What a hoot. But it really is a great way to hear words you left out and words you’ve overused.

The woman’s voice drove me nuts when she said Repentance. She pronounced it Repentnance. And they both pronounced ch as k. That’s why the guy says Repentance looked like a rabbit caught in torklight instead of torchlight.

All in all, though, I think listening to the story read in these dispassionate voices was really helpful!

Give a listen:

I’m still alive.

I cried as I read the last couple of chapters.

Because the story was sad, not because I hated it so much. Which is cool, because just last week I was saying I wished all my characters would just curse God and die.

Now I have to read the whole thing through to see if the changes make sense, and to see if the characters’ motivations work, and to see if the book is better for the revisions or worse.

And I have to pretty up the scenes I just roughed in yesterday and today. One of them was so hard it took a great force of will to just keep putting down one sentence after another. I’m sure it’s ugly stuff. But it will give me something to work with.

And it’s done.

At least for the time being.

And that is such a great thing.

Next, after I give it a spit-shine, I’ll have to see what the agent says and what the crit partners say. My mom is reading it right now on my Kindle. I love having her read it over and over because she always forgets the story within a week (she’s 88), so I’m always getting a fresh response from her.

She told me tonight, “You are changing so much—” yes, she’s been listening to me moan and complain for the last two weeks, “—that I think I’ll just forget everything I know about the characters and read the book as if I’m meeting brand new people.”

And I’m thinking, “Good one, Mom. Pretend that the reason you don’t recognize the characters is that I changed them so much.”

But I do so much appreciate her reads. She is actually a very good reader and can tell me where she’s bothered by stuff and why. it’s quite helpful.

Now, I’m off to watch a movie and veg my brain for several hours on mindless entertainment.

Here’s a little gem from his How Stories Do Their Work on Us post:

Instead of giving you a lecture on the importance of staying warm, Lewis builds a fire and says, “Here—feel this. Doesn’t that feel good?” You can hardly help but love Aslan for the things he says and does. You can hardly help but desire what’s good and right and true.

And then, in an effort to help us desire what is good and right and true, I suppose, the next post is about a junior high football player being pantsed. heh heh This is Dr. Jonathan Rogers–one of the smartest fellows around and still a middle grade boy at heart.

I think.

That’s my best guess from reading his books, anyway.

If you have not read his books, I urge you to do so. Buy them for all the kids you know who need birthday and Christmas presents. I’m not kidding. Read the blog. You’ll see. Rogers finds humor and beauty everywhere and possesses the happy knack of being able to slow us down and direct our focus so we can see truth in a way our fast and noisy world won’t normally allow.

JI Packer, speaking of blogs, said:

I’m amazed at the amount of time people spend on the internet. I’m not against technology, but all tools should be used to their best advantage. We should be spending our time on things that have staying power, instead of on the latest thought of the latest blogger—and then moving on quickly to the next blogger. That makes us more superficial, not more thoughtful. —

I agree with him. That’s why Dr. Rogers’ blog is being added to the small list of blogs I never miss. I want to spend my time on things that have staying power.

The site went down pretty quickly.

I’ve found the conference moved to http://lisa-laura.blogspot.com/

Lots of really great stuff! I’m loving it!

But I’ll try to give you as much as I can, as I go back through and try to read my own writing. Please don’t take anything I say I learned as direct quotes from the speakers. I was not taping sessions and I was writing fast.

Today I’ll give you some of my notes from the question and answer time with Highlights editors. I’m skipping the science and history stuff, because I don’t write those so my notes are a little sloppy in those areas.

• Q. Illustration wish list?
  • A. We don’t buy illustrations seperate from writing. Send samples. We’ll assign projects. All of it is work for hire.




• Q. What tense and pov do you prefer?
  • A. Younger fiction often works best in present tense. We want dialogue–not a lot of narration or scene settting. Illustrations can do a lot of that.




• Q. Simutaneous submissions?
  • A. Yes, but if you sell it, please let us know.




• Q. Wish list?
  • A. Updated on the website every six months (under current needs link). Also if you go to highlightskids.com and search the index, you will see what’s been done already. You can work some of those topics over and give them a fresh approach. The Highlights audience grows up. Since there is a new audience every six years or so, you can reuse some topics that have already been done but are still of interest. Thomas Edison, for instance, will be of interest to every new audience. But each topic has to be done for today’s audience.




• Q. Holidays and Religion?
  • A. We are always looking for holiday material and it can be submitted any time of year. We can introduce people to the religions of the world. We have readers from every walk of life. Christmas is hard because we want to do it for readers who are Christian and readers who are not Christian. We want the real meaning of Christmas but we can’t proselytize. The same goes for Easter.

OK that’s it for today. Obviously there was much more said and the thing about sitting in the sessions and listening to the editors speak is that you really get a feel for the editors as people and for what they might like. I have very distinct impressions about Andy Boyles and Carolyn Yoder and Christine French Clark and what kind of people they are. I don’t know them well, so some of my impressions may be wrong, but I know them better this week than I did before the conference. I have a sense of voice from them and a sense of what kind of voices might appeal to them.

All that to say: If you can go to Chautauqua, you should go to Chautauqua.