came from Eva Schloss's memoir, which I'm reading at the moment, called After Auschwitz.
** Translation: "the art of living going back up the river"
***: This is a quote from Rumi

A Journey To The Darker Side of Other People's Lives: Meet Chris Macfarlane

Ladies and gents! You got a chance to meet yours truly on the blog last week, so it is now my pleasure to introduce you to one of my most beloved MA colleagues and fellow Where the Wild Words Are author, Chris Macfarlane.  Last year I had the pleasure of sharing a workshop group with Chris, and I was always struck both by her unparalleled sense of story both in her own writing and in her feedback to others.  I'm thrilled that she decided to develop her piece, A Girl Called Harry, into a full manuscript.  It's a book for teens with a strong moral compass and I'm getting excited right now imagining this novel finding its way into the hands of its intended readership! So, without further ado, I'll let the woman speak for herself.  Dear readers, I give you Chris Macfarlane!

Finding her Voice: Introducing Yael Tischler

Afternoon, all!
I'm really excited today, because I get to kick off this run of introductions by interviewing my good friend and co-conspirator Yael Tischler! When I first met Yael, back in September 2012, it was clear within about a minute that we were going to be great friends. Since then we've co-written stories, embarked on numerous adventures, invited you all to join our barricade, and finished some MAs into the bargain.
That alone would be excellent grounds for an interview. But Yael isn't just one of my best friends, she's also someone whose stories always excite me - a fantastically talented writer with a real gift for getting into characters lives and voices. And the reason I'm so excited about today? I honestly can't wait for the rest of the world to get the chance to read her writing.

So, ladies and gentlemen. I give you... Yael Tischler!

Where The Wild Writers Are...

As Harriet reminded us a few weeks ago, summer is well on its way (though you wouldn't know it from the weather outside). And so too is May 13th, when myself and the other writers from Bath Spa's MA in Writing for Young People will be launching our Where the Wild Words Are anthology and setting out into the as-yet uncharted waters of the publishing industry. It's simultaneously exciting and terrifying, and I really can't wait!

(picture courtesy of the fantastic Harriet Balfour Evans)

But of course, before we can launch the anthology in style, there are a few more preparations to be made. Pitches need honing, some books still need finishing, and we clearly can't start transforming the venue until the day intself. And, while the official countdown runs on the anthology site, we thought we'd do a countdown of our own on the Chronicles of Word and give anyone reading the chance to get to know the writers a bit in advance. In other words, for the next three weeks we will be interviewing each other! 

So, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin... 

Summer’s on its way! …Sort of.

Okay, so the picnic blanket is still mouldy and crumpled up in the shed, temperatures are still verging on arctic, and your sunglasses are god knows where, BUT things on the YA scene couldn't be hotter (not even counting those pictures of Theo James at the Divergent premiere... enough said). 

Here are some latest releases that I can’t wait to get my hands on:

Aside from having the best title of 2014 so far, The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare revolves around one of the most exciting themes known to books, erm... ever. Of course, any book about time travel would struggle NOT to be awesome, but this one looks particularly promising. Geeky-yet-quietly-hilarious Alex is trying to get rid of her weird visions of the past – a task gets infinitely harder when it turns out they’re actual scenes from her fifty six various previous lives. And if that wasn’t enough to deal with, there's someone on her tail, someone who's biding their own time before going in for the kill...

Coming in a close second for Most Awesome Title of The Year (and arguably, Most Awesome Cover of the Year) is The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender. It’s a moving account of a girl born with bird wings, struggling in her innocence to make sense of the world around her. Leslye Walton’s rich, beautiful language explores love, nostalgia, hope and sorrow. Sure to be a tearjerker; prepare accordingly.

And if Gayle Forman’s new instalment Just One Year is filled with even a smidge of the tension, dialogue and heart-melting detail of its predecessor, Just One Day, you’re going to want to keep those tissues out. This time, we’re getting up close and personal with the charming and somewhat elusive Willem de Ruiter. 

Romantics, please form an orderly queue. 

My final recommendation isn’t out until summer, but I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait…

Kate Karyus Quinn has a knack for the eerie and the terrifying – if you read her last book, Another Little Piece, you’ll know what I mean. But the concept of (Don't You) Forget About Me is pure, twisted brilliance.

Gardnerville is an near-utopian paradise. Except for the fact that, every one year in four, the town’s fuel source exacts its revenge on its teens, imbuing them with hostile urges that make them commit horrifying acts. To save her sister - one of its victims - Skylar must lift herself out of her grief and drug-induced stupor, and find a way to finally set the town free.

Roll on June! *claps wildly*

So what’s on your YA reading list this month? Any recommendations? Don't forget to add them in the comments sections below...

Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?

Friends:

It is time for us all to decide who we are.  No, not really.  (I seriously hope most of us know this already.  If not, probably a good time to hop to it.)  It is actually time for us (Yael & Cinders) to introduce you to a concept that is very close to our hearts. It is time to introduce you to the “Diversity Barricade.”

You might be side-eyeing the computer right now, wondering what dead, fictional revolutionaries and barricades have to do with the children’s book industry. We suppose this confusion is warranted, but let us explain.  

First, take a look at this wonderfully illustrated chart from Tina Kügler, illustrating the current level of diversity in children’s fiction:

Depressing, no?

We might not be Enjolras*, but recognizing the lack of diversity in children’s publishing gets our blood boiling with revolutionary fervour.  

This Post is Rated "R"... for Rejection

Well hello lovely readers! I thought I’d start the New Year off by posting something nice and cheery.  The topic of this post… drumroll please… is rejection!

Why are you qualified to write this post, you may ask? Well, surprising but true: I have been rejected from many things in my life: literary magazines, universities, boyz, jobs (gosh, a whole lot of jobs actually! Talk to me about last November some other time… Trying to find a job in London is pretty brutal!).  Hec, I’ll probably be able to add agents and publishers to the list once I start submitting my manuscript later this year.  Rejection is practically an occupational hazard of being a(n aspiring) published author.

If you’re anything like me (that is, your skin is the thickness of rice paper and Achieving Things is very very important to your fragile ego), REJECTION SUCKS.  Some people brush off rejection, as they are bigger than that.  I commend those people.  I am not bigger than that.  In fact, many times, I find myself on the floor, beating my fists against the carpet, moaning, “Why me? Why me?” (#toughfirstworldproblems).  At the end of the day, though, I peel myself off the floor and keep going.  Why? Because rejection is a side-effect of the journey to do difficult/awesome things.  It’s a sign that you’re doing something right, because you’re putting yourself out there in a challenging landscape.  It’d be worrying if you never got rejected, because either you're the most awesome person to ever be born and better than everyone else (unlikely, but if that’s the case, congrats!) or you aren’t pushing yourself.  Rejection is normal, part of the process of getting where you want to be, and it happens to basically everyone. 

But does rejection still suck? YES. 

So, I asked you - my fellow bloggers, readers, and Facebook and Twitter buddies - to weigh in on how you cope with rejection.  The response was overwhelming – I don’t think I’ve ever had so many comments on a post! Rejection is such a universal experience that everyone had something to say about it.  (And by the way, thanks to everyone who wrote back. You’re all superstars.)

So what did you all have to say?