CREATE

I've decided to try a little writing exercise in this post. I'm going to try to put together the best word that starts with each letter in the word "CREATE" that symbolize what that word means to me. Here goes:

Let's see. I mean "C". Clay, construct, conceive, craft, composition, concept, conjure...

Are you kidding me? "R" you? React, reveal, realize, risk, relate, record,  rare ...

Enough is "E-NUFF"! Elements, elongate, extreme, embody, engross, emphasize, excite, eye ...

Hey, there. Ahoy, mate. Art, adopt, attract, attach, adorn, approve, adapt, anger, aim ...

Tick-tock, tick-tock. I never said I was on the clock. Tantalize, total, tempt, try, time, trust, transform...

Enough is "Enough"! Eager, ease, edgy, edit, echo, ego, effort, embrace, emotion, endure, expose...

With that done, I need to pick the words that best represent "CREATE" to me at this stage of my life. And those words are as follows:

C: craft; R: rare; E: engross; A: approve; T: transform; E: emotion

This was fun.

Time to Send in my MS!

Well, I finally finished my entry for this year's Highlights for Children Fiction Contest. Now all I have to do is get my letter postmarked with tomorrow's date, 1/31/12, the last day entries will be accepted.

I'm feeling pretty good about my entry, but I've had that feeling before and, well, you know the results. I really do enjoy the process and one of my friend's younger daughters read the story and gave me some invaluable feedback. The girls are in the targeted age group for the story so that was great.

Now I'll have to start that long wait to see if my story is good enough to get published or place in the top three in the contest. Who couldn't use the publicity and the $1,000 prize money. But I have to be realistic about my chances because to make the top three entries you need to be somewhere in the top .2 %.

No matter what happens, I'm building a nice portfolio of my writing and I feel like I'm improving with each step. I'm already working on my next project, which is to polish and finish my middle grade novel that I started two years ago.

I just got a rejection letter from Pockets today too. I had submitted one of my old Highlights entries to them after a little tweaking. Patient persistence. That's what I keep telling myself.

Highlights For Children-Fiction Contest-2012

It's that time of year again for the Highlights fiction contest. To officially enter the contest, one must submit an original fictional story under 475 words (beginning readers) or 750 words (older readers) to Highlights between January 1st and 31st, 2012. This year's theme is "A funny story inspired by an unusual newspaper headline".

I've been thinking about ideas for over two months. I also wrote three different stories. I liked my first story, but it wasn't funny. Strike one. The second story had promise in my mind. It didn't have that "WOW" factor though that you see in some of the winning entries. Strike two. So I tried to incorporate some of the elements that I liked in story number two, with a few surprises and VOILA, I had a third story that just might work.

Last year, I didn't enter after 5 consecutive entries because I was working on my entry for one of the SCBWI writing grants. Even though I didn't win, I learned a lot.

One more thing before I sign off. I just noticed that the word count for the 2012 contest has been reduced from previous years. I guess it is good practice to double-check the contest rules. I'd hate to be disqualified because of the word count.

Good luck to all those who enter this year!

Ken

The Cricket

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Here's a story I wrote several years about an actual encounter with a cricket.

About a week ago, I was sitting in my family room watching TV when a chirping sound started coming from inside the room. Now it's not that unusual for me to find crickets in our garage. And some do squeeze under the door and enter the family room from time to time.

This cricket had an incredibly loud chirp that made it hard to hear the TV. After about a minute or so, I decided that it either didn't like the show I was watching or wanted my attention.  So I slowly got up and starting looking for it. It took me about a minute to find it.  It was about four feet off the ground on a small ledge of a wall ornament. I could have squished it, but I didn't.  I then grabbed a tissue and trapped it inside. I carefully carried the tissue outside and released it on our deck. Besides its great chirping ability, this cricket had one additional unique characteristic.  It only had one back leg. Amazingly, it hopped away as if it had two good hind legs.

About one week later, as I was letting one of our dogs outside, I saw the same cricket again. It was hopping across the deck and almost got eaten by our dog. I was really surprised and happy. It was almost like this little guy came back around to say thank you.

You're probably wondering where I'm going with this cricket thing. My point is that everyone at some time or another feels like a wounded cricket. I know it sounds a bit odd, but I think we all can learn something from this little guy. No matter what life sends you, try to figure out a way to not dwell on things for too long and get on with living. Also, if you see someone wounded, provide that tissue or keep the dogs at bay. You just might be surprised how it helps that person or how good you feel after doing it.

Pssst. My name's Alexander.

Sometimes you just have to sneak into places so that you can see what's going on and introduce yourself. Tonight I crawled into Ken's garage and under the door into his family room. You see, his cats and dog might not take kindly to me trespassing so I waited until everyone was asleep. Now he has a habit of leaving the computer on all night so I didn't have to turn it on. I quietly walked by Calvin, sleeping in his dog crate, the basement door where their three cats, Oreo, Benjamin, and Leo sleep and into the computer room where Ken writes all his stories.


You're probably wondering how and why I decided to write this post. My name's Alexander and I'm a special kind of spotted salamander. I have the ability to understand human communications and I like to talk. Okay, I love to talk. I live in a beautiful forest called Brianwoods. Something very special happened in Brianwoods that allows me to do what I'm doing right now-communicating. But I don't have time to share any more because it's getting late and I still have to get back outside before everyone wakes up.  I also type really slow so it took a while for me to write this message. But I'll be back.


Bye for now.


Alexander

Writing Momentum

My Merriam-Webster dictionary defines momentum as a property that a moving body has due to its mass and motion. I imagine my college physics book has a very similar definition. Anyway, I've been lacking motivation to write lately. I definitely have mass, tipping the scales at about 168 lbs. I also have been in motion plenty since I run and walk a lot too. But I lack writing momentum. How is that possible? Well it's quite simple. I need to simply write.  And then I need to find those things that are an impediment to my writing and find a way around them. I really enjoy writing and I believe I just have to keep at it. Doesn't this sound like a pep talk. Perhaps I needed one.

From Poetry to Play

I wrote a rhyming poem entitled "The Last Leaf" for a contest a number of years ago. It was far from being perfect. But I think it had that certain something, "a hook", like that term used to describe a song with a certain appeal. Anyway, I've been working on converting it into a children's play and it's been fun. I'll give you a sampling of several of the lines in it. Keep in mind that the leaves on a tree come to life. Here, one leaf is attacked by several hungry caterpillars.

Later on, caterpillars stopped for lunch. All you could hear was "Crunch, Crunchy, Crunch, Crunch".
"Get off off me, bugs! Get off of me, please! Now look what you've done. I look like Swiss cheese."

I'm anxious to see if I can get someone to actually do the play. My fingers are crossed.

Let me know what you think. I'm interested.

Thanks,

Ken