This week on the Pinterest board I have been leaning more toward the informational type of pins. Want to know how to get out of a zip-tie? Or have you ever wanted to bind your own book? Or how about the contents of a Victorian medical kit?

None of those things are in my current WIP, though I’m considering adding a zip-tie scene. But it was fascinating to me how much information was on Pinterest, but maybe I’m the only one who only thought to pin pretty pictures.

Here is a pin, however, that is both pretty and informative.

Have a medieval MS or maybe someone who is VERY green with their clothing. Personally I would have never though red onion skins would turn something that color.

Enjoy!

I&A is proud to feature monthly guest posts from the Firehouse Five!

Guest post by Jane True

Whether we write fact or fiction, picture books or adult genre, we all have one thing in common—we want our characters to be memorable. In striving to create interesting and quirky characters, one thing to consider is giving your character a disability.

Why would you want to do this? If you want your writing to be reflective of the society in which your audience lives, be aware that one in five Americans today has some kind of a disability. Then realize that each of these “ones” has family and friends who would probably be interested in reading about a fictional character who reflects some of the traits and qualities of the person they know and love. Your potential market is growing geometrically! But a better reason to consider bestowing a disability on one of your characters is because people with a disability often see the world a bit differently, are very creative problem solvers, and are just plain intriguing and fun to hang with.

Along with the power we have as writers to build characters comes the responsibility to do so respectfully. This is especially true when describing a person with a disability. The words we choose as writers to describe our characters influence how the reader values what our character represents. In this way, we can influence society’s attitudes toward and perceptions of certain conditions. In the words of Mark Twain, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”

Just two rules will take you a long way toward building a character with a disability respectfully.

Rule #1: Never use the “R” word
There was a time, maybe sixty years ago, when this communicated something to medical people and educators. But today it has evolved to be a very degrading and negative descriptor, and will immediately raise the hackles of anyone who has ever loved or worked with a person who is cognitively challenged. I could stand on this soap box for a few hundred more words, but this video will do a much better job:

Rule #2: Use “People First” language
Wikipedia describes this as follows:

People-first language is a form of linguistic prescriptivism in English, aiming to avoid perceived and subconscious dehumanization when discussing people with disabilities, as such forming an aspect of disability etiquette.

The basic idea is to impose a sentence structure that names the person first and the condition second, for example ‘people with disabilities’ rather than ‘disabled people’, in order to emphasize that ‘they are people first’. Because English syntax normally places adjectives before nouns, it becomes necessary to insert relative clauses, replacing, e.g., ‘asthmatic person’ with ‘a person who has asthma.’ Furthermore, the use of ‘to be’ is deprecated in favor of using ‘to have’.

In writerly terms, the idea is to never equate a person with a disability. Say what a person HAS, not what a person IS. So the wheelchair kid named Susie has an 85% free throw shooting record” becomes “the awesome shooter, Susie, who uses a wheelchair to get up and down the court.” By placing the person first, the disability is no longer the main defining characteristic of the person, but one of several aspects of the whole person. Following this rule can help to eliminate prejudices, generalizations, and stereotypes. Words are powerful!

Now that we know how to build our character with a disability respectfully, we need to give them a name. For a good discussion of naming characters, see the article “What’s In A Name?” by Joelle Anthony in the Jan-Feb 2013 SCBWI Bulletin.

Finally, thanks to Ink and Angst for the opportunity to be a guest blogger!

Recommended websites for more thorough discussion of People First Language:
Family to Family Network
The Arc
Wikipedia
People First Language

Jane True
Author of My Skiing Sister, starring Toby—a freedom-seeking 18-year-old, and his sister Clare, an awesome skier who has autism, a seizure disorder, and one heck of a sense of humor.

One of the most useful forms I’ve used to jumpstart my understanding of a character or a situation is the “How-To” form. It’s exactly what it sounds like and chances are you’ve written variations of it before naturally. I pull out the How-To when I need to explore something my character knows really well. It’s typically something that doesn’t make it into the manuscript as it’s written but it informs me of how my character sees the world around them.

For example, the MS I’m working on now has a main character that has grown up with an alcoholic mother. There is a point where she encounters an eight year old girl who lives in similar circumstances and I realized at that point that I needed to outline for myself what those circumstances would be. So I wrote a How-To.

“How-to put your drunk mother to bed.”

“First you have to search her bed for hidden bottles. You don’t want her to roll over in the night, send one in motion and you wake to the sound of glass shattering on hardwood. She will probably pass out before her shoes are even off her feet.

You will need to undress her. By the time you’re nine, you’ve seen your mother in every bra and panty set she owns. You quickly find that this is not like playing dress up with your dolls. The dead weight of your mother strains your muscles. It pains you for days afterward.

After you’ve removed her shoes and socks, the easiest part of the routine, you have a choice. You can either work from the top down or bottom up. Her shirt will have stains on it. These will range anywhere from tequila to vomit. Her jeans will have stains on them too. Urine. Vodka. Spit. Mud. You will know the correct way to launder them by the time you are eleven.

The trick to getting her jeans off is to take it one leg at a time. Undo the button and zipper, pick a leg and pull on the hem until it starts to shimmy down her hip. Ignore the piece of paper with the number of some guy named John or Pete or Mike that will fall out of the pocket.

Move to the other leg and pull at the hem until it also starts to shimmy down her hip. Alternate left and right until they are at her knees, at which point simply pull as hard as you can and they should slide the rest of the way off as if greased.

Don’t worry if the backs of her legs hit the floor hard enough to bruise. She’ll think it’s something she did at the bar.

Next you take off her top. The ease of this all depends on the type of top she has chosen for tonight. It’s not until you are ten that you realize if you suggest she wear a certain shirt before she goes out, the easier time you’ll have in the early hours of the morning.

You pray the top is a button up, so that you can simply undo the buttons and slide the shirt out from under her. If not you have to grasp under her arms, lift her so that her torso is upright against you and quickly yank her t-shirt up over her head. Pay no attention to the hickeys on her collarbone and along the slopes of her breasts.

There will be no reason to change her underwear unless they’ve been soiled in some way. By the time you are thirteen you’ve seen them soiled in every way. If her panties are in need of a change you can decide to clean her up or leave her as is. By the time you are thirteen you always leave her as is.

Pull an old t-shirt of your dad’s out of a dresser drawer. She’ll complain about waking up in one, but when she thinks you aren’t looking she’ll rub the fabric against her face.

If you’re lucky, she’ll realize she’s cold and wake up a little. If so, you take advantage of her confused state to stand her up, slip her shirt on and walk her to bed. If not you have to grab a pillow from her bed, slip it under her head and lay a blanket across her. You will turn her so that she is on her side, in case the poison wants to climb itself up her throat.

You will realize that it was the tender age of eight when you first understood what your mother is.”

By writing the How-To I felt I had a better grip on the life my character was living prior to the story I’m telling. It just gave me an outlet to further explore her and her relationship to her mother so that I can implement that in the story going forward. If you’re looking for a writing exercise, give this a try. You can write as your character or perhaps even about something you yourself know how to do, just to see how the form feels. Just another tool for the toolbox!

Scene: friends at lunch, one who writes and one who’s considering it.
Her: but I’ve never felt compelled, you know? People talk of having to write, an absolute need to get a story down. I don’t have that. I feel like such a fraud—
Me (snorting chai): hahahahahaha um, sorry, you were saying?

Back up two years. Me, running across an airport to catch a transfer and making it, barely. Followed by forty minutes of me sucking on a worthless expired inhaler as an the old lady in the next seat rambled on about her sons and grandsons and cats, while I told myself in no uncertain terms that I was not having an asthma attack on a freaking airplane because I wasn’t going to panic because my chest wasn’t hurting as bad as it felt like it was because I was not having an attack.

By the time the old lady had moved on to her daughters and granddaughters and dogs, breathing didn’t hurt so much and I’d decided the whole situation was ridiculous. I wasn’t yet thirty. I mean, come on—I should be able to traverse an airport without dying. To that end, I started the Couch-to-5k program a week later.

There was no compulsion, no magic. I didn’t see the perfect pair of run shoes in a shop window and find my addiction. I didn’t think running would ever be an addiction. I was simply determined not to relive those forty minutes of hell if at all possible.

It was a choice.

Which turned into something as beautiful and necessary as breathing.

Even now, it’s a choice. I’m an early morning runner, and somedays I’ll still have to tell myself to get up—that I’ll feel better about my day if I just run. And when I’m up and on the road and tired, I tell myself “Don’t worry about doing 8 miles, just do 4. The world won’t end.” Then when I hit the 2 mile turn around point, I think, “Just one more mile. That’ll net me 6 total, which isn’t bad.” And at mile 3? “Well hell, I’m feeling ok, one more won’t hurt.” Then I hit mile 4 and all I have to do is turn toward home—and the chocolate soy milk waiting for me.

But for all the days I play mind games with myself, there’s as many days and more where I look forward to slipping on my shoes and heading out the door. Where the world’s at my feet, and every step channels assurance and strength and an invisible film crew shoots my gazelle like grace in slow motion.

Sometimes things—callings, addictions, loves—are magic. Some of us have written since we were little, or typed a first novel in a half-crazed, nonstop frenzy. These things happen.

But the real truth about magic? Most the time we make our own.

If if isn’t personal what the heck is it?

Author Interviews That Rock

Liz Fichera

HOOKED

HOOKED releases from HarlequinTEEN on January 29, 2013

Click the pics for awesome Liz links!

Liz Fichera is an American author originally from Chicago who now lives in the American Southwest.  HOOKED is her debut young adult novel.  It’s the story of a Native American girl golfer with a killer golf swing who takes on the boy on her team with the killer smile.

It’s Perfect Chemistry meets Catching Jordan with a dash of West Side Story.

Check out the  HOOKED trailer!
Click Liz’s banner…

Now let’s hear from Liz Fichera!

Just to get us started, how old are you?

Old enough to remember having a crush on David Cassidy from The Partridge Family. (Me too )

What inspired you to write HOOKED?

Living in Phoenix, Arizona, I’m continually inspired by the Native American cultures and desert landscapes that surround my home.  I got the idea for HOOKED as I was driving down a long stretch of desert called Pecos Road about 4 years ago.  I actually did a whole inspiration video (set to music!).  It’s on my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFP9bNCTW4E

Do you have a special affinity for the American Southwest?

Absolutely.  I love the desert. I find much beauty in its simplicity and starkness.  That said, having grown up outside of Chicago, I never in a million years thought that I’d one day call the desert home.

What made you want to write in the first place?

I’ve loved writing stories ever since the fifth grade when a teacher told me she loved a story that I wrote about my dog.  My parents were always very encouraging too.  My mother, in particular, loved it when I’d read my stories to her.  Those are some of my fondest memories.

What keeps you writing?

It helps to make a few sales. But I write because I love to write.  There’s always a story bubbling inside my brain that wants to come out. (Me too. Kind of a blessing and a curse! )

What is the best piece of writing advice you were ever given?

Keep writing.  Even as you query, watch your rejections stack up, or start to investigate all of your publishing options, keep writing.  You should always be writing your next book, even as you try to sell or market your current one.

How do you discipline yourself to keep at the writing?

I’m fortunate that I’m able to write full-time.  It hasn’t always been that way.  So, I treat my writing like it’s a job.  I’m in my office, butt in the chair, writing, at least 5-6 hours a day.  The rest of the time is devoted to other things like promotion and social media. (Atta girl!)

When did you decide, this is what I really want to do? I want to be a writer! Was there a particular ah-ha moment?

I’ve known that I wanted to be a full-time writer since I was ten years old.  However, life kind of got in the way and there were other obligations that surfaced—you know, life’s curve balls.  But I never stopped working towards my goal.  I was able to write full-time 7 years ago.

Do you belong to any cool writerly groups on or off line?

I belong to The Class of 2K13, a group of debut YA and MG authors, along with The Lucky Thirteeners.

Just for kicks… What are some of your favorite TV shows, movies?

I am currently head-over-heels over two shows: HELL ON WHEELS and LONGMIRE.  I love angsty gritty shows set in the The Wild West.  TEEN WOLF is also a guilty pleasure.

As a kid what was your favorite book?

I loved THE BOXCAR children and all of the Laura Ingalls books.  Re-read each a million times.

What is your favorite board game?

Chess and Scrabble. (Yeah for Scrabble!)

What is most special about your protagonist?

Fred Oday is the main character in HOOKED.  She’s a Native American girl (Gila).  She dreams big dreams and doesn’t let anything get in her way, including being the only girl on an all boys’ team.  I wish that there were more Native American characters in mainstream YA. (Ditto)

Other than writing, what do you like to do for fun? Hobbies?

I read every day. I usually have at least 2 books going at once.  I also love to hike and run in the desert around my home.  I post a lot of my hiking pictures on my Facebook page. (I love hiking too. Check out my Facebook page. )

If your protagonist could give one piece of advice to your readers what would it be?

Dream big. Nothing is impossible. When you can’t achieve what you want, figure out another way.  There’s always a way. (Amen)

Any closing words of wisdom for other author-wannabees out there?

Write, write, read, and then write some more.  If you don’t love what you’re doing, do something else.

And there you have it! Personal and Real with Liz Fichera!

To check out Liz’s awesome Blog Tour with HarlequinTEEN with daily giveaways and gobs of free stuff Click the beautiful HOOKED banner!

HOOKED’S most recent reviews will rock your socks! Check them out…