Not all novels are written straight through, draft after draft. Often the journey is more circuitous, with stops and starts, side trips, and moments wishing you had a regular job. A book you believe will be written in six months may actually take years. The schedule you make for your novel can’t take into account life interruptions.
Candice’s newest middle grade novel took eight years, from idea to hardcover in hand. It was a journey in which she figured out how to handle those stops and starts, life interruptions, and side trips. In this workshop, she will share new tools she developed that helped her through those eight years.
In this two-hour workshop, Candice will give a presentation on the writing and rewriting of Juneberry Blue. You’ll learn how she developed off-the-page tools that helped her over each hump. These tools include little-known outlets for research, methods to visualize story, and five off-the-page projects. These projects can be done at the beginning of your novel’s journey, when you are stuck in the middle, and throughout the revision process.
After the presentation, Candice will discuss how to make the off-the-pages projects and how they can be tailored to your novel and future projects. Participants will begin creating a project Candice is using to focus a new picture book idea: a glue book. Your glue book will be a make-and-take you can finish at home. Please bring a blank inexpensive composition book, scissors, and a glue stick.