We’ve been dealing with Fay all day. Internet on and off, power on and off. Mostly on, and the big issue is rain, of which we’re getting a lot. But we’ve got the tornado watch too until this evening.

Lots of fun.

Writing-wise, I’m STILL writing lesson seven, (and saving frequently) which is all about how to plan a novel without getting sucked into the whole worldbuilding, storybuilding time sink. It’s an enormous lesson, and I’ve logged nightmare hours this week working on it. I’m trying in vain to remember what regular sleep is like.

BUT…. I love what I’m getting.

The lesson itself is done. And I only have two more modules on developing just the critical parts of the story in planning (of the eight) to go.

When I laid this course out, I thought each week would have just one technique. Hell, I thought I’d be working forty-hour weeks at most. Hah. I think so far, I may have had one week with just one technique, and my average work-week has been 60 hours.

I keep telling myself the prep work is the most massive part of this, and that when we get into acutally writing, my schedule will get more sane.

At this point, I’m not sure I believe me.

I had the most amazing breakthrough today. Still writing the Think Sideways course, and was sitting in the little snack area in our local Target brainstorming the whole world-building/pre-planning process for novels (Lesson 7). My two guys were off looking for video games, and I had my carry-along notebook out and was drawing flow-charts, trying to figure out how to make the whole process of what you need, and what you don’t need, and why, and WHEN, clear.

Scribbled the word “Why?” on the left page, opposite the flow chart. “Why” is the best question on the planet, and my “why” here was simple. “Why worldbuild?”

The answer isn’t obvious, but it is beautiful, and elegant, and when I had it staring me in the face, I experienced my own Eureka moment. Not just for how to explain it to students, but for myself, as well.

That was a question I’d never asked myself, because I always thought I knew the answer. And now that I know the answer, what to build, and when, and how, becomes simple.

I love writing. These moments are part of why. You never know everything, and the more and deeper you explore, and the more mysteries that you unfold, the more you realize how much is left to find. It’s wonderful.

This is a clip from the How to Think Sideways Lesson #2 movie (movies are once a month and provide an overview of the month’s four-lesson topic and one of six Thinking Sideways Rules).

I think this is significantly better than the first one, production-quality-wise. Hope it also gives you a bit of food for thought.

Got news from my Scholastic editor today that THE RUBY KEY could be picked up for books fairs around the country. This would be a huge break for me—book fairs were where I was allowed to buy my own books for the first time when I was a kid. It could allow me to meet new readers I could never find otherwise. I won’t know for a while if this actually does happen, but I have my fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent the entire week working long hours on the Week Five lesson for How to Think Sideways. Got to do my second movie—way better than my first one, with good sounds. I bought a new microphone—a Blue Snowball—and I’m using Audio Hijack Pro instead of GarageBand for sound recording, and the differences are amazing. The Audio Hijack Pro interface is lightweight and simple, it offers a nice range of sound effects (but I haven’t used them) and it gets out of the way when you don’t need it—something no one will ever say about GarageBand. I’ll do a little mini-clip of the movie once I get the rest of the lesson finished (yeah, still working on it) and post it here as soon as I get a chance to let you see what I’ve been up to.

Oh. I moved from doing a lot of my artwork in Fireworks to using Keynote in Apple iWork. So far, I really like it. Have to see what my course beta testers and students think before I commit to heavy use with it, though. I will say that it cut movie creation time from around 40 hours down to about 20. That’s a big deal for me.

I’m having such fun putting this course together. It gives me an excuse to practice the guitar, draw, write, create short movies. I’m working longer hours than I do writing novels, but this is a joy to do, every single day.

My husband has a new column at The Escapist. Take a look.

I hadn’t planned on the week following registration for How To Think Sideways being a week of troubleshooting all the many things that broke on the system software; thought we’d tested everything, but you only think that until a course goes live and real students start taking it.

Anyway, this week I’m playing catch-up writing lessons. Didn’t get a newsletter out yesterday, didn’t get a handful of other things up and running, either. And am 600+ emails behind again. That’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.

The lessons are wonderful to write, though, so my work process for the next few months is all stuff I love. And thanks to copious notes, I’m making steady progress.

C has started nagging at me though—I have to write that book. Soon. It’s gotten so good inside my head I have to tell it.

How often does Hollywood get it right?

Having paid to see movies this year I’m now ashamed to confess I saw even in previews, as well as some that I held in desperately high hopes only to be saddened by the lack of heart/ stupid story/ flat-lined characters/ idiotic excess of gimmees (the gimmee is, you know, the ONE thing for which you’ll willingly suspend disbelief, which dies the instant it becomes TWO things for which you must suspend disbelief, and is diced into a thousand tiny bits, cooked on a barbecue, fed to the neighbor’s dog, and recycled coming out the other end to be spread on toast when it becomes a DOZEN gimmees—Indy I’m looking at YOU on this one), I was about to say that Hollywood poisons everything it touches.

So who made The Dark Knight, where did they hide while they made it, and how did they keep their masterpiece away from the idiots responsible for Jar-Jar Binks, anything starring Mike Meyers or Adam Sandler, the skip-the-movie-buy-the-action-figure Hulk, and scenes starring aliens, shaky cameras, and Central Park?

It’s as if… as if… as if someone actually read Frank Miller’s brilliant The Dark Knight, and not only read it, but GOT it, and not only GOT it, but then transferred the heart and the soul from those drawn pages to the screen. And then beat all corporate-bean-counting-soulless-hack movie execs with baseball bats repeatedly and brutally until they left their sticky “put-a-cute-action-figure-in-for-the-kiddies” mitts off.

It’s brilliant. Heart, soul, meaning, characters, thought, emotion, philosophy. No one is dumbed down, no one is softened, and none of the rough edges have been sanded off to make it palatable or inoffensive to those easily offended. We are who we choose to be, The Dark Knight says, and we must claim both our victories and our failures. Viktor Frankl showed us that circumstances do not excuses make, that in the end we decide not what happens to us but who we are when it’s done. The Dark Knight has more special effects, but presents the same truth.

And it left me with a line seared into my mind. “Sometimes, people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”

Sometimes they do. So go. See it.

Once in almost never, Hollywood gets one right.

I meant to mention this here yesterday, but I’m swamped getting everything ready for the Think Sideways classes to start next Tuesday.

Last night, after uncountable (and unspeakable) attempts to explain the course, I FINALLY figured out the right name for it, the name that describes what Thinking Sideways actually is.

How to Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers

The cutoff date for pre-registering is Sunday night at 7 PM.

Registration will start (for pre-registered members ONLY) on Tuesday, July 22, at NOON EDT.

Pre-registering will make you eligible the Charter Student benefits, and folks who are pre-registered for the course also get a 24-hour head start on getting in.

I hugely expanded my seating limit (from the 50 seats planned) to 300 seats per class. And I decided to allow 600 folks to pre-register (guaranteeing them the charter student price as well as head-start registration for both the first and eventual second classes).

So this all sounds nice and leisurely and roomy, right?

Not so much. I just checked a second ago, and there are now 549 folks pre-registered. That means I have 51 pre-registration spots left. I’m pretty sure that when registration opens, I’ll have a full 600 people in line for the first class’s 300 seats. Now, any of those 600 people who don’t get into the first class will get a full day’s head start to get into the second class. This means in theory there won’t be any seats available publicly until the third class. It does suggest in fact that there won’t be very many.

Furthermore, the course itself runs six-months, and I’m not sure how often I’ll offer it—I do have books to write, and I have no idea yet how much time running the course will take. Right now it’s all-consuming, because I’m writing and creating lessons, setting up boards, hunting bugs, getting the website and classroom all put together, and a laundry list of other things that boggles my mind. I’ve woken up between 3 and 4 a.m. every day for a week now (without an alarm) and started work, just because there’s so much I have to be sure is ready.

I keep reminding myself that it isn’t always going to be this hectic. The first class won’t be a true test, either, because I’ll still be putting together later lessons while students are taking earlier ones. At least I’ll have some idea, though.

Anyway.

51 pre-registration slots remain. No. Just checked. An even 50 now.

If you would like to see exactly what the course is (it’s much meatier than I’d originally planned), and if you’d perhaps get one of those last fifty spaces, here’s the link to the last-chance pre-registration page.

Forty-seven years old, and THIS week I discovered something about myself that
I never knew. I yearn for wings that work.

I’d used the metaphor of wings as ideas in a lesson I was writing. And then noticed
that I’d made references to flying in another lesson outline. And then discovered
that an anecdote I’d written about being five on my first day of kindergarten,
which referenced having my wings clipped, also listed the REASON I got my
wings clipped by Mrs. Quimby, kindergarten killjoy.

1966, when girls still had to wear dresses to school. I wore shorts under
mine.

My first day of kindergarten, I:

Ran from one end of the teeter-totter to the other fast enough that
the other end of it was still in the air when I got there, giving me the most
wonderful sensation of weightlessness in the few instants before it crashed
to the ground… and I elicited a scream from Mrs. Quimby… (”Never do that
again!”)

And…

Launched myself from the swingset into midair at my swing’s apogee (and
these were old swingsets with very long chains and impressive height from
earth at their highest point)… and I drew a shriek from Mrs. Quimby…
(”Are you trying to kill yourself?” “…No… “)

And…

Slid down the very tall galvanized sliding board standing, wearing my smooth-
soled Mary-Janes , shooting weightless through the air at the bottom to
land on my feet at a dead run. Beating snowboarders to the punch of that
particular thrill by a good thirty years…

… and Mrs. Quimby and two other teachers on playground duty rushed up
to me and told me I must never, ever, ever do that again, because I could
be hurt and what if the other children did what they saw me do?

First day of kindergarten, three separate times when I got chewed out
for doing something I did all the time—I lived within walking distance of
the school and and had played there off-hours since we moved there.

And all three times, I’d been flying in my own way.

When I wrote about my brief and pathetic career in track, I wrote about
flying.

When I was nineteen, I looked into getting a pilot’s license, and only
the fact that I made $99/week at my job kept me from doing it.

When my family traveled by plane, I begged the window seat.

And when I write and the writing is flowing, it feels like flying.

Wings that work.

But I never put it all together. Never realized until I tripped over a series
of metaphors hidden in different places how much I have yearned all my life
for this thing I cannot have.

I don’t want a plane. Don’t want a hang glider. Don’t want to
parasail, or parachute. I want wings that work. Somewhere
down deep, it is part of the core of who I am, and who I have always
been.

Look through your own writing, and study the metaphors you’ve
used. See if you can discover the part of you hiding behind everyday
life, duty, obligation, routine…

I’m willing to bet there’s something magical in you, something you
don’t even realize is there.

And if you find something, drop me a line and let me know.

Here’s to your wings, in whatever form they take, and to your magic.

(I took this from the most recent issue of my Writing Updates newsletter. I don’t often crosspost, but this particular discovery hit home for me, and I’m wondering what you’ll discover about yourself, too.)

The folks pre-registered for the course have had about a week to look over this. I figured I’d have a little fun now and demonstrate a mild improvement in my video skilz. :D

This is the first third of the video component of the Week One How to Think Sideways lesson.