What am I Doing Right Now?

What am I doing tonight? Not doing homework, an architecture essay on the history of Neuschwanstein. Not cleaning the house or working on a resume or any number of things I should be doing. Instead, I'm writing Chapter Nine in TDS and making brownies.

And the slacking is wickedly, wonderfully, delicious.

Mm, brownies.

Just Some Updates

With the sun setting at 6:00 pm, I'm so tired I could curl into bed right after dinner. So I'll keep the post short for today and just give anyone who checks in a heads up on what I'm plotting lately.

The Hearthsinger
I got a call today from the magnificent mother of a friend of mine, who offered to help set up recording sessions for The Hearthsinger throughout January. Keep your fingers crossed for me! I am so so excited to finally get the main parts cast. A beautiful friend of mine named Claire has agreed to read Mari for me, and I promised to bake her as many cookies as possible. It'll be worth it. She has a beautiful speaking voice and a perfect one for Mari. I'm going through a heavy editing phase right now, but I'm aiming to get things done by early December. And hopefully I'll be posting more chapters soon!

The Default Sweater
Erin got mentioned in the Figment newsletter this week, and I'm so happy for her! Very excited to make editor's choice, and hopefully I'll be getting a couple more chapters posted over Thanksgiving break!

Both Hearthsinger and TDS have gotten new covers, and they are gorgeous! Thank you to Carolyn Fisher for her work on The Hearthsinger.

Other than that, all's quiet on the home front. Man. I love vacations.

Coming to You Soon: The Hearthsinger on Audio!

New chapters of The Default Sweater  and The Hearthsinger are up on figment! Hopefully, now that things have calmed down a bit, I'll get around to posting more.

This post is dedicated to revealing my secret project...which, truthfully, has not been so secret around here. Over the next few months, I'll be working with a cast here in Austin to produce a few chapters of The Hearthsinger on audio. I've always loved audiobooks, and ones with full casts--an actor for each character rather than narrated through one voice only--are amazing. I'm incredibly excited! Over the next few months I'll be posting how recording/editing is going, along with the cast and a few more details. Both versions of the chapters--written version and audio--will be posted on my figment account/facebook account/blog, hopefully by January.

The whole process is very exciting for me. I love the cast so far, and soon (I hope) will be able to sit down and meet Michaela, the girl who will be reading the voice of Mari, the main character. I feel so very lucky to go to a school which allows me to do projects like this. There's still a lot to organize, so I'll keep this blog post short and hope to tell you all more in the future. In the meantime--off to go edit the next chapter! Wish me luck!

Songs for Erin

I mentioned yesterday that the Gumption score is on my playlist for Default Sweater. Here's more of the playlist that I'm starting to turn on whenever I sit down to write another chapter about Erin. Which is coming soon. I promise.

Lonely Lullaby, Owl City
Colgando en Tus Manos ("Hanging in your hands"), Carlos Baute and Marta Sanchez
All About Us, He is We and Owl City
Fever, Michael Buble
Spontaneous Me, Lindsey Sterling
What If, Colbie Caillait
I've Got the World On a String, Frank Sinatra
October Road, James Taylor
Lose Control, Maria Mena
The Bird and the Worm, Owl City
Hamburg Hinter Uns ("Hamburg Behind Us") , Revolverheld
So She Dances, Josh Groban
A Thousand Miles, Vanessa Carlton
Rhythm of Love, Plain White T's
Sunburn, Owl City
Ich Bin Ich, Rosenstolz
I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow, from O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Love Song, Sara Bareilles
Both Sides Now, Joanie Mitchell
She's Funny That Way, Frank Sinatra
J'aime a Nouveau, ZAZ
I Won't Say (I'm in Love), from Hercules
Layla (acoustic version), Eric Clapton
Monday Morning, Melanie Fiona
When the Stars Go Blue, The Corrs
Missing You, Allison Kraus
I Can Love You Better, The Dixie Chicks
Lazy Days, Enya
Gumption, from The Holiday

Gals with Gumption

Everyone loves a good heroine. I can tick my favorites off without thinking about it: Elizabeth Bennet, Ella in Ella Enchanted, Becky Jack, Dashti, Eliza DooLittle, Katharina from Taming of the Shrew. There's one thing that ties all these ladies together, and its name is gumption.

If you've ever seen the movie The Holiday, there's a certain scene where Eli Wallach describes his late wife to Kate Winslet. "She has gumption," he says. Later in the film, Kate Winslet bursts out to Rufus Sewell, "I don't know, but I think what I've got is something slightly resembling....GUMPTION!"

That line, that phrase, is just so perfect and tender and lovely. I think people love seeing a heroine (or a hero) with a rumpled, wild, human, daring spirit, because they can see themselves in her. That's me, they think. That could be me. That doesn't mean a female superhero, conquering the world (even though that could be awesome). They love to see a character who's vulnerable and uncertain and real, but who forges her way through her story just because she's got....gumption.

I've got the song 'Gumption' from The Holiday on each playlist I listen to while I write, whether it's for Hearthsinger, TDS or Kaleva. It's a little nudge, a little reminder to me for myself, but also for the character I'm writing.

Because it's really, really fun, to write about a gal with gumption.

I'm Not Hiding

I don't know that I have many people checking my blog, but there might be a few of my fellow figs popping in every now and then, so just an update: I'm not hiding! School has been so busy lately, and I'm scrambling to keep up as much as I can. I had one very difficult course end last week, and suddenly I have so much free time, I don't know how to handle myself. I can read. Sit down at a table to eat meals. Shower. All that good stuff.

I'm very, very excited about The Default Sweater. It's been chugging along so well that I'm trying to keep up. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I'm a very systematic writer and have to block out the entire storyline before I can delve too deep into writing. With TDS I took an unusual leap and wrote the first few chapters with nothing more than a vague idea of my plot. But now I'm almost done with my outline (and the writing's not going too bad either), and I'm silly with excitement.

Anande Sjoeden, author of Nattie and Finn, very kindly mentioned Erin and me on her blog, and I felt compelled to return the compliment! Nattie and Finn has kept me on nail-chewing tenterhooks since I began reading. It's my daily treat to come home and read a chapter if I get lucky and she's posted (yesterday, I got FOUR!).  Figment has a feature where the approximate time it will take to read a certain book is posted on the book's description page. At the point I started reading, Nattie and Finn was at about seven hours. That Friday, I sat at my computer until two o'clock in the morning, not able to go to bed until I finished. She also has several other books posted that I'm really looking forward to reading.

Hopefully, I'll be able to blog more now that the bulk of the year's schoolwork is accomplished. Darn those teachers. Darn their sorry hides.

The Last Days Caught on Camera

I had a fun blog post in mind for today, but instead I think I'm going to write another Figment chapter for Default Sweater, so here's a couple pictures of what's been going on at home lately:

Out of my Comfort Zone

My strongest instincts in writing have always always been toward fantasy. I'm terribly lazy about doing research for stories, so historical fiction is off-limits unless I get my head in the game, and I've always shied away from modern stories. Writing is a kind of escape from the real world, and especially in this last crazy year of school, when my life is full of math problems and college applications and computer programs, there's nothing I want more than to leave that behind. Not to say that my life is unpleasant--just busy!

I've always been drawn to write fantasy. The whole idea of creating another, new world is irrestible.

But suddenly, there is The Default Sweater. 

Writing a modern novel is freeing in a completely different way that writing a fantasy is. Writing fantasy can be exhausting; you have to constantly invent, because you're creating a completely new world. In a modern novel, however, the world is around you, there to draw on. It's a wonderful break sometimes when I need a rest from Hearthsinger, a fantastic cure to writer's block. I might not be working on my main project, but at least it's keeping me at the keyboard/notebook occasionally.

Sometimes, stories emerge in your head fully formed. Just as with the title for this one, Erin marched through my mind one day, found a comfortable corner, and set up shop. I really enjoy writing her.I'll be posting more as soon as I can! Just now I'm really enjoying putting it on Figment, but I'm tentative to post more than the first three or four chapters. And still, Hearthsinger is my priority, especially with my secret project coming up in the spring (more on that later!).

I'll be posting more about the inspiration for Sweater in another post, and you can hear all about the sweaters that I have and kissing and all the chocolate chips on top. Do I end these posts with mentions of food too often? It must be that it's autumn. I haven't baked a thing yet.

The Hearthsinger

When I talk about writing, The Hearthsinger is always first on my list. The main character, Mari, is so unlike me in so many ways, but I love writing her story. If it were real, I hope she'd be friends with me. I would want to be friends with her.

And although Hearthsinger is my cherished, long-preserved, first-completed novel, it is definitely the most difficult to write. Eighteen months and seven (or eight) drafts after the idea first hit me, I know that this story will still be with me for a long time, in my head and my computer. But I can't help but feel that it's a labor of love, and that one day when I see it finished, the memory of labor pains will have faded and I'll still be smitten with it.

The plotline came to me a year and a half ago, possibly brought on by sleep loss, and it's steadily consumed my life. I was sixteen and volunteering for two weeks at a bakery, helping them out during the cramp of Easter bunny baking. That was fun, but it meant getting up at four in the morning and working from five to eleven. I mixed the ingredients, worked the frighteningly large mixing machine, kneaded the dough into loaves, greased pans, and yanked bread in and out of the eighteen-by-eleven-foot oven. Somewhere in the midst of all that, probably around 6:30 a.m., while I sleepily stared at the forty pound mixer arm walloping dough around its metal tub, a story moment touched me. I risked leaving the mixer without supervision to run to the front and scribble my first few lines on the back of a baking advertisement. For the rest of that day, I willed the bakery clock to tick forward onto the eleven so that I could go home and write.

After several (or eight) drafts and a trip to Germany, the storyline smoothed out:

The forest has always been Mari's forest, in the war-torn kingdom of Isar. As a child, she wanders there with her nurse, hearing stories, singing songs, and at last, learning the secret to hearing what the trees sing in return. And her parents' disapproval can't change what she hears, not during the long years of the war, not even when Mari is home and loneliest.
Soon, though, she is sent to the south, to a place completely unfamiliar, to marry an enemy boy. But Montren turns out curious about the forest songs and eager to learn more, and it sets a glow going in Mari that can't be put out. When mercenary attacks send Montren to the king and Mari learns of a threat on both their lives, the question is not whether or how to ride to the captured city: it is how to find him and warn him of the danger, before she herself is overtaken.

That's all I'm giving away! The first chapter can be read on my account on Figment. Please enjoy and (gasp!) critique your little hearts out, if that's what you're feeling.

My trip to Germany provided enormous inspiration for Hearthsinger. Everything from food to trees became an "Oh!" moment for me, a moment where everything stops while Savannah rushes to write down an observation. The long walks in the woods were the best. Our house was just down the road from a forested mountain, surrounded by cows and cornfields and, in the summer, big, glistening, slugs. But the slugs only added to the adventure, and I always emerged from my walks feeling starry-eyed. I wrote and rewrote my chapter sequence and plot summary (I have to write that way, otherwise my story flow becomes either excrutiatingly slow or queasily fast), and felt whisked away by the magic of that stolen half-year. But that's another story. Germany became the backdrop for Hearthsinger, until I couldn't imagine Mari anywhere else. It was unbearably lovely.

The books I'm far too old for

Last year when I was in Germany, my exchange partner's father, Ludwig, was extremely generous with his books. When I arrived and told him, yes, I liked to read, he immediately led me to their third floor and piled my eager hands high with both his favorites and ones he had read to his boys when they were children.

Of course, they were all in German. Although I'm normally a very quick reader, it took me two months alone just to get through the first one he gave me. I went to my bookshelf after that and decided I wanted a bit of an easy read next. My choice was Der Wilde Wald, "The Wild Forest", by Tonke Dragt. Originally published in Norwegian, fantastical, funny, adventurous, even a couple moments that made my heart thump.

One morning in the dining room I pulled Der Wald out. After a while, Ludwig appeared, and as he got his breakfast ready, he glanced sideways at the title and said:

"That book is a little young for you, isn't it?"

He didn't mean it condescendingly--he wanted to be hospitable and make sure I was enjoying myself. But since I was enjoying it so much, my instincts startled up in defense.

It's the same back home. Every now and then I sneak a book off my shelf that I should have outgrown years ago, but I haven't, because it's just too darn good.

Here's my official list:

1. Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine
I remember living in rural Texas in the third grade and experiencing my first agonizing, breathtaking moment of cartharsis, bending over my copy, my nine-year-old heart pounding during that final scene. Char was also the first character who ever got me blushing. And I would still willingly slide down a stair rail with him.

2. The Frog Princess Series, by E.D. Baker
There's something fuzzy about these books. There's constant humor popping up, the kind that makes me chuckle out loud, and even though I would probably barely rate them at PG, a certain character always gets my heart jumping when he asks for a kiss. Reading these and Ella in one sitting would probably send me into cardiac arrest.

3. Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
This was one of the many times my mother was right when she said, "You'll like it if you try it." It's homey and sweet, and set in New England, which is where I spent some of my childhood. I love watching the transition of Elizabeth Ann into Betsy, and reading of Cousin Ann hugging her goodbye.

4. The BFG, by Roald Dahl
I went through a hefty Dahl phase as a child, and still don't know any other official definition for an epicure except, "It is someone who is dainty with his eating." This spring, I went through our storage closet and found my much-loved copy of BFG. I laughed out loud the whole way through. Dahl had a gift for messing with words, which I love, while admittedly developing some frightening situations (50-foot giants running around the world every evening to eat "human beans", an extremely small, 24-foot giant who can create dreams, nightmares rattling in jars, that sort of thing).

5. The Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale
I am constantly in awe of Shannon Hale and love her teen and adult books, but Princess Academy tends toward a younger audience with as much creativity and loveliness. I was twelve when I first read it, and sat in my window seat until my backside was numb, forgetting to do important things, like eat, until I read the last quarry song and saw the last miri petal twirl off above a mountain.

6. Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes
My mother read this to me years ago, and we stayed up much later than I was supposed to, probably as late as ten-thirty. It was one of the first times I remember hating a character in a story. Not because it was a bad character. Because you were supposed to. That induced more heart-thumping, of a different variety.

7. The Bronze Bow, by Elizabeth Gouge
I believe my fourth grade class read this together. I loved Daniel, the main character, in spite of his surly behavior. How is it that that just made him all the more loveable? The ending is beautiful, with one line standing out particularly in my memory:

"How light it is," Leah murmured. "Even with Jesus gone."

With all these stories, there's something irresistably lovely that makes it impossible for me to let them go. Maybe I'm one of those people who don't outgrow children's stories. I'd like to be one of those people.

Figment and other distractions

When I originally set out to write a blog, I did it with the shiningly pure intention of sharing my writing with the world. As a writer, I'm typically shy. I stow away in corners, but if anyone tries to peep over my shoulder, I'm like a frantic armadillo curling into a ball. As a result, it's generally only my family who reads anything of mine.

Last winter, my friend Isaac told me about a writer's website called figment.com. It took me a while to get warmed up, but now I'm a regular "fig". There are some truly talented writers there. There's genres for poetry, short stories, novels, anything a little writerish mind can dream of. If anyone is interested in reading some of my work, they can follow this link to view my profile:
figment.com/Savannah-Finger

Figment's become a very fun place for me. I have an unintentional attitude toward my stories that makes writing like romance: I can't have a fling with a book. A story socks me in the stomach, and I'm in love forever. I don't do well writing multiple stories at the same time. Occasionally another idea teases me, and I yield to it for awhile, file it away to age, and repeat. Since the dawn of Figment, though, I've started allowing those teasings to distract me, lead me off in different directions. A couple of the things I've published are short stories/poems/screenplays which I loved writing, but know aren't going to go farther. So, still hopeful, I'm sending them out to the other figs, wanting them to be loved a little at least.

My two big projects, The Hearthsinger and The Default Sweater, probably won't enjoy as much posting. With these two, I'll most likely just post the first few chapters and ask for critiques (eek!). This coming week, I'll post the synopses of these two guys, as well as my screenplay, The Way the Scroll Is. Which was just so dang much fun to write.

 A side note: Hooray! Rain's finally hit Texas! It's amazing to see how grateful people are after five months of scorched grass, blazing 105-degree temperatures, wildfires, and drought. It's almost as though we were the thirsty ones, instead of the earth. I was at our church this afternoon when the roof started to rumble with rain. Everyone stopped and looked at one another in amazement. It poured like it was trying to make up for the last few months. I think it'll have to try harder, though...

We opened the patio door and let the rain smell seep in. I saw an older couple walking through the puddles of the parking lot, holding hands. After so much devastation in this area, the realization of rain startled me and made me almost want to cry. It's amazing what you learn to appreciate when it's suddenly not there.

So we central Texans are reveling in our wet wonderland, and it's September, my favorite time of year. I should start baking stuff. Maybe I can sweet talk my mother into making a pie. Mm, pie....

On Blogging

Hello, look at this. I've become a blogger. I guess we'll see how this project chugs along. I'm not a technical kind of gal, and probably won't be able to figure out how to do this anywhere else, so I'll go ahead and introduce myself:
My name is Savannah! (There's a start.)

 I have kept a blog before, but, as I said, I am not gifted when it comes to technology, and when the website encounters problems...you got it. I can't fix them.
So this is my new site, I guess, for talking shop about writing, sharing a bit of my own work with you all, and generally discussing stories. While not possessing a particular aptitude for the mechanical, I do love stories.