Caroline Starr Rose

picture book and middle-grade author

The Notebook Series: Blue Birds

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I keep a notebook for each book I write. I thought it might be fun to share some of those pages with readers through a series of posts. Today’s post, the third in the series, will focus on my second verse novel, Blue Birds.

Twenty years before Jamestown, another English settlement tried to take root in Virginia and failed. This colony of 117 men, women, and children, started on Roanoke island, 150 miles southeast of Jamestown. All we know about the colony and its inhabitants took place over a five-week period in the summer of 1587. 

The colonists had been promised land in the Chesapeake Bay, perhaps not far from the place that eventually became Jamestown. But throughout the voyage, their leader, Governor John White, fought constantly with ship captain Simon Ferdinando. By the time they arrived in Virginia, Ferdinando was done. He left the colonists at Roanoke, refusing to take them any farther.

This was not the first time the English had visited Roanoke. Explorers had come to the island in 1584, and interactions with the Native population had been positive then. But by the time the colonists arrived in 1587, the English were no longer welcome. Those intervening years included the burning of a Native village because of a missing silver cup, the Roanoke’s growing frustration as English soldiers who’d built a fort on their island insisted the tribe provide for them, and English diseases that decimated many of the Native peoples. Then escalating mistrust between the Roanoke and English led to English leader Ralph Lane’s pre-emptive attack on the tribe, killing Wingina, the Roanoke chief. When, days later, the English left, they knew there was no chance at reconciliation.

The colonists who arrived in 1587 knew nothing of those intervening years. The stage was set for tragedy, and tragic things happened on both sides. I wanted to show this historical truth in Blue Birds, but I also wanted to breathe into the history my own version of hope: Two imaginary girls (Alis, who is English, and Kimi, who is Roanoke) destined to be enemies but choosing friendship instead.

17 English women and 11 boys made the journey to Roanoke. No young girls where on the 1587 manifest. But with both the Dare and Harvie families having babies a few days apart, adding Alis to the Harvie family felt practical. She could serve as a nursemaid to both children.

This was an interesting discovering. Early attempts at a poem in Kimi’s voice…

…and its final form in the book.

The poems in Blue Birds are narrated three ways — poems only in Alis’s point of view, poems only from Kimi’s point of view, and poems told in both girls’ voices. As the book progressed and changed, I made a number of “quilt charts” to help me see how that narration played out. Notice the book’s early name was Secret Sharer, a title I’m still partial to.

A silly aside: Of all my books, none has influenced my office space more than Blue Birds! Below is a piece of fabric I drape over a chair the dog likes to lounge in.

Read the post about May B. here.
Read about Over in the Wetlands here.

Five Things I Learned From NaNoWriMo

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Here’s an oldie but goodie for those of you in the NaNoWriMo trenches. Enjoy!

It was with a bit of reluctance I decided to join in this year’s National Novel Writing Month. For those of you unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it’s a month-long challenge to produce 50,000 words on a new piece of writing. I’d tried NaNo in 2009 and failed miserably. I never, ever was going to do it again. But things came together for me this year in a way that joining in made sense:

  • BLUE BIRDS was off with my editor
  • I was at the point with my research for a new novel that I was itching to get started
  • I read this blog post by Darcy Pattison
  • My critique partner, Valerie Geary, promised me peanut butter cookies if I made it through

I didn’t sign up officially. Instead I created a contest of one I called Fake-o NaNo, where I aimed to write 1500 words a day six days a week. I missed one day, had a good number of sessions I didn’t hit 1500 (and a couple I wrote more), and felt finished with the draft a few days before Thanksgiving — the exact day BLUE BIRDS “flew” back to me in a big padded envelope.

Here are five things I learned from the experience:

  1. Slow and steady has been my writing mantra this year. But sometimes fast and furious is just as important. Typically, I write verse novels and picture books. It’s a sloooow process, especially when I’m initially drafting. But with this new novel, I’m trying my hand at prose, something I haven’t poked at for seven or eight years. Throwing words on a page was a very liberating, non-committal way to reintroduce myself to this form. With my first NaNo attempt, I got stuck during the first week and decided to stop. This time around was no different. I faced the same impossible rut one week in. But I kept moving, mainly by sticking to the next lesson I learned.
  2. Sometimes you just have to write about the writing. While I’ve kept a journal for this book since April, I still have a lot of exploring to do. Many days I found myself writing about what was working in the story and what wasn’t. Things I’d have to look further into, characters I needed to add, relationships I needed to develop. Really, the draft became a running commentary, an in-the-moment chance to reflect on my ideas (or lack of them). I know this will be invaluable when I return to the book in a few months.
  3. Practice holds the fear at bay. I’ve written here a lot about how much angst is bound up in my first drafts. The creative process is a scary thing for me, and beginning (and finishing) a first draft is my biggest challenge. By holding myself to a daily goal, I was able to break through some of that fear by simply showing up and doing the work.
  4. Embrace the mess. The “draft” I finished with is quite possibly the messiest, worst thing I’ve ever written. But it’s been such a great experiment in getting words down, feeling out characters, and sometimes learning exactly what I don’t want to write about (by first doing just that). Knowing I could toss it all took me in some directions I might never have discovered if my approach had been more careful.
  5. Did I mention the cookies? Committing out loud to a friend kept me honest. And the cookies were a great pay off!
Are any of you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? What has your experience been like?

 

(BLUE) BIRD BY (BLUE) BIRD: On Small Writing Goals and Big Change

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In 1998 I showed my sixth graders at Southwest Middle School (Orlando, FL) a video about Roald Dahl. In it he discussed his writing habits — how he always used a yellow legal pad, stopped when the writing was strong (so it would be easier to pick up the next day), and wrote two hours a day, whether he had something to say or not.

For years I’d talked about writing a book. After watching the video, and with summer just a few weeks away, I decided to give it a try. I checked out a dozen or so books on the Oregon Trail, researched for two weeks,* and started writing.** Dahl’s advice to write for two hours a day felt doable. It’s been a pattern I’ve kept up ever since.

Except when I haven’t, which is most of the time.

It’s far too easy for me to get distracted by the computer, life responsibilities, and the like. This spring, while researching my second book for Putnam, I realized I needed to be better about using my time well. The idea of juggling two books at once was an overwhelming one. I needed a plan, something simple, like Dahl’s two-hour approach.

I started by simply writing down the amount of time I was researching each day. It was frustrating at first to see exactly how much work I was (and was not) doing. But it was a good, honest start.

When working on editorial revisions for BLUE BIRDS, I had the luxury of ten weeks to get my first round done. I aimed for three to five hours a day, five days a week. When the amount of work necessary to pull the book up to what it needed*** felt insurmountable, I tried to remember the small, daily work would lead to something better in two months’ time.

The act of writing down my hours each day pushed me to keep moving. On days where writing was cut to just a few hours or squeezed out entirely, it was also good to refer to my calendar. I had meetings, a boy with a broken wrist, and a retreat to pull together and facilitate in August and September. Seeing those full days helped me chill out a little. I wasn’t eating bon bons or wasting my time. I was busy living life.

If I commit to doing the work, it will get done.

What strategies do you use to meet writing goals?

* do not try this at home
** terrible manuscript but great learning experience!
*** it’s not there yet, but it’s closer