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A writer's notes on family

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Season 7 Begins! Nora is writing a story!

August 17, 2019 by Sue Campbell

This season 12-year-old Nora is going to write a short story using all of the story structure principles we’ve been discussing for the past year on the podcast. We discuss how to start story planning. Follow along and write your own story!

And Not got her first haircut since second grade.

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Season 7, Episode 1: Nora Starts Story Planning

Things we mention (or forget to mention) that you should check out:

  • Story Grid for all things related to the 5 Commandments.
  • More information on the four-act structure can be found at Storyfix.com.
  • Our mailing list! Sign up today and you’ll get cool subscriber only perks like bonus material.

And, don’t forget, you can now, buy, read and enjoy my book: The Cat, the Cash, the Leap & the List. (And leave a review when you’re done, pretty please.)

Disclosure: By the way, all of these links are affiliate links, so if you buy something, you pay the same, but Nora gets a few pennies for her big 8th grade trip fund.

Filed Under: Podcast, Writing

S6, E8: The School for Good and Evil

August 6, 2019 by Sue Campbell

Nora had to pilot the podcast ship this week due to severe little sister interference. And burning beeswax. And she did a fine job analyzing the first book in the popular series The School for Good and Evil using the four-act structure.

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Season 6, Episode 8: The School for Good & Evil (Book 1) – Story Structure Analysis

Things we mention (or forget to mention) that you should check out:

  • Story Grid for all things related to the 5 Commandments.
  • More information on the four-act structure can be found at Storyfix.com.h
  • The School for Good and Evil series can be purchased on Amazon.
  • Our mailing list! Sign up today and you’ll get cool subscriber only perks like bonus material.

And, don’t forget, you can now, buy, read and enjoy my book: The Cat, the Cash, the Leap & the List. (And leave a review when you’re done, pretty please.)

Disclosure: By the way, all of these links are affiliate links, so if you buy something, you pay the same, but Nora gets a few pennies for her big 8th grade trip fund.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Stories We See and Stories We Don’t See

July 28, 2019 by Sue Campbell

Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash

As a writer, I feel like my brain is both my biggest asset and my biggest liability. I suspect this is true for most writers.

We are storytellers, and we’re really good at it. And when we’re sitting down to write a work of fiction, we know that we’re writing a story. It may feel like truth to us—and it should. That’s what we do. But on some level, we always know it’s fiction.

Here’s the thing, as we’re going through our days with our families, at work, everywhere, we are also telling ourselves stories. All day long. We’re creating stories in our minds about what’s possible and what’s not possible; how good we are, and how terrible we are. But we often don’t recognize the fact that they are also essentially fiction. There are so many stories constantly swirling around our heads, and we don’t recognize them as fiction that is synonymous with what we do when we sit down to produce a book.

But I submit to you, even if you’re not a writer, that many of the things that you think are fiction. And those thoughts are interfering with the opportunities that we see around us or that we don’t see around us.

So, I’m working on identifying when I’m just telling myself a story. And then consciously choosing to tell a story that serves me better.

We are really good at creating barriers that don’t need to be there.

So much of the work I do as a book launch coach (my day job) is about helping writers create healthier mindsets and get past their mental blocks about finding an audience for their books. There’s so much fear and so many stories that are shackling us to imaginary limitations.

One of the things I’m starting to do is ask writers to start at their preferred end.

(I tweaked this exercise from the amazing life coach, Martha Beck.)

You can try this too, even if you’re not a writer…

So we’re gonna flip to the last page of our story…

It’s five years from now, and you’ve hit it big. Whatever big looks like for you. I want you to close your eyes and really think about waking up and having everything you want. Everything you’ve been dreaming about. What does that look like? How does your day go? Who do you talk to? Where do you live?

Just revel in it. What do you feel like as this future you? What does your body feel like? Does it help you relax? Does it help you not to grasp? Just sit with that for a minute.

The crazy part is that you don’t really want whatever it is you just imagined. You want the feeling state you think it’s going to create.

And you just created that feeling state. And it’s no less real and no more real than the feeling state that’s created when we tell ourselves, “I’m no good. I can’t do it.”

Those two feeling states are both the result of fantasies, right? So if we’re gonna delude ourselves with our own mind stories that are always playing, let’s use our powers for good, okay? Let’s use our storytelling powers to actually lift ourselves up, and create a feeling state that’s going to serve us throughout our day so that we can come from a place of that quiet confidence.

Let’s replace that nagging voice of resistance and shame.

On purpose.

Let’s start recognizing that voice of resistance inside our heads is debilitating and it’s not real.

If we’re gonna be debilitated by something that’s not real, we can make a decision to shift that and say, “All right, I’m going create something else that’s going to help me feel better.”

None of our stories are real, but they have the power to create a feeling of truth inside us. So choose your story carefully.

Filed Under: Big Themes

The Mommy’s Pen Podcast -S6, E7: Mary Poppins

July 26, 2019 by Sue Campbell

It’s summer and we’re lazy so we’re doing a movie instead of a book. AGAIN. And we’re going backwards. Last episode, we talked about Mary Poppins Returns and this week we’re doing the original movie.

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Season 6, Episode 7: Mary Poppins – Story Structure Analysis

Things we mention (or forget to mention) that you should check out:

  • Story Grid for all things related to the 5 Commandments.
  • Mary Poppins can be found on Amazon.
  • Our mailing list! Sign up today and you’ll get cool subscriber only perks like bonus material.

And, don’t forget, you can now, buy, read and enjoy my book: The Cat, the Cash, the Leap & the List. (And leave a review when you’re done, pretty please.)

Disclosure: By the way, all of these links are affiliate links, so if you buy something, you pay the same, but Nora gets a few pennies for her big 8th grade trip fund.

Filed Under: Podcast

The Mommy’s Pen Podcast – Season 6, Episode 6: Mary Poppins Returns

July 14, 2019 by Sue Campbell

It’s summer and we’re lazy so we’re doing a movie instead of a book. We liked Mary Poppins Returns way more than we thought we would and we’re analyzing the four act structure.

We also have two special guests, Alma (age 4) and Romeo, a visiting dog friend.

If that’s not enough, we also dive into the fact that Nora’s a Rebel and I’m an Obliger, as defined by Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies framework.

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Season 6, Episode 6: Mary Poppins Returns – Review and Story Structure Analysis

Things we mention (or forget to mention) that you should check out:

  • Story Fix for more details on the four act structure.
  • Story Grid for all things related to genre.
  • Mary Poppins returns can be found on Amazon and Netflix.
  • The Four Tendencies is a framework by Gretchen Rubin and you can find out your tendency by taking this quiz.
  • Our mailing list! Sign up today and you’ll get cool subscriber only perks like bonus material.

And, don’t forget, you can now, buy, read and enjoy my book: The Cat, the Cash, the Leap & the List. (And leave a review when you’re done, pretty please.)

Disclosure: By the way, all of these links are affiliate links, so if you buy something, you pay the same, but Nora gets a few pennies for her big 8th grade trip fund.

Filed Under: Podcast

How A Dollhouse From The Jazz Age Is Inspiring My New Novel

July 9, 2019 by Sue Campbell

I just started draft four of my newest novel.

And it’s an excellent reminder that when you sit down to do the work, the muse meets you there.

The story structure is in place and my excellent writing group composed of two pro editors confirmed it’s solid. This draft will be all about going deeper with the characters and refining the POV and backstory for each of them.

Here are the main players:

Martha Fitzgerald at 15—You may remember 10-year-old Martha from The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.) She’s still Martha, she knows what she wants and is determined to get it. She wants to be a grown-up already. And an artist. But now, her hormones have kicked in and threaten to overcome her innate good sense.

It feels a bit risky to use the pre-pubescent character from my middle grade novel for this book—which is shaping up to be either young adult or just plain adult. (This will be a book for you instead of your middle graders.) But I’m respecting my initial instinct. I wanted to write a novel inspired by the movie Rushmore (directed by Wes Anderson) but with the main character as a girl who goes to Waldorf School instead of a boy who goes to an exclusive prep school. When I started imagining the story and the character, I immediately knew it was Martha.

Mateo Alano—Mateo is the new music teacher at Martha’s school, and the subject of her hormonal surge. But his intentions couldn’t be more honorable, even if he doesn’t always know the best way to deal with Martha. He plays guitar and hails from Spanish. Does any young woman stand a chance?

Evelyn Shepherd—Evelyn is a new teacher too. She teaches handwork: knitting, sewing, crochet and the like, which is an important part of the Waldorf curriculum. And she befriends Martha, who’s acting as her assistant this year. Evelyn is still very young, just twenty-five. And her professional and personal boundaries are not yet fully developed, to put it kindly. She admires and cares about Martha, and tries to keep her out of trouble, but ends up being the cause of Martha’s broken heart.

I’ve really been struggling to come up with a title for this book. But yesterday after working on Chapter 1 of the new draft, a word dropped out of the sky and straight into my head that is helping me understand Martha more and that I believe will guide this draft: Pastiche.

Martha is imitating what she thinks adults are like. And, as a budding artist, she’s imitating the style of those she admires. She needs to come into her authentic self, and her authentic age.

I’m thinking Pastiche is the title of the book. 

Which lead me into some research on art and artists for Martha imitate. 

And here’s who I found: Carrie Walter Stettheimer (1869–1944) who created an amazing replica of the Manhattan apartment she shared with her feminist sisters (one was a painter and one was a writer and they all eschewed marriage) and that served as a salon to Jazz Age luminaries like Marcel Duchamp, Carl Van Vechten, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

There was already a gigantic dollhouse in the story, but this is helping me see how Martha got the idea and what types of things swirl around in her head.

I’m now down a beautiful rabbit hole and can’t wait to see where it all ends up. You can read more about the Stettheimer sisters here.

Filed Under: Books, Writing

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What kind of blog is this?

This is a blog for PARENTS. True, the writer, Sue Campbell, writes books for kids. But this blog is for grown-ups. It has some swearing and would be super boring for kids. Except for the swearing.

The PODCAST is for KIDS and PARENTS. In fact, my twelve-year-old daughter is my co-host.

If your kids like Sue's books, send them over to suecampbellbooks.com where there's some kid-friendly content. EVEN BETTER, join the mailing list. You get stuff for grown-ups and printable stuff for kids. And sometimes there will be super ill-advised giveaways or coloring contests for free books.

MORE ABOUT SUE: She makes an ACTUAL LIVING from writing words and marketing books and lives with her husband, two daughters, six chickens and one messy house rabbit in Portland, Oregon. And yes, Portland IS that weird. She really couldn't be any luckier.

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