Sunday, May 6, 2012

Dust It Off Bloghop - Day 2

Yay, it's day two of the Dust It Off Bloghop, hosted by Cortney Pearson and Theresa Paolo.

The Dust It Off Bloghop will be three days, May 3rd, 5th and 7th.

We've all had those manuscripts that we poured our heart into, fell in love with the characters and still think of them at random, but unfortunately had to shelf. Now it's time for a little spring cleaning. Take out those manuscripts and Dust It Off!

The first day, May 3rd: We want you to post a 1-2 sentence pitch (Great way to practice pitches) about the shelved WIP.

The second day, May 5th: Post your favorite excerpt (300-350 words)

The third day, May 7th: Post what you learned from this WIP. You become a stronger, more rounded writer which each manuscript and we want to know what this particular work taught you.

So after I posted my pitch for Three Left, the novella I wrote when I was 12, I got a lot of questions about the powers that the kids had. I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and answer that question with my excerpt:

“You’ve got a nice saxophone,” Amber commented, eying the gold colored buttons enviously. “Can I take a look?”

“Sure, but be careful,” Raissa warned. “It’s the best sax in the school.” Amber nodded and started to take the sax. But Raissa let go too soon, and it started to fall. Instinctively, Sal concentrated and stopped the instrument just before it hit the ground. For a moment it hovered, before Sal forced it into his hands.

Charlie, Amber, and Raissa stared at the youngest in shock. Realizing what had just happened, he lowered his gaze to the ground. “Here’s your saxophone, Raissa,” he whispered, his voice nearly drowned out by the background noises. “I’m gonna... ah... go, I guess.” He started to back away as she took her instrument.

“So, you’ve got a power, too,” she mused, stroking her chin comically for a second. Sal froze in his tracks. He regarded her with puzzlement. “I can do something like that,” she explained, looking away a little nervously. “I can turn back time.”

“No way,” Sal replied in disbelief, his jaw dropping.

“Way.”

“And I can talk to animals,” Charlie piped up, turning their attention away from each other and to him as he fingered the chain-linked necklace with a picture of a dog on it, the first animal he’d ever spoken to.

“And I can heal people by pressing a pad to their injury,” Amber chimed in, raising an eyebrow and patting her pocket self-consciously. She always kept her magic pad there, in case of an emergency.

“Kind of coincidental that we all met,” Sal offered, letting his voice trail off meaningfully.

“Something must be toying with us, something much greater and more powerful than we can imagine,” Amber suggested, getting into the swing of things. Raissa couldn’t help but snicker at the melodrama.

“I’m not going to be toyed with,” Charlie said defensively. “Let’s go find this thing and what it wants with us.” He pounded his fist into his hand and Raissa now giggled quietly at him.

“Yeah!” But when Sal joined in, she had no choice but to accept what was about to happen.

7 comments:

  1. Aww! This has such an air of youthful innocence to it - I love it!

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  2. This is cute! Very well done for a 12-year-old! I'd love to read what you can do now. :)

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  3. That's really impressive that you wrote this when you were twelve. It's really sweet, and I am curious about how they got their powers.

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  4. Nice follow to your pitch. I still think its so cool that you wrote this when you were 12 :) Thanks for sharing.

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  5. I like the byplay between the characters, how they giggle at the melodrama. Nice job.

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  6. This is great, I love their dialogue!

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  7. You wrote this when you were 12!!! Wow! I'm beyond impressed. Seriously if you wrote this when you were 12 I can only imagine the skill level you are at now.

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