Edward J. Denecke
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Inside that "box"

11/30/2016

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​
​In my last post, I was preparing to describe the content of that "good and all-giving" Pandora's Box that I had discovered upon opening an email from the SCBWI organization of which I am a member. So here goes . . .

​The SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) email contained a link to a video posted by an upcoming speaker at their next regional event. The sad thing is that I don't even remember which video I watched that day! But it whetted my appetite to keep searching on that YouTube link for more of the same. Dozens of similar videos appeared in a cascading stack to the right of the one that had first snagged me. I was hooked!!  

That first video was about methods and techniques to improve novel writing skills. Forgive me for not listing these following video descriptions  in any significant order (as viewed or in importance) but I had accidentally discovered the mother's lode of story-crafting resources. On the decade-old, second-hand Mac computer screen glowing before me, I watched - mesmerized into a near catatonic state by the magnitude of information I was viewing - video after amazing video.  There were  numerous TED lectures from the geniuses at Pixar and Disney, successfully published authors and screenwriters describing their techniques, high school and college literature lecturers and university professors giving valuable writing tips, and even everyman-point-of-view amateurs with extraordinary insights into the novel-writing craft.

I felt like an information addict; I couldn't get enough! I scribbled notes on papers as fast as I could, not knowing at first the sheer quantity of pertinent videos that I had stumbled upon. It was extraordinarily endless! Before long I had too many pieces of paper to keep track of. I was inundated with staggering amounts of incredible novel-writing factoids. I had to stop and figure out a method for cataloging all of it into a meaningful, accessible resource for my writing project.

My next post will describe some of the content that I discovered and what I did to make it useable.  Don't forget to check back again soon!



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2016 Update: New Horizons!

11/29/2016

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Where do I begin? Nearly a year ago I walked into my home office and sat down at my desk.  I was interested in doing something constructive in the "author" part of my life. So, I sat in the chair behind my desk and contemplated where I should focus my energies.  Looking across the room I spotted the splines of four 3-ring binders peeking out at me from inside a small bookshelf.  Each binder's spline displayed a one-word title-summary of a specific story in a four-part children's book adventure series that I had begun in the early 90's: BEYOND, BENEATH, BETWEEN, and BEHIND. I hadn't even thought about any of these abandoned projects for years. I got up from my chair and moved across the room and slid the first 3-ring binder, BEYOND, off the shelf. Returning to my chair, I plopped the binder down and opened its cover. And that is when this spectacularly invigorating journey began.

​Have you ever returned to something wonderful that you have forgotten about for ages? If so, you can identify with the avalanche of emotions within which I became immediately immersed. Creative-possibilities renewed their cheering admonitions for me to return quickly. Excitement beckoned me onward. Empty pages (of which the binders were chock-full) greeted me like hungry baby birds chirping frantically for mother-bird's offered morsel. "Feed me!" they demanded. What else could I do, I reasoned, than to surrender to the thrill of penning the next  National Book Award recipient? And so I succumbed to the tug and once again invested myself in the all-consuming process of writing my children's book novel four-part series. For about ten minutes. And then I realized why I had stopped writing twenty years ago. It is hard work. Once again, I felt completely stymied in my writing. 

That is, until one tiny, life-changing event that occurred not many days after I heard that 50,000-70,000-word-chapter-book siren call.

​I want to tell you the amazing path that I have been on for nearly the entire last year.  It all started when I opened an email from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) of which I am  a member. That email had a link attached which highlighted a future guest speaker at an upcoming SCBWI event. Clicking on that link opened a "good and all-giving" Pandora's Box that I will forever be thrilled that I unleashed into my life. The content of that link - and where it eventually led me - will be the subject of my next update. I hope that you will return to find out what that "box" contained!
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    Author

    Edward J. Denecke is an aspiring children's book author.
    His first book was published in 2014.

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