Mummy's very Favouritest Special Toys

There's something peculiarly satisfying about garden work. Especially with sharp devices. A saw and a long handled trimmer can shape a tree in a matter of moments. One minute there's a beast, the next  a shapely tree.
I find it hard to believe I was unaware of this magic until recently.
The speed of the transformation is a worry, and has often led to me saying, Oops. There goes the tree. But it's all for the greater good, and there's normally enough life left for the tree to take off again in spring and space is revealed, symmetry restored, sky discovered.
I never realised until recently how much better some trees look after a good trim.
The cypress out the front was dark and gloomy with it's full complement of unruly foliage; a bit of cutting back - and behold - a friendly climbing tree and heaps more space for the kids to run in.
Yesterday I finally got around to going up the wattle-walnut tree again to get down some of the over-running vine and dead wood. Wedged up a tree with a saw, looking down on the world and busily bringing order, brings a new perspective to things.
I recommend it to all and sundry.
While in the bush wild is good, in the garden space and (some degree of order) rule the day. And I'm not averse to wielding sharp-devices-of-power; until I get my magic-talking-sword, the saws and clippers will have to to substitute. Mummy's very favouritest special toys. Not to be touched by small hands.
(Yes, Sprocket, that means you. Okay, you can use Mummy's saw, but Mummy has to help you.)
Now to apply the same principles to my novel.
To clip away all the passive sentences, trim the sections that delay the story, saw off the excess description and prune the unwieldy paragraphs.
And when that's done there's the fun stuff - planting camellias and azaleas where the overgrown trees were, popping tulips and freesias into the sunny place revealed by savagely pruned bushes and, when in doubt chucking in some roses. You can never have too many roses. (As long as you keep them pruned, an untamed rose is a savage monster. I know, we battled one last year, four times my size and thrice as bloody-thirsty it was a very satisfying victory when it was cut to size) Then to go prowling for a place to re-plant the citrus trees.
Or rather...fleshing out the section with the mermaid and the Great Library, adding in the description of the potions and the meeting with the unruly, but very clean, pixie, strengthening the motif of the dragon in the basement, heightening the conflict between mother and daughters and allowing the character of the evil one to become multidimensional. Adding in the relationship with the hero, which I seem to have skipped.
Fun, fun, fun!

Now, if I can only work my way up to the electric saw - both in my book and in the garden, then we'll really be talking. Vrooom. Vroom. 

Just Get Outside

Wednesday was a bleah sort of day, full of sadness, worries and upsets.* In the end I just loaded the kids into the car and we drove. That's the best thing about the country. Two minutes in the car and we're in rolling green hills followed by temperate rainforest. I headed for the town of Mirboo North. It's a quaint, thriving little place full of weatherboard cottages and interesting shops, all tucked into forest. It's what people expect when we tell them we live in a country town, rather than the multitude of shops for lease, social problems and ring of surrounding power plants that's the reality. However, a pleasant drive and voila. The dream is ours.
Telling myself it was all for research, we popped into the cafe Dalliance. (With toddlers, I know, I was feeling brave!) And... it sold all my favourite teas... including Liquorice Legs! And o the chocolates. After brief but intense scrutiny of the handmade chocolates on display, I chose a Red Rose, an Exotic Spice and a Cinnamon Truffle. Going to order a cappuccino I spied a glug of chocolate swirling. Being told it was European Hot Chocolate, I decided it was my duty to try it. You know, for when I write my Emporium Sisters Escapade book set in Susie's Chocolate Shop. Which is at least a year away. But still. It's good to be prepared.

Yum, huh. For the record, the exotic spice and the red rose were okay, rich and incredibly filling but lacking the wow factor. The cinnamon truffle was divine. Completely covered in cinnamon with a sweet soft inner contrasting. Mmmm.. The European Hot chocolate was a winner. Not too sweet, but warm and gelatinous and cocoa-y. More Please.
Luckily for my sanity, there was an outdoor courtyard. Winner. We shared it with a mother's group and it made all the difference. If only all cafes had a similar space to run the kids!

And then, across the road to the park.

*My Granny's funeral was being held in Scotland, my Beloved was panicking that he'd just failed the year - now, half-way through, on some retrospective marking technicality, and let me say, I can take the whole impoverished student thing as a necessary evil but an extra year of it? The thought did not make me sing with joy. And then a particularly negative crit on Scribophile to ponder. And did I mention the wonders of toilet training? Sigh. Okay, I'll stop whining now!

Ruminating

I've set this week aside for ruminating

It's very hard. Like a cow with her cud, I'm just chewing things over. 

I keep reaching for my story to try to cover up the holes I know are there. And then I stop myself. 

I'm just going to keep rolling ideas over in my head. Aerating them so they turn to good, fertile soil. (Which is mixing metaphors, I know, but I'm still going with a rural theme.)

When I go into the Lands next time I want to be able to really see the story and how to strengthen it, I want more of an over-arching approach. Rather than the just sit-down and write and then wonder how the heck that got there. 

So I'm ruminating. As the kids build and crash towers and we shiver in the playground (well, I shiver, they run) I'm teasing out themes and trying to remember if I got round to including the scene where the dragon flies down and delivers the emporium to Smith Street. Should I include the passage I wrote on Pixies... and ended up leaving out as my self-imposed deadline loomed nigh. As pixies clean houses in return for a few sequins, I think they're important in a world created by women. But are they too twee?  Does that matter? Should I just work on creating un-twee pixies - Lani Taylor created brilliant un-twee fairies in her Dreamdark series. It's not impossible. And if I'm the Lands are a repository of lore saved by women over 77 generations, then it's fairly certain some twee stuff is going to get in. There are four generations in there of Victorians and Edwardians. I'm thinking some tweeness probably does get in.

 Should Nell actually meet a pixie, or should she just be told about them? 

And more importantly, how should I bring out the entire evilness of the evil one, Mazarine? I was listening to Jenny Crusie* talking about conflict yesterday and she was saying you need to love your antagonist as much as you love your protagonist - as yet I do not love my antagonist. But is my antagonist really Mazarine, or is it Nell's mum, who is preventing the sisters from reaching the Lands of Lost Lore and opening their shops, but only because she loves them and is afraid of Mazarine? I do love the Mum - maybe she's really the antagonist, stopping the sisters doing what they want, but for good, if misguided reasons. Hmm. Let me ponder more. 

Anyway folks, I've posted another few chapters of Dragons' Nests and Fire Berries (Working title) up the top in the tabs! I'd love to hear anyones thoughts! 

*Jennifer Crusie & Laini Diane Rich of Dogs and Goddesses and The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes have started a series of online writing lectures called the The Writewell Academy  It's not all up yet, but I'm enjoying what is up - the visuals alone would do it for me, they crack me up every time. It's so nice to listen to people talk about writing whose writing you actually love and respect.  

I'm not so keen on being talked at, and because it's so much slower to listen then read I have to do two or three other things at the same time, but some very interesting points to ponder and exercises to do. 

How Old is too Old?

How old is too old... that is my question du jour.
Specifically I'm wondering about the implications of having a (semi) adult as the protagonist in a Young Adult novel. My protagonist, Nell, is 21... so still in the technical range of the YA readership (13-25 I think) but do teenagers really prefer to have protagonists their own age? Or do they sometimes like to imagine ahead to what comes next?
I've been pondering other YA books that have adult protagonists, but most of the ones I can think of are in books that are the last of a series, so the protagonist will be eleven in book one, but twenty eight in book three or five - I'm thinking L.M Montgomery's, Ann of  Windy Willows, Emily's Quest here, or Tamora Pierce's In the Hands of the Goddess Series, when Alanna starts out as a page in Book One and ends a fully fledged knight in Book Four.
Robin McKinley's protagonists tend to be in the 'cusp' age - Outlaws of Sherwood, Beauty, The Hero and the Crown, but is she marketed at YA or is she cross over?
Michelle Coopers Montmoray series * again start as teens and grow to adulthood in the course of the series. Tara Moss's The Blood Countess has a character who is clearly beyond school, as well... but are these the exceptions that break the rule?
In writing Dragons' Nests I was inspired by Diana Wynne Jones Castles in the Air and Howl's Moving Castle - I wanted to write something with the same fizz to it, the same sense of the impossible seeming completely possible. The characters there, are, again, in the 'cusp.' But... when I think of these characters... maybe I do think 19 rather than 21? Does it matter? Let me do some Googling...
Am I just trying to talk myself around because I have no desire to go back to school? (Shiver.) Don't make me relive high school.  Noooooo!
And I want stuff to happen that can't happen if the protagonists are too young. I want travel, weddings and careers in my series. The next book in the series Bella is supposed to be inviting all the Griffins, Mermaids, Pixies, Dragons etc to her sisters wedding and dealing with the problems of Mermaid attendance. (Large amounts of sea-swimming water required)
Basically, I want a frothy, fun series.
And the teen years are hard. (Or at least in my book they are, I should take a poll)
The twenties are fun. You can do stuff. Open shops, travel, explore, party. You have mastery.
Or should I look at it as an experiment - how much freedom can you give an imaginary teen and still have them believable? Self-Mastery....

Should I try to make my protagonist younger... could I? would the story still work? would the series still work? Would I still have fun?

*Reminder to self - go back and read the first book. It's lame to only read the last two books in a trilogy. Especially when you loved them so! 

This one, that one, this one, that one... Toss a Coin?

I'm in the midst of the Great Title Debate. (Or trying to put off cleaning a house, which considering this last week I've done very little but write and play with the kids, is in an interesting state.)
Having my manuscript in a (semi) finished state I'm second guessing all the details. Of which the title is the biggest.
What's in a title? How much depends on it? How much should you disclose of the contents of the novel in a title - or should it just sound interesting and different? And how different can it sound when there are already so many millions of books out there!
Sigh.
So far with this book, a young adult fantasy adventure, I've gone through a multitude of various titles.
South Sea Secrets (& the variant South Sea Magic) when I was taking it in a different, doomed, direction.
Guardians of the Lands of Lost Lore,
Gatekeepers of the Lands of Lost Lore,
A Gratitude of Dragons,
Scheherezade's Legacy,
The Storyteller's Legacy,
Nell in the Lands of Lost Lore,
An Emporium Sisters Escapade, Book One, Spice, (Okay, I was getting desperate)
The Phoenix Feather
and the current title Dragons' Nests and Fire Berries  which I only changed back to very late last night, although it means I need to beef up the role of the fireberries. Okay. Add them in from the side notes. I suggested to my Beloved that I use Dragons' Nests and Fire Birds, as there is a central phoenix, but he said it wasn't as catchy. Is he right? And I recently added a werewolf element in... should I try to use that?

Anyone got any ideas? As you can see, I'm still floundering...