Welcome to the second edition of Writing Festival Friday, a blog event where you can connect with other writers, promote your books and blogs, and possibly become the featured writer next Friday. It is easy to participate. Just leave a comment to this article, telling us about yourself, your writing, and whatever else you want us to know. Please include your site and blog links if you have any. Writers of all genres are welcome to join in.

You can post here any time between Friday and Wednesday morning to be included in the next random drawing. The winner of the drawing will be sent a short series of interview questions via email, and will be featured in the next Writing Festival Friday posting.

Please visit the websites and blogs of your fellow writers to give them the support they need to keep on writing!

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Donna Alice Patton

Today’s winner is Donna Alice Patton, a novelist living in Ohio. Donna has a blog: Layers of Life. She won Honorable Mention for middle grade novels in the 2007 Write It Now! competition. She’s written in a variety of genres and co-writes a monthly syndicated newspaper page for children. Her first novel will be published before the end of this year.

Linda: Congratulations on having your book chosen for Honorable Mention in the Write it Now! Competition at Smartwriters.Com. Please tell us about your book and the series it is part of.

Donna Alice Patton: The book that won the Honorable Mention is The Cattle Rustling Catastrophe. It’s the second book in my series about ten year old, Jenny Cameron. This book (along with the first, The Hooky Playing Fiasco) takes place in 1890’s California. I grew up watching westerns on TV and I love the Old West so it was a natural choice. What I try to do with the books (while still being historically accurate) is to take problems all children face and let them see the consequences of making choices. It sounds like a lofty goal (and somewhat boring) but the books are anything but ho hum!

In the first book, Jenny and her best friend, Brose, decide to skip school to see a circus train. Having lost her three brothers in a fever epidemic, Jenny will do anything to keep Brose’s friendship. Too often staying friends means taking dares to prove how brave she is. When events spiral out of control, Jenny comes to realize it isn’t taking dares that makes a person brave, but standing up and saying no. At the end of the book, she gets a lesson in true bravery when she has to save not only her life, but her father’s.

I love how the book also had a built in lesson on peer pressure, a problem kids today face too.

With The Cattle Rustling Catastrophe, Jenny and Brose are up to mischief again when they borrow a dime novel from the Cameron family cook. Sent to pick up the family’s wash from the washerwoman, they make an amazing discovery. Miss O’Leary matches the description of the female outlaw, Annie O’Banyon, from the dime novel.

Never one to sit still when there is a problem to be solved, Jenny is determined to help “capture” the cattle rustling female and help her family. Pretty soon, she’s in over her head and an adventure follows. This book deals with lying, spreading rumors and what happens when you “cry wolf” once too often.

Sometimes, I think of Jenny as a cross between Tom Sawyer and Maverick !

There are two more books planned for the series but I’m still doing research on book three, The Ghost Town Gamble.

Linda: What was it like to be part of that contest? Would you recommend it to other writers?

Donna Alice Patton: This was the third year I’ve done the Smartwriter’s Contest. The first year, I submitted a Jenny short story, The Quilting Bee Calamity. While it didn’t win, it did go on to be read and evaluated by Blooming Tree Press for an anthology. The story didn’t make it, but I got some nice feedback from everyone involved.

Last year, the first Jenny book didn’t place. This year, I got the Honorable Mention for the sequel.

I think the Smartwriter’s in a great contest to have your writing validated. Even if you just enter and get a critique, you can get some positive feedback and know where you missed the mark. While some writers don’t think contests have much value, I’m a firm believer in contests. I enter quite a few and am always glad to have the critiques. (Not that I don’t yell and fuss and kick a few tables for a couple of days at the bad ones! But, eventually, I get over it and either agree or disagree with the judges.)

Linda: Tell us about your writing journey; when did it start, and how did you grow as a writer?

Donna Alice Patton: I always tell people I was born to be a writer. There isn’t really a time when I didn’t KNOW that’s what I wanted to be. Not that getting started was easy. Even though I scribbled little stories, or made up millions in my head (usually sequels to my favorite TV shows), I didn’t know that real people were writers. In my mind, writers were some great, exalted creatures gifted with this rare talent. They weren’t someone who cut out coupons or sat around in their pj’s plotting a novel.

I was about eighteen when I first started to take my writing seriously. The first piece I ever had published was a Letter to the Editor. In those days, I was always protesting something! A lovely older couple called me on the phone to tell me they loved the letter and agreed. My first fans!

Since then, I’ve written probably millions of words. Honestly. I wrote short stories, articles, and just about anything else. Happily, I’ve been published in quite a few magazines, online sources, etc. Probably the best thing to happen to me is that I read somewhere a writer should try different types of writing. I never limited myself to any one genre.

For several years, I wrote all the PR for the Autistic Society in a nearby big city. Not that I knew anyone who had an autistic child, but they asked for a volunteer and it sounded like good writing practice. I wrote several books (never published) but I think I gained more skill with each book I wrote. At first, I wrote Gothic romances (which dates me, I’m sure) because those were what I loved to read. Later, I started to read more children’s and young adult books because I remembered how I’d loved them as a child. Books were always the doorways to adventure for me.

After awhile, I realized that I wanted to write more for children than any other age group. (Although I do have two grown up novels in the works too.) My first book, The Search for the Madonna, will come out by EcceHomo Press sometime toward the end of this year. It’s a historical mystery set during the Depression on a small Ohio farm.- I also write a monthly newspaper page, Cookies and Milk, with two friends I met at a writing group. We just published our first full year and are syndicated in several other papers (with a tentative promise to be syndicated in more this coming year.) Several short Jenny pieces have made their print debut in the newspaper. Which proves, even in a small mid-western town, there are great opportunities for writers!

I know you didn’t ask, but it’s a question I always like to know from other writers — what’s your favorite piece of advice? Mine would be try a lot of different writing. Diversify. Switch genres or time periods. Try something totally different. I spent one year happily writing educational worksheets for an online provider. It was great practice on being concise and sifting out what’s really important in biographies. It also gave me tons of material to recycle when I began to write for the newspaper. You’ll never know what you’re best at until you try.

Donna Alice Patton: The picture is of me sitting on the porch of one of my favorite authors, Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was taken on a visit to Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri

Linda: Donna Alice… thanks so much for participating in Writing Festival Friday. I’ve appreciated the opportunity to get to know you, and look forward to reading your books.

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This post is now part of the Writers Block Carnival, the Books Carnival, the Bookworms Carnival, and the Work at Home Moms and Dads Carnival.

There are three things every writer should have:

1. Confidence - Every writer needs confidence. We need to know that our words are worthy and that if we practice writing enough, good things will come of it. A writer’s life is not easy, so it is imperative that a writer has an inner knowledge that hours spent alone, word-crafting, will be hours well-spent. Be assured that your writing is worthwhile so that if you meet nay-sayers along the way, their negativity won’t assail you in the least.

2. Perseverance - Be ready to write, keep writing, and never stop writing. No matter what else life is throwing at you, there’s always time to put your words on paper, or into bits and bytes if that is your choice. Most important, don’t even consider quitting. Each writing project, no matter how disastrous it may seem, is a building-block for your career. Each thing you write is a learning experience. Cherish all your projects, and keep on writing. Quitting is not an option for successful writers. Writing is a way of life, not something you dabble at.

3. A Writer’s Notebook - One thing every writer should have is a writer’s notebook. It doesn’t matter how fancy it is; it just has to be something that works for you. Legal pads are nice. I use a simple notebook I picked up at a variety store. Others will get a bound book or a sketch book. Whatever it is, if it works for you, it is the perfect thing. I tried several types of journals before I figured out what I needed. The notebook is for writing down your writing inspirations. Thoughts are fleeting. Don’t expect to remember everything - it doesn’t work like that. When you get an idea, put it in writing, in a place where you’ll be able to find it again. A writing notebook is perfect for keeping all your writing thoughts in one place, easily accessible. It’s also great for scribbling down bits of description or observations of the world and people around you.

Tonight I finished the fourth revision of The Scribe of Irohila, a novel I wrote in 2001. Sorry to say, I feel I must revise it again. It is getting close to completion, but I’ll be checking for a lot of useless words and double checking that all the characters are consistent. I also need to add some descriptions. It seems that a writer’s work is never done! Of course one of these days I’ll have to give it up, send it to publishers, and concentrate on something else, but for now, I’m still sure I’ve got work to do.

For example, the word “just” is practically useless. I scanned the entire manuscript for the word, and found it way too many times. Even though I know it is a useless word that has almost no place in a novel, I’d skipped over it about two dozen times during this last revision. With my scan, I deleted almost every “just” I found, though I kept a few I thought were appropriate.

This time I wrote a summary of each chapter as I read through the manuscript. These summaries are version one of my synopsis. My next project will be to revise the synopsis until it sounds like an exciting novel any agent or editor would love to read more of. I’ll do that and start revision five.

The Scribe of Irohila starts out slow and ends up as an exciting, eventful novel that’s hard to put down. I love the characters and the locations, and everything about this novel. I look forward to the day I feel ready to share it with the world.

This is the first edition of my new blog event: Writing Festival Friday . Using the comment section for this post, all writers are welcome to post links to their sites, information about their current writing projects, or anything else that will help promote their writing careers. Tell us about yourselves, and what we can expect when we read your writing.

I will randomly choose one entrant each Wednesday. The chosen writer will be contacted for a short interview and featured for the next Writing Festival Friday here at Perspectives on Writing.

Please visit the websites and blogs of your fellow writers to give them the support they need to keep on writing!

(My method for choosing writers to feature will be a random drawing of names, so this will be done in a totally impartial manner.)

Note: Friday is over, but you can keep posting here a few more days. I won’t choose the person to interview until Wednesday morning.

This year I’m participating in The Newbery Project, a group collaboration blog with book reviews by people who have agreed to read all the Newbery Medal winning books. The Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the American Library Association (ALA) for the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature, the prior year.

I decided to do this because I’ve had the goal of reading all those books for a long time. It started about ten years ago when I started reading children’s novels out loud to my young children while I was homeschooling them. We developed a habit of reading Newbery Medal winning books, and Newbery honor books, together as a family. So I’ve already read many of the titles on the list. I, however, included the Newbery honor books rather than only the Newbery Medal winners, so there’s still a lot of winners I haven’t read yet. I plan to re-read books I’ve read before, to prepare to review them for the site. I’m also posting reviews on this site for each novel.

After reading many of these fine novels, I set my heart on writing some, and that came to pass starting in 2001. I’ve now written three middle grade novels and two young adult novels. Because I’m writing in this genre, I need to read the type of books I’m working on. So The Newbery Project serves a real need for me, as well as being something that fulfills a goal I set for myself years ago.

So far I’ve reviewed only three novels for the list. I have one more review in the works, and am currently listening to another Newbery Medal winning novel, on tape.

So far, I’ve read 36 out of 86 Newbery Medal winning books. Only fifty more to read!

2007 - Susan Patron - The Higher Power of Lucky
2006 - Lynne Rae Perkins - Criss Cross
2005 - Cynthia Kadohata - Kira-Kira
2004 - Kate DiCamillo - The Tale of Despereaux
2003 - Avi - Crispin: The Cross of Lead
2002 - Linda Sue Park - A Single Shard
2001 - Richard Peck - A Year Down Yonder
2000 - Christopher Paul Curtis - Bud, Not Buddy
1999 - Louis Sachar - Holes
1998 - Karen Hesse - Out of the Dust
1997 - E. L. Konigsburg - The View from Saturday
1996 - Karen Cushman - The Midwife’s Apprentice
1995 - Sharon Creech - Walk Two Moons
1994 - Lois Lowry - The Giver
1993 - Cynthia Rylant - Missing May
1992 - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor - Shiloh
1991 - Jerry Spinelli - Maniac Magee
1990 - Lois Lowry - Number the Stars
1989 - Paul Fleischman - Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices
1988 - Russell Freedman - Lincoln: A Photobiography
1987 - Sid Fleischman - The Whipping Boy
1986 - Patricia MacLachlan - Sarah, Plain and Tall
1985 - Robin McKinley - The Hero and the Crown
1984 - Beverly Cleary - Dear Mr. Henshaw
1983 - Cynthia Voigt - Dicey’s Song
1982 - Nancy Willard - A Visit to William Blake’s Inn
1981 - Katherine Paterson - Jacob Have I Loved
1980 - Joan Blos - A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl’s Journal
1979 - Ellen Raskin - The Westing Game
1978 - Katherine Paterson - Bridge to Terabithia
1977 - Mildred Taylor - Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
1976 - Susan Cooper - The Grey King
1975 - Virginia Hamilton - M. C. Higgins, the Great
1974 - Paula Fox - The Slave Dancer
1973 - Jean Craighead George - Julie of the Wolves
1972 - Robert C. O’Brien - Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
1971 - Betsy Byars - Summer of the Swans
1970 - William H. Armstrong - Sounder
1969 - Lloyd Alexander - The High King
1968 - E. L. Konigsburg - From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
1967 - Irene Hunt - Up a Road Slowly
1966 - Elizabeth Borton de Treviño - I, Juan de Pareja
1965 - Maia Wojciechowska - Shadow of a Bull
1964 - Emily Cheney Neville - It’s Like This, Cat
1963 - Madeleine L’Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
1962 - Elizabeth George Speare - The Bronze Bow
1961 - Scott O’Dell - Island of the Blue Dolphins
1960 - Joseph Krumgold - Onion John
1959 - Elizabeth George Speare - The Witch of Blackbird Pond
1958 - Harold Keith - Rifles for Watie
1957 - Virginia Sorenson - Miracles on Maple Hill
1956 - Jean Lee Latham - Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
1955 - Meindert DeJong - The Wheel on the School
1954 - Joseph Krumgold - …And Now Miguel
1953 - Ann Nolan Clark - Secret of the Andes
1952 - Eleanor Estes - Ginger Pye
1951 - Elizabeth Yates - Amos Fortune, Free Man
1950 - Marguerite de Angeli - The Door in the Wall
1949 - Marguerite Henry - King of the Wind
1948 - William Pène du Bois - The Twenty-One Balloons
1947 - Carolyn Sherwin Bailey - Miss Hickory
1946 - Lois Lenski - Strawberry Girl
1945 - Robert Lawson - Rabbit Hill
1944 - Esther Forbes - Johnny Tremain
1943 - Elizabeth Gray Vining - Adam of the Road
1942 - Walter D. Edmonds - The Matchlock Gun
1941 - Armstrong Sperry - Call It Courage
1940 - James Daugherty - Daniel Boone
1939 - Elizabeth Enright - Thimble Summer
1938 - Kate Seredy - The White Stag
1937 - Ruth Sawyer - Roller Skates
1936 - Carol Ryrie Brink - Caddie Woodlawn
1935 - Monica Shannon - Dobry
1934 - Cornelia Meigs - Invincible Louisa
1933 - Elizabeth Foreman Lewis - Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze
1932 - Laura Adams Armer - Waterless Mountain
1931 - Elizabeth Coatsworth - The Cat Who Went to Heaven
1930 - Rachel Field - Hitty, Her First Hundred Years
1929 - Eric P. Kelly - The Trumpeter of Krakow
1928 - Dhan Gopal Mukerji - Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon
1927 - Will James - Smoky the Cow Horse
1926 - Arthur Bowie Chrisman - Shen of the Sea
1925 - Charles Finger - Tales from Silver Lands
1924 - Charles Hawes - The Dark Frigate
1923 - Hugh Lofting - The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
1922 - Hendrik Willem van Loon - The Story of Mankind

This list will be updated each time I read another book from the list.

This is a review of one of the books I’ve read for The Newbery Project. - LJM

The 1943 winner of the Newbery Medal, Adam of the Road, a 23-chapter book by Elizabeth Janet Gray (Elizabeth Gray Vining), is a juvenile romp down primitive roads surrounding London during the Middle Age years of 1294-1295. The title character, Adam Quartermayne, is the eleven-year-old son of a minstrel. Adam starts his adventure with a harp, and ends it with a bagpipe. He also has a steady repertoire of songs, including at least one he wrote himself. And Adam has the road.

According to Adam’s father, Roger, the road is home to a minstrel:

“A road is a kind of holy thing,” Roger went on. “That’s why it’s a good work to keep a road in repair, like giving alms to the poor or tending the sick. It’s open to the sun and wind and rain. It brings all kinds of people and all parts of England together. And it’s home to a minstrel, even though he may happen to be sleeping in a castle.”

-Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray, Viking Press paperback, page 53

I found this particularly interesting because my first big writing project, my seventh grade term paper, was about minstrels. I wish I’d known about this novel back then.

There’s some beautiful description in this book:

“Between the high, windswept fields the road stretched muddy and rutted toward bare purple woods. Here and there a swollen brook flooding the road reflected the cold cherry-colored light of the setting sun.”

-Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray, Viking Press paperback, page 292

The book contains plenty of action to keep a child interested as Adam leaves his school to follow his father down the road to harmonious minstrelsy. His adorable red setter, Nick, goes along.

Things happen in a fairly ordinary way until page 126 when Adam’s dog, Nick, is kidnapped. I wondered if this might have been a better beginning for the story, since at this point the story grabs the heart and emotions and won’t let go. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Adam soon loses track of his father as well. You just have to keep reading to find out what happens next!

Adam’s story is one of suffering and hardship. On the road he meets wonderful people who want to help him as well as evil people who want only to harm and destroy. The contrast of Adam’s experience with the lives of children in modern times is going to be an eye-opener for every child who reads this moving novel. Despite all conflict, Adam maintains a sense of gratitude for the experiences life gives him:

“Last night at Guildford Castle, the night before at the Ferryman’s house, tonight at Farnham Inn under the merchant’s care! Adam thought he knew now why Roger said the road was home to the minstrel. It was because people were kind.”

-Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray, Viking Press paperback, page166

Some of those people were so kind they tried to convert Adam to their styles of living. He was offered opportunities in several different trades, but it was minstrelsy he had his heart set on.

I found a lot of dated expressions in this book. How quickly our language changes! I won’t ruin the experience for you by pointing them all out, but expect a 1940s book, because that’s what you’re going to get when you read Adam of the Road. Quaint in places, but still an excellent children’s primer on the life of minstrels in the Middle Ages in England.

I’ve been struggling with revision for years. It used to be so easy - before I was struck with the necessity of getting an entire novel ready for publication. I’ve read so many suggestions. Some go-getters advise only two edits - one for correcting typos and getting rid of excess verbiage, and one for adding details. Others say a novel should be revised ten times or more! What’s a novelist-in-training to do?

It appears that since there are so many methodologies of revision being promoted, we who are writers must go by our own instincts to know when our novels are ready for submission. Personally, I prefer to edit more than just twice. I’m on my fourth revision of The Scribe of Irohila, and this is a major one. I’ve added several scenes. I’ve cut entire paragraphs without regrets. I may try to combine two chapters soon. I’m not sure about that, but I’m considering it, to make the introductory section of the novel move faster. I’ve never done these things before and for me, it has been a nightmare to learn it.

Maybe if I cared less about my novel, it wouldn’t hurt so much. Somehow I’ve picked up the feeling that touching my novel is scary because I might scrap something that should stay. Or keep things that should disappear forever. Either way, it seems that what I’m facing is an irrational fear that I may be incompetent to revise effectively.

The truth is that I’m very competent as an editor. I’ve been working for the last six years as an editor for a small town news business. Yet when it comes to my own novel, I’m having a terrible time getting revisions done. At this point, I’m somewhat desperate. I need to get this project off the ground because I have quite a few other novels begging for my attention.

I believe after the first novel is edited, revised, and done with, it will be easier to do the others. I’m just sorry it took so long to get the first one done. (I wrote it in 2001, in only 17 days!)

I know that the opposite of fear is love, so my plan, to overcome this irrational feeling, is to love my novel into readiness. And that’s realistic. I truly do love The Scribe of Irohila. Every time I read through it, I enjoy it and am pleased that I wrote such an unusual novel for children. But there are so many tiny details that must be coordinated to make the novel work perfectly. I’m probably going to finish this revision soon and find other people to read it through. I need another person’s perspective to let me know if something is missing or out of place.

Next Friday I’m starting something new. I’m calling it Writing Festival Friday. It will be a day when writers can come here and leave their links to their websites, books, blogs or whatever they want to share. Links in comments should become good back-links for publicity-seeking webmasters and writers.

Each Wednesday I’ll have a random name drawing of one writer who posted on that week’s Writing Festival Friday. That writer will be asked for a short interview. Free promotion!

So come back on Friday and plan to participate. Let us know who you are and what your most recent writing projects are all about.

I’m still working on revisions for my 2001 novel, The Scribe of Irohila - this is the fourth revision - and at the same time I’m writing the synopsis. I’ve been terribly slow at getting this novel ready for publication. I wrote the original manuscript in only 17 days, but getting to the first edit took months because I’d never done it before and because I wanted to give it a rest period before reading it for the first time.

When I get this revision done I’ll be sending copies out to a few people for reading and reviewing. I have a few family members wanting to do this for me, but would like to have some children’s book writers look at it too, so I’m interested in trading book reviews with someone else who has a manuscript revised and ready for a first-reader.

This is a coming-of-age type middle grade novel set in a primitive society; fairly realistic, not much fantasy to it.