While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make
enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all of the
professional writers above...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what
I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a
point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote
to the left will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output
and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!
This story was my
first attempt at a kids’ kids story and I absolutely did exactly what every
writing book tells me not to do: I took the story from real life!
At the time I wrote
it, we had a cockatiel – along with cats, dogs, fish, hamsters, lizards, and frogs. I liked to tell people we had a pet
animal representing each major animal class: mammal, fish, reptile, amphibian,
bird, and insect. My son was Angel’s favorite person. I was probably its LEAST
favorite person. But at the time, I was very familiar with its behavior.
Angel loved to have
his chest stroked and his head scratched.
He also loved to
screech when he was lonely and would fly wherever he could get to then avoid
capture to be returned to his cage. We sometimes enticed him with fresh citrus
fruits when we had them.
I’d also taken care
of a massively and old iguana named Moses, back when I was in college. It was
one of those “work-study” jobs. I was a biology major and cleaned the animal
room. Most of the job was normal – clean the rat and mouse cages, feed them
plus the rabbits, and maintain the supplies. There were two NOT-normal jobs I
had to do.
On a table in the
animal room were ten fish bowls. In each one was a HUGE, UGLY, WHITE FROG...albino
African clawed frogs to be exact. Females and males (the females were much
larger than the males and had to be kept separately because, if the male was too
small, she’d eat him...
The other odd job I
did was take care of Moses. He was elderly, and because he was under the care
of a bunch of science geeks, he was pretty healthy and had a row of hard spines
on his back running from his head to his tail. My job usually involved cleaning
his cage and feeding him part of a head of lettuce as well as piece of fruit,
leaves of various plants, and some vitamins dusted on to his food. I also had
to take him for a walk in the Biology Hall and into the Administrative Building
adjacent to it.
He had a Chihuahua harness
that I put on him along with a purple leash. Once a week, it was my job to set
him up and then let him do a controlled “run”. He’d start scrabbling as soon as
I started to lower him to the floor. Then he’d take off and I’d follow, making
sure he didn’t go under or into anything I couldn’t get him out of.
I’d tried breaking
into this market with a couple of mysteries I desperately wanted to write that
were based on science concepts, but those attempts flopped. Using Moses and
Angel – and some names plucked from cultures other than the one I was raised in
– I set up the story.
It was quite a bit
longer initially, but Stories for Children Magazine (online) was a growing
market. Unfortunately, it was a non-paying market, but it did give me an online
presence in the early days of electronic magazines or e-zines and so I took the
opportunity.
The response to my
story was strong enough that they asked if I would permit them to put it into
an anthology of stories form their first year. For that they offered token
payment...
At any rate, the
things that went RIGHT with this:
- I was looking for a children’s market outside of the standard CRICKET, et al.
- I had experience with animals, and stories like this are popular with kids.
- I had the KID solve the problem using information he already had. In other words, he showed up the adults in the story.
- I SENT IT OUT UNTIL I FOUND A MARKET! (I wrote about persistence here: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2014/05/writing-advice-persist-guy-stewart-1.html)
Resources: You’ll find the story here: https://books.google.com/books?id=aEiCeLhk08wC&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=iguana+spine,+tangerine+slices&source=bl&ots=QEKQMRcOWA&sig=kM13BdupZOhn2s16z3jl6SA0Ggw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=u1fXVKOsB4WGyASMl4KQBw&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=iguana%20spine%2C%20tangerine%20slices&f=false
Image: http://static4.quoteswave.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/We-are-all-apprentices.jpg
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