Writing updates book #3: 2011

image copyright Omar Rayyan, 1999

I love this illustration, created for The Unicorn's Secret.  It's a series, eight slim books written so that third graders can read it, but almost half the fan mail is from adults.  The story came from dreams I had in gradeschool, contiguous dreams that went on for about a year and a half and  felt like a second life. Every night I went back to the same place, then, when night fell in the dream, I would go to sleep there and wake up *here*.  Writing these books was the beginning of my strong preference for letting the story write itself. 

http://www.kathleenduey.com/KidsBooks/  for first chapter excerpts.

okay, on to much darker things.....

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Resurrection of Magic book #3---in progress. 

Traveling always interrupts my work, but it also provides distance. After a week of teaching writing, I spent the first two days here at  home rereading.  Here's what I know now. Hahp has passed a point of no return--and he knows it.  Gerrard is hiding something, from me, from everyone.  Sadima's choices are heartbreaking, logical, impossible. I can only hope.

An acacia tree that died, maybe...didn't.

I have almost 50 solid chapters now, and the time lines are crossing, converging. The city is on the edge of terrible things and the boys in the cliff are almost beyond fear. Almost.  I have one more conference next weekend--four days counting planes days--and am taking my Neo with me.  Then I have a whole month at home. This is so hard to write. I love these people.  

Thanks to everyone getting in touch to ask when the book will be finished. Soon. Probably all too soon...

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6 26 2011

Euphorbias -- the fleshy cactus-like limbs sometimes drop and rot, but the thorns live on and on and on....like bones. 

Just returned home from two conferences, back to back. I'm always amazed by the blooming writers in my class sessions and critique sessions. My two-day home-again acclimation is over. The garden is tended, the jet lag is gone and about half of the third Resurrection of Magic book is now sent off to gather early feedback. I will start the day by rereading chapters, listening to my recorders, reading the pile of notes from me to me... and then, probably around noon, I will start writing. 

There is so much trouble in the city of Limori.  The boys in the cliffs can't hear the shouting or see the guards' hands, always on their sword sheaths. They can't see the beggar children in South End who stand silently, one hand out, afraid to speak, to ask anyone for food...but they can feel something changing, collapsing... 

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6 29 2011

between thunderstorms in Florida...

Last night, very late and very sleepy, I might have gotten a glimpse of how things will end.  I cried, then smiled, then wrote the notes and filed them.  I am a long way from writing those end scenes...but not THAT long...so it's good to have the future revealing itself.  

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6 30 2011

I woke up dreading the place I have to start today.  Immediate, unscripted, un-outlined writing is all about not letting yourself blink, or run away.  I know what will probably happen and I just have to record it accurately whether I am right or wrong.

some trees are like poems 

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The backstory in this trilogy is so intricate that I find myself rereading sections of the first two books to check details, to make sure the physical set up of some part of the city is consistent, but then I keep reading far past what I needed to read, notice small things that set me thinking and I finally look up from the book when I realize I am hungry. I am a deep writer. Maybe not an efficient one, though.

But there is THIS:

Karen Bale and I wrote this book for middle grade readers many years ago. It stays in print--and once in a while, gets translated again.  This is the brand new German version--a reminder that life and death drama never gets old. Heroism--and the lack of it--play a part in every life. 

South End

 This is a building that was  in San Antonio TX USA. It was being torn down when I photographed it.

It is now in South End, a slum where several people in my Resurrection of Magic books live. It  has also become the setting of some short stories I am writing.

Backstory:
Captive children broke all the windows on the first floor and many of the smallest ones escaped.  

The remainder were marched up steep stairs to the third floor-- and locked in without food for seven days as punishment.

On the first night, they found two stones and began chipping at the walls-- taking turns so that the stones were never idle.

On the fourth night, they tied together all of their clothing and descended safely, scattering like South End rats, then, without discussion or promises, they stopped running and reassembled, shivering in the cold, free, a family of sorts, bonded by misery and hope. The short stories will be built around their lives after that night....

Free Rat, Stays, Unicorn Untitled, The Virgin's Blood, Wishes

These are my current projects.

One is a film-book idea, one a short story, the rest novels. All but Wish, for 2-4th graders, are YA. One include two voices, one art, one text, one a development situation with an agent who will look at early work and contribute, the rest with my beloved literary agent.

I am working long days now, knowing that in about a month I will be starting the last book in my Resurrection of Magic trilogy. They are complex books: two stories go back and forth every other chapter, taking place about two hundred years apart (though that gap is closing). The first story causes the second one. There are two equally weighted protagonists, both in the same place--which has changed over time, of course. So, once I begin it...it consumes me.

Before I am consumed, I want to have a killer-diller partial book/complete synopsis of STAYS (which is shaping up to be *really* interesting) A good summary-start on Free Rat, which is fascinating as it grows, a finished Faeries Promise: Wish, a completed Unicorn Untitled, and a few chapters and synopsis of A Virgin's Blood. So I won't be posting as often for a bit...

That odd little thing is starting to happen to me again. I think about how upset a character will be when they find out another character is hurt, then remember they are in separate books. Or are they?

Thomas Marsham's passage

It took me an hour to find this image in my files. I remembered it, the arches, the various colors of stone and brick, the proximity of ancient and modern. It is the place where Sadima is shivering, standing straight. She is becoming something I never expected, but completely understand.

I am going to be adrift and weird when I am finished with this book, which will be soon. I will have to start the third one asap.



This is Volubilis, the southernmost Roman outpost. The restored arch (brick) frames the original Roman construction beyond it. Soliders lived here. Click to enlarge.

exits and traps

This image is from Morocco. It's also in South End, Limori, one of the exit-alleys, lined with vendors and kiosks. It eventually leads away from the ale houses and the sailors and the squalor, back to cleaner, better parts of the city. It's one of the alleys that Sadina cannot walk. She just can't.

I realized something this morning:

It's weird how much of every book is autobiography. Oblique, maybe, but true, true, true...

writing about writing about writing

Just a quick note to say I am asking writers to respond to this:

The hardest thing about writing is....

Your answers will help shape the book about writing that I am slowly compiling. I want it to be truly useful--or what's the point? Two lists have already given some great responses. I hope to get many more. The answer can be about any aspect of the endeavor: craft, time management, how you enter "the trance", art vs commerce, character control (or not), writing through personal crises, the business end of writing, your mother in law's insistence that it's a cute hobby as long as your house stays nice (oh, no, wait, that was me, years ago)...and whatever else stands between you and writing a brilliant book.

Anyone so moved can certainly answer it here. Anyone preferring privacy can email me at kathleen at kathleenduey.com

Thanks for writing, for leaving your work for family, friends, and readers to enjoy, thanks for saving literacy.

The Tannery

This tannery/leather dyeing enterprise is 400 years old. It is a family-run business in Morroco. When you ask to be shown around a little, one of the kids will lead you up long narrow steps to the rooftop, and give you a sprig of mint to hold under your nose. It doesn't help.

There is a tannery in Limori's South-End, too. It is guarded by a vicious dog. He is Sadima's very first friend.

click the picture....

time, time, time...

These cobbles are in Paris. I have moved them to Limori's slum South-End, a dockside squalorous place--and where Sadima is now.

The writing is flying again. The time line is resolving itself. About 200 years pass in one story and less than 10 in the other. I have been pacing a lot, considering various devices. But the every-other-chapter format is enough. I don't want devices and visible structure to upstage the characters. Not even a little. So I am going straight at it, and I think (hope, want to believe) it's working.

Limori's neighborhoods

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.Limori, once you are up the hill from the docks, out of South -End's squalor and jumble, is a city of wood and brick. Beyond that, Ferrin Hill has estates, massive homes of quarried stone, built, like castles, to last generations. I realized this morning that I pictured the neighborhoods around Market Square like some of the older ones in Boston-a city I have visited only three times.

Writing about book-building here has made me notice where things come from, how I paste realities together to form a tangible fantasy, while I think I am just following the characters around. The Eridians have basis in fact, too. Writing all those middle grade historical novels left me with piles and e-piles of research, all of which include great stories I couldn't use at the time. America has a long history of cultural experiments.

May Gray

May Gray, That's what the locals call these wonderful foggy mornings. I love them. I get a lot of writing done. Which is good because I have a lot to do--several projects in motion. Sacred Scars is primary.

It's time to get back to work.

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I live in southern CA.

This is the Atlantic , Rabat, Morocco.

writing is so weird

The woods, the woods....

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I was flipping through old pic files just now and stopped to stare at this one. This is exactly where Sadima is, where I left her last night at midnight, not because I was tired, but because it hurt. These are the trees, the fading light. She is running, jerking her long skirt free, stumbling, running...

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The photo was taken in the Shenandoah Forest, several years ago at an SCBWI writers' retreat. Enlarge it and look at the horizon line, left of center. You can see her silhouette. I can.

writing is so odd...

I am taking a break--gotta eat something today--and am sitting here with my whole body thrumming. I can't type fast enough today. I can't keep up with the story. I have stopped twice to write notes for tomorrow and beyond. If I could figure how and why this happens, I would...

Actually I have some theories and am having more and more days like this. I will write about it soon. For now, back to work.

Puppy updates.

The little girlpup is off to Texas to her new home. Her brothers remain, and they bounce off my office walls while I work.

I am sunk deep in the stone passageways where the second book of The Resurrection of Magic trilogy is taking place. There and on the docks in South End, the slums of Limori.

Limori is an old gypsy word.
Its meaning is central to the books.
All the place names and character names have real linguistic roots, some of them obscure, some not. Knowing the meanings matters to me. There is a resonance.

Writing... Sometimes the story just spins out like you have nothing at all to do with making it up. Today was like that, silk and quicksand. Bliss.


Porcelain dish belonged to Molly Hamilton, my
great aunt. Button jar... I can trace most of them
to clothing I wore on landmark days,some are
from thriftstores, some found in old houses,
and other places. It's odd what we love, what we keep.