Rachel Starr Thomson

In WriteAtHome courses, students do three drafts of every paper. Sound excessive? It’s not. In my own writing, especially in my novels, I’ve found three to be a consistently powerful number. Each draft has a distinct purpose.

The First Draft: This is the magic draft, the fun draft, the frustrating draft; it’s the lift-your-wings-and-fly, let loose and pour, spill it all out on the page draft. The First Draft is where your ideas take shape for the first time. It’s often best just to push through a First Draft, not bothering to stop and edit much. Save that for . . .

The Second Draft: In the Second Draft, it’s time for a substantive  edit. This means that you’re going to look at your content and analyze it. Take a big-picture approach. What’s working? What isn’t? What needs more fine-tuning? Do you need to make major changes to structure or plot? Are you majorly lacking any key elements–like description, convincing points, or dialogue? Is there anything you should cut? Are there plot elements or key points you’ve left undeveloped that should be expanded? Read through your first draft, take detailed notes, and make a plan for your Second Draft. Then go at it! When you’re finished, you’re ready for …

The Third Draft: Now it’s time for a copyedit. At this point, your big-picture issues should be taken care of. It’s time to fine-tune the little stuff, to immerse yourself in the nitty-gritty of word choices, rhythm, punctuation, and grammar. Now’s the time to proofread carefully and master the art of reading out loud to yourself.

Should you do more than three drafts? If your work calls for it, yes. But for turning out great writing, three is a powerful number — make good use of it.

Just a quick update on the Book Review Contest: all entries are in! I’m so thrilled by the numbers of people who participated, and I can’t wait to dig into the reviews they wrote. Yes, this does mean that I have yet to begin. The reviews are currently being organized, and I hope to begin reading next week. I will keep you posted on this blog and through my e-mail newsletter (sign up on the Home Page if you haven’t yet).

Once I begin reading entries, the posting of reviews on this blog shall commence. I can hardly wait! We’re looking at several weeks of reviews, young writers, and books, books, books.

So stay tuned .

This week promises to be both fun and challenging. It got off to a great start last night as Soli Deo Gloria Ballet performed His Faithfulness for the first time. This 45-minute presentation was almost entirely Carolyn’s brainchild, but I wrote narrations in the form of prayers to help connect the songs. We performed it at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Welland, and it was both fun and a real blessing to lead in celebrating the faithfulness of God.

The week will end with another event: the KW Home Educators’ Conference. I’m speaking for an hour on homeschooling from a graduate’s perspective, and Carolyn and I will both be signing and selling books throughout the day. If you’re in the area, I’d love to see you there!

Two more items of interest today:

Jill Williamson of the Novel Teen Book Review Blog has posted a review of Worlds Unseen here. She writes, “Thomson weaves several characters’ journeys together on this fantasy adventure, though Maggie is the heroine. I enjoyed Thomson’s allegorical style. She creates a wonderfully realistic fantasy world.”

Also on the Worlds Unseen front, I’ve received my first translation request–from a teacher of visually impaired students who wishes to produce a copy in Braille! Needless to say, I’m thrilled–especially as she’s going to send me a copy .

I’m on the road today, headed out to the Niagara Region for a performance, speaking at a conference, Hiding Place event promoting, and more. By virtue of travel and various engagements, this blog is on hold until Monday. See you then!

Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1800 poems, but not even a dozen were published in her lifetime. Her distinctive style was unusual, but its music is timeless. The poem beginning “We like March” often taps its rhythm out in my head at this time of year.

We like March, his shoes are purple,
He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder’s tongue his coming,
And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
That our minds are hot.
News is he of all the others;
Bold it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
On his British sky.

Looking for the perfect name for your character? Stuck for inspiration? Desirous to add depth to the culture or themes of your story? Consider curling up with a baby name book.

Just as every writer should have a good dictionary and thesaurus to hand, so I believe every fiction writer needs a good baby name book. I have used mine (this one) to name characters I already had, invent characters I hadn’t thought of, and even get new story ideas. Names are a vast depository of treasures just waiting to be mined.

A random opening of the Big Book of Baby Names & Announcements yields fascinating information and lots of potential stories. Did you know that Vesta  means “Guardian of the sacred fire” or that Vivian was “imprisoned by Merlin in King Arthur Legend”? I flip to the Ns and find that Nissa means “Friendly Elf,” Nitara is Hindi for “Deeply rooted,” Nika is Russian for “Belonging to God,”  and Nova, a Hopi name, has the elusive meaning of “Chasing.”

In the section for male names, I found the name of one of the O’Roarke boys in Burning Light–Kieran, which means “Little and dark-skinned” in Gaelic. I can discover things about other Seventh World characters here, too: Jerome is a “Holy name,” Nicolas means “Victory of the people,” and Michael proclaims “Who is like the Lord?”

If you don’t have one of these treasuries on your shelf, I highly recommend picking one up. Look for one that includes names from many cultures and languages and gives some background information about them. In the meantime, check out BehindtheName.com, one of my favourite Web sites, which goes into name etymology and meaning.

Today, as I face into another week in which I shall not write any fiction, I’d like to celebrate two writers who shall.

The first is Elisabeth, who this morning commented on my recent “I Remember Writing” post. The post advocates the “Park yourself in a chair and write something every day, no matter how small” method of becoming a writer. Elisabeth said:

I have been parking myself in a chair and writing a little bit every day since I read this post, and I completed drafting a rather long chapter I had meant to finish several weeks ago. The method works! This strikes me as funny: I knew I should have been trying to write at least a few paragraphs every day, but I never put it into practice until I read your post. Thanks!

You’re welcome! I’m so excited for you!

The second is Rachel Rossano. Several years ago, I stumbled across a Xanga blog where Rachel was serializing a novel. I left her a comment, which led to more comments, which eventually led to meeting Rachel’s marvelous group of online writing friends. They quickly became mine as well, and together we formed the Wayside Inn Writer’s Society. Our creativity exploded into The Romany Epistles (Taerith is my contribution.)

Rachel was only partway through Wren, her own Romany story, when the arrival of her son Jonathan refocused her energies for a while! Over the last few weeks, Rachel has been sending out chapters of another novel, and today, she announced a new chapter in Wren. I encourage you to check it out! Rachel’s creavitity and dedication has been an encouragement and inspiration to me .

This month’s Boundless article is all about homeschooling — a lifestyle my parents chose when I was young that has impacted every part of my life. Here’s the link.

As I sit at the computer, watching the clock strike 11:01 when I meant to be in bed at 10:00, and think over the day’s events — the phone calls I muddled my way through, the little Dodge Neon I bought though all these years I’ve planned to buy a minivan, the schedule which continually remade itself with every passing minute — as I think, too, of the Book of Job and how hopefully confusing truth seemed to get for that righteous man –

Well, it occurs to me that if we could plan life all out the way we want to, it would have the precision of the finest orchestra playing the finest symphony. Not a note out of place. Every instrument doing just what it should.

But we can’t, and life is rarely like that. Instead, we go with the flow, get knocked over sometimes, laugh, and learn to enjoy the currents. Life is a lot like playing “You Are My Sunshine” on the guitar while wearing oven mitts.

And with that profound thought, here is the one-and-only Katie Rees, my friend and fellow homeschool graduate, doing exactly that:

Tonight, I’m privileged to wrap up the March CSFF tour with an interview with Allan Miller, one of the Miller Brothers, who took time out of a very busy schedule to first agree to a last-minute interview and then to thoughtfully answer my questions about art, allegory, homeschooling, and more! I really enjoyed my conversation with Allan, and I hope you will as well!

Here we go:

Rachel: Once I was a few chapters into Hunter Brown, I found myself impressed by the big issues you tackled. Actually, they made me uncomfortable: I really didn’t like the idea of looking into a mirror and seeing an evil, black-eyed face looking back. What was it like writing such heavy issues into a children’s book? Were you ever tempted to water them down or make Hunter morally better than he really is?

Allan: Good! We wanted to make you squirm! Well, just a little anyways… One of the points we wanted to be central in the story of Hunter Brown was the idea that doing good and being good are two entirely different things. So many books and movies today inspire us do good — and somehow that is what saves the day. “If you just find the hero inside yourself…” we hear. Sounds nice, but the problem with that is that it’s a lie that sells us short of the scary truth: we’re not good, and nothing inside us is going to save us. We need something greater to redeem us. That’s the powerful message we wanted to challenge our readers with. The Hunter that readers first meet is not a terrible kid, but he’s clearly not perfect — he’s just a “not-as-bad-as,” “good enough” kind of guy. We think readers relate to that quality of Hunter — we all want to think of ourselves as being good, even though we know we’ve fallen short. That’s when we try to become good. The real adventure is in finding out how big of a problem that really is.

Rachel: There’s a debate going on about Christian art: some feel that Christian art can’t preach a clear message without losing its quality as art; others feel that the message is the whole point. Where are you on that spectrum?
Allan: More and more, we are becoming convinced that you can’t separate the message from the art. Every story has a message behind it — no matter how hard a person might try to hide it. In our opinion, we’ve got the greatest message on earth to tell. We’d be wasting our time if we didn’t. As we do, we hope our work reflects excellence in creativity (again, we’d be wasting our time if we didn’t do that too!). In the end, I think that’s the combination that will truly inspire others.

Rachel: Related to the above question, I’ve heard Hunter Brown criticized as “paper-thin allegory.” In your view, what is the purpose of allegory? Is allegory any good without a clear message?

Allan: Actually, we take that criticism as a compliment of sorts. While we certainly don’t want a “beat you over the head” experience (never pleasant, though at times effective), we more importantly don’t want the message lost or left wide-open to interpretation. Allegory should convey truth in an instructve way. Hopefully we’ve achieved a balance to allow our readers to enjoy the story in a way that also lets the truth sink in over time. Time will tell!

Rachel: The famous writer question — which I won’t ask! — is “Where do you get your ideas?” But in a book as heavily allegorical as Hunter Brown, I’m curious as to what came first. Did you begin with a message you wanted to share, a world you wanted to create, characters whose story wanted to be told?

Allan: Thank you for sparing us! It started from a childhood love of a “tissue-paper-thin” allegory that impacted us greatly… Pilgrim’s Progress. The images and concepts it brought to life about our spiritual journey as Christians was something that inspired us all throughout our lives. We give that story a couple nods in the early parts of Hunter Brown if you look for them. After that root inspiration, defining our message came next, and the rest quickly dissolves away into the mushy realm of the creative process where worlds and characters come to life in a way even we don’t fully understand.

Rachel: You guys have a whole lot more going on than just books. Your company, Lumination Studios, promises to develop “Books, Graphic Novels, Musical CD Products, Web-based Products, Animated Films, Games & Toys.” That represents an impressive array of talents and interests on your parts! Can you tell us about what’s in the works now? What upcoming products are you most excited about?

Allan: Beyond continuing our Codebearers Series (Book Two, Hunter Brown and the Consuming Fire, is slated for 9/9/09), we are also working on completing our other series, the Heroes of Promise children’s books. The other non-book mediums are works-in-progress (like a kids’ musical of “Gid the Kid”). As long as Chris is alive, there will be plenty of ideas swirling around for us to pursue. One developing property combines modern-day youth, time-travel, mystery, and early-American history. Another is a new-format book that we’ve dreamed up to function as part story, part puzzle. We’re getting nibbles from publishers on that one and really hoping it gets picked up. Someday we’d love to produce some animated movies (our first love), but we’re on hold with that pursuit for now. Until then, we’re so grateful we can use our talents in the books we write and illustrate.

Rachel: As a homeschool graduate, I was delighted to discover that you were homeschooled through your latter school years as well. How did those years influence your career direction? If you hadn’t been homeschooled, do you think you’d still be doing this?

Allan: It’s hard to say “what would be had we not…”, but we can’t imagine how we would have gotten here without the gift of homeschooling. One of the greatest gifts of homeschooling (besides the closeness it gave our family) was the chance to explore our strengths beyond what “normal” school would have. Our teacher (Mom) had the great wisdom to allow us to pursue our interest in art within our daily school projects. We explored animation, sculpting, and creative writing. Our science studies turned into illustrated children’s books. It was a great way to learn and grow. The extra time together also helped us foster a stronger bond as brothers which, of course, has been a big part of allowing us to work together.

Rachel: Allan, one of my favourite parts in Hunter Brown is in your special thanks section: “My big brother, Chris — dreams are great, but so much better when they are shared. Keep dreaming big with me … just give me time to catch up every once in a while.”

It’s rare to see brothers who dream together in this day and age, and I’m inspired by your example! Thanks for sharing some of your journey and message with us!