The Multimedia Issue

My vision for Heaven's Wait had always included more than mere text on a page. I wanted others to see the world as I saw it, the characters as I saw them, the sounds as I heard them. Now that the first major story about Heaven's Wait was complete, I needed to find a way to go back to those visual and audio elements and figure out a way to integrate them into my work, so others could experience them.

Linda Jay Geldens, my copy editor, and I got together for a very pleasant lunch. She asked me how I planned to proceed with R.J.'s Story.  I told her that, more and more, I was feeling that traditional publishing was not going to fit the bill. She thought I might be right. Linda thought R.J.'s Story had huge potential to become an animated movie, and that there was great marketing potential for the characters of Heaven's Wait. Her words made me realize I needed to stick to my gut feelings about preserving all that I had envisioned and already created. The illustrations and sounds were important. I jokingly told Linda I was tempted to go knocking on Pixar's door; the company is right down the street from my work. But I knew there was a fat chance would answer the door. Disney/Pixar's story ideas were largely created in-house, and I was dreaming to think otherwise. Besides, my primary goal was to take my work to meaningful places in people's hearts, like that of Linda's, and those places weren't always in a giant commercial world.

So I dug into my numerous character illustration and sound files, most of which had sat unattended for several years. They brought sentimental smiles and reminded me why I had started down this path in the first place. The bulk of my original manuscript still sat on top of my bookcase, wrapped with a brittle rubber band and blanketed with a layer of dust. But the modern-day characters were still alive within the pages, and the illustrations and music I had compiled were all about those characters.

It was time to start bringing all that was Heaven's Wait so far--R.J.'s Story, pictures, music, the Drippils and their activities--to a common home. So I veered down another side path and started work on the Heaven's Wait website, the logical centerpiece for my ongoing project.

R.J.'s Story: The Last Step, Copy Editing

Time and again, I've read that it is wise and recommended to have a professional editor review your manuscript before you submit it to an agent or publisher. And it's a must, if you self-publish your work. Since I had yet to determine my publishing strategy, I decided to take this one last step, and make sure the manuscript was tweaked to its best possible form.

I contacted a wonderful copy editor by the name of Linda Jay Geldens. I met her at a Bay Area self-publishing conference I had attended back when my husband, Mike, was just coming out of his illness. I kept her business card, knowing I would most likely make use of her services somewhere down the line. She was shocked that I remembered her, and glad to hear that my manuscript had finally reached this stage.

I sent it off to her and hoped for the best. Right away, she emailed me saying that, so far, she loved the story. I emailed her back, saying I hoped that feeling would continue. Not having worked with an editor before, I didn't know what kind of corrections or feedback to expect. My work had already been dissected so many times, yet I was ready to accept the fact that further criticism could do nothing but improve the end result.

What I didn't expect were the hundreds, maybe thousands, of red marks (suggestions) that accompanied the returned manuscript. I'm surprised my eyes didn't fall out of their sockets! Linda does admit to being an overly zealous editor. New punctuation marks, rearranged words and phrases, and a fair share of questions oozed from the pages. I had a good laugh, set the manuscript aside and waited until my brain was ready to accept a new round of "punishment." But as I eventually worked my way through the pages, I found that 99 percent of her marks made sense. By cutting and pasting, making subtle grammatical changes, and tweaking vocabulary, she made the pages flow like they never had before, without interfering in the least with the storyline. I was extremely pleased with her expertise and attention to detail.

What surprised me even more, however, was the fact that Linda absolutely adored the story, the characters, and the world of Heaven's Wait. "I'm hooked," she kept telling me. She felt especially connected to one of the younger characters, as well as to the unique animals who inhabit the land. Here was an objective reader with no previous knowledge of my creative journey, someone who has literally read thousands of writings, who was actually over-the-top about my crazy little world. What more can we ask than to touch someone's life in a meaningful way? Isn't that why we're all here?

Needless to say, I highly recommend professional editing. From what I've seen, it can do nothing but enhance a body of work, making it that much more meaningful to the end reader.

( Learn more about Linda at http://www.lindajaygeldens.com/ )

Finishing R.J.'s Story

Finally…the time had come for me to return to Heaven's Wait and R.J.'s Story. Everyone else's needs seemed to be satisfied for the moment, and (except for my day job at our coffee company) I was ready to set aside time to complete R.J.'s Story once and for all. As far as I was concerned, the suggestion that I file the story away as background research was not an option. R.J. and his beloved community of creatures would have started an uprising in Heaven's Wait, insisting they deserved much more than to be relegated to research. They had stories to tell, songs to sing, and personalities that deserved exposure. Despite the fact that R.J.'s Story was the historical view of Heaven's Wait and that it laid the groundwork for future stories, it had its own charm and importance in the series.

I was also ready to solve the dilemma of identifying the audience for my work. The adults and young people outside the publishing world who had critiqued the drafts of my story over the years had never been concerned with the appropriate age group or genre. In fact, when I hinted to adults that I was focusing on a tween/young adult audience, they argued that the subject matter was just as easily suitable for adults, even though most of the characters were cartoon-like and the language was simplistic. I finally realized that the key to the audience had been sitting in front of me the whole time, embedded in a message I had written in the first few pages of the manuscript…To Playful Spirits Everywhere. It wasn't up to me to decide who those playful spirits were!

So, in the final rounds of reading, editing, re-writing, and improving R.J.'s Story, my job became clear. I simply needed to tell the story as best I could. I tried to make each scene believable, each sentence relevant, and each character integral to the story. I've learned so much about the writing process over the years. Time will tell if I have learned enough.

Note: R.J.'s Story is available for purchase in ebook formats at Smashwords.com. Visit the book's page on Smashwords to see a detailed description of the story. You may also read a 20% free sample of the story on your computer by clicking on the "Online Reading" link at the bottom of the page. Come see what Heaven's Wait is all about! Link: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/104130  Reviews and "Likes" are welcome.

Delightful New Characters: The Drippils

Approaching deadlines from the Trademark Office led me to the task of inventing a new cast of characters that lived somewhere in the land of Heaven's Wait. What would I name this new species? I already knew where that question would lead me…back to Google, to see if I could come up with a word that wasn't already in use. That research was always very time-consuming. I didn't know who these characters were, what they looked like or where in Heaven's Wait they lived. I just started thinking up nonsensical words and testing them against the Google and Trademark Office sites. Someone somewhere was already using most of the words I assumed I had just invented. It was surely a tedious trial-and-error process.

 

Finally I came up with a word that no one seemed to lay claim to…Drippils. Okay, that sounded like fun. But what the heck were Drippils? It didn't take long for my imagination to kick in. They were live, animated drops of water, of course. They were children. They wore colorful hats. They were silly and playful and moved about in various ways. While one character hopped, another flew, and still another jumped. They lived in a tiny community that was nestled under a droopy vovo plant, which was already an element of vegetation in the land of Heaven's Wait. The Drippils' houses were carved from the precious fruit of the land; their fences were made of wood slivers; their chimneys also wore hats. The names of female Drippils ended in "ee," while those of the male Drippils ended in "ey." I felt I now had enough information to get me off the ground with product development under the appropriate trademark categories.

As I suspected, however, the Drippils soon took on a life of their own. Once I started drawing the various figures in Illustrator, I saw their personalities popping out at me. And as I developed the products, I imagined all kinds of children's stories and activities that could revolve around the Drippils. If I wasn't careful, I could end up with even more on my plate, which was already overflowing! So for the most part, I stuck to the original list of products that was in my trademark application: a storybook, a diary, a recipe book, a writing journal, greeting cards, bookmarks, and a CD that included a multimedia version of the storybook, as well as home-printable journals, diaries, and Drippil coloring pages. Of course, I couldn't help but throw a couple of handmade card games into the mix.

It took months to design and tweak, hand-produce, and take specimen photos of the various products. Once I had mailed sample Drippil packages off to a small trial audience, I sent the photos, along with the shipping receipts, to the Trademark Office, and kept my fingers crossed that the requirements had been met. After a couple of months passed, I got word that my trademarks had gone through. About five months later, my official Certificates of Registration arrived.

Thanks to the Drippils, Heaven's Wait finally had a legitimate place in the real world! 

Drippils products will soon be available for online purchase. Take a peek at the offerings.

http://www.heavenswait.com/ShopDrippilsStore.aspx

Heaven's Wait...Sidetracked Again: Trademark Issues!

As I stepped back to decide how to proceed with R.J's Story, which seemed to be hanging in an audience neverland, I suddenly felt the deadline of Heaven's Wait's trademark completion looming large. Two years had already passed since I had first applied for the trademark, and there were still no products to show that Heaven's Wait was actively involved in "commerce," which was a requirement for securing the mark. I had no idea how long it would take for R.J.'s Story to become a printed good, and I hadn't even begun to develop accompanying products that were part of my long-term vision--bookmarks, greeting cards, cookbooks, diaries, and music/activity CDs that followed the Heaven's Wait theme. If I didn't develop some of these items and get them into the marketplace within the next year, I would lose the trademark on the name. After all the time, effort and extension fees I had poured into this project, I knew I needed to do something to complete the process.

The problem was that I didn't want to expose my unique, original characters to the world before the initial story was published. What a spoiler that would be! The personalities, creatures and otherworldly elements that were so endearing to me would have no meaning to anyone else if they were to suddenly appear on randomly presented products.

After many a discussion with my trusty Heaven's Wait consultant (my son Mark), we came up with a solution. Mark suggested I create a line of characters that live somewhere else in Heaven's Wait, simple creatures that have no connection to my stories. They could be introduced to the world without jeopardizing my original vision, and the products designed around them would satisfy the requirements of the Trademark Office.

It was time to get busy, reboot my imagination, and come up with some simple, fun, new characters to occupy just a tiny corner of the slowly expanding world of Heaven's Wait.

An Eye-Opening Side Trip to the SCBWI Conference

After several grueling months of nursing my husband through a whopper of an illness, I was not only more than ready to get back to reality, I was anxious to dive back into the world of Heaven’s Wait. I really missed my characters, and the creative process in general.

As a way of jump-starting my reentry into creativity, I decided to attend my first SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) Summer Conference, since I knew there was still a lot I needed to learn about the realm of children’s books. The workshops and list of speakers seemed appealing, and the schedule included an opportunity to submit a sample of my manuscript for a review by a professional in the industry. I submitted the first 15 pages of R.J.’s Story, along with a synopsis, and headed to L.A.

At the least, I was blown away and inspired by all I experienced. There were over 1,000 enthusiastic writers and illustrators in attendance, along with an impressive faculty of literary professionals. I was especially taken by keynote speeches by Sherman Alexie, a vibrant, wildly funny Native American author of several award-winning novels and poems, as well as celebrated children’s writer, Richard Peck, whose masterful words brought tears to my eyes. YA novelists Kathleen Duey and Ellen Hopkins had a wealth of knowledge and inspiration to share, as did several agents and editors from renowned literary agencies and publishing companies.

I had a private manuscript consultation with one of the faculty members. He said he liked the story a lot, but his main concern was that the hero (R.J.) was not a young person. He couldn't think of a children’s or young adult book whose central character was not a child or young person, and cited several examples of heroes and heroines from children’s literature, including Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter. I needed to find a way to bring a young character into the mix, or a young audience wouldn’t be motivated to read my work. Or, I could put R.J.’s Story aside until the next book I was writing was published, since it was going to be chock-full of young animated characters.  R.J.’s Story could then be released as a prequel to that book.

“Thanks so much for the feedback,” I said with a smile, and quietly slipped out of the consultation hall, my head in a spin. 

So how was I now to proceed? One person told me R.J.’s Story belonged in the children’s book genre. Another told me children wouldn’t be attracted to the book if an elderly person were the main character. I told a fellow attendee about my dilemma; her comment was that perhaps I should move on to the next book and make R.J.’s Story my background research, instead of its own book.

Opinion overload! I left the conference filled with inspiration in many respects, but I realized I now needed to step back, weigh my options, and ultimately, listen to my gut.There was much to consider before I moved any further into my project.

(Learn more about:

SCBWI at http://www.scbwi.org/

Sherman Alexie at http://www.fallsapart.com/

Richard Peck at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Peck_%28writer%29

Kathleen Duey at http://www.kathleenduey.com/ 
Ellen Hopkins at http://www.ellenhopkins.com/ )

Hurricane "Illness"

After reshuffling the scenes and chapters within R.J.’s Story, I was ready to dig into each chapter and make it as full of life as I could. I would introduce my oddball characters as early as possible, find a way to convert long narrations into conversations, and correct a couple of chapters to make sure the entire story was told from R.J.’s perspective. I was excited about tackling these issues and finally making the story as good as it could be.

Then…out of nowhere and with no warning, my husband Mike was slammed with a major illness. On a casual Saturday afternoon in November 2008, Mike sat in front of the TV watching a Cal football game while I got ready to attend my high school reunion with him that evening. A few minutes later, I stepped out of the shower to find him curled up on the bed in extreme pain. 

“Acute pancreatitis,” they told us in the emergency room. When we heard those words, we had no way of knowing how our lives would change for most of the following year. Mike, who had never been in a hospital before, was suddenly a helpless patient, too doped up on morphine to realize what was happening to him. In an instant, I became his full-time nurse, advocate, illness administrator and emotional anchor.

There were dizzying months of hospitals, emergency rooms, home care, tube-feedings, complications, specialists, procedures, and a mountain of medications. All Mike could do was ride the storm and tolerate everything that happened to his body. For me, it was clear from the start that normal life needed to be set aside so I could devote myself to helping my husband survive this mean, mean illness. I adjusted to sleepless nights of implementing his round-the-clock med schedule, coordinated tests and procedures with specialists, and attended to Mike’s constant needs. I became the self-proclaimed CEO of his surviving his illness.

Thank goodness, our two sons were close by to take over our regular lives for us. Son Shaun took on the huge responsibility of keeping the family business running smoothly and keeping the accompanying stresses of it all out of Mike's reach, since Mike could handle NO stress in his fragile condition. Son Mark, who lived with us at the time, spread himself thin by assisting his brother, assuming my regular work and household roles and assisting me with the nursing duties. Our family was presented with a major test; yet somehow we managed to pass it.

Miracles do happen because Mike survived the storm. His recovery took several months, and he is still improving to this day. When I finally came up for air and remembered that R.J.’s Story even existed, I realized that my project would always be there for me. I knew I would get back to it at some point, after we reassembled the pieces of our normal life. I think we're still reassembling in a few ways. In the meantime, I tucked away for safekeeping the many lessons the medical emergency taught me, knowing they could well influence my constantly evolving project somewhere down the line. And we all breathed a sigh of relief when the turmoil finally faded to calm.

On a brighter day many months later!

Storyboard Vision

Once the newly expanded R.J.’s Story was complete, I sent it back to story consultant Brad Schreiber. I knew I would need help, because so much of the manuscript was new material, and it had been proven that new material that came out of my head was far from ready for publication. As expected, Brad found new elements that needed attention, so he sent the manuscript back to me for further revisions. But, because I worked on my project during my "leisure" time, it took me 4 months to attend to those needs and again send the manuscript back to Brad for one last round of advice.

As usual, Brad was gracious with his criticism, but more firm about issues that needed resolution in order for the story to work. He thought it took too long for the residents of Heaven’s Wait to be introduced; certain character backstories needed to be livelier; all the necessary elements of a good story were there, but needed reorganization; and, for the sake of young readers, the length of the chapters needed to be more consistent. As most writers know, I had to fight the defensive urges that wanted to rise and sit on the comments for a couple of days.

 

I slowly accepted the fact that almost all of Brad's suggestions were accurate. What I decided to do was make myself a massive storyboard. First, I went through all the story chapters and gave each scene a name. Next, I made a column in an Excel spreadsheet for each chapter. Under the chapter titles, I listed the names of the scenes. This printed worksheet ended up being several pages in width, but once I spread it out on a table, I was able to see the entire story, scene by scene. What an eye-opener!

Then it was a matter of shuffling scenes, shortening some chapters and lengthening others… all the while making sure there was some enticement at the end of each chapter to make the reader keep turning the pages. I was working my way toward a story that was much more concise, and certainly more fluid. And during this process, I built myself a storyboard template to use for future story development.

My Heaven’s Wait folder was rapidly outgrowing its bounds.

Trilogy: The Return to R.J.

After putting aside nearly 900 pages of tales about the oddball characters of Heaven's Wait, I sat down with my 33-page preface about R.J. and wondered how in the world I was ever going to turn his story into an entire book. Eventually I became very excited about delving deeper into R.J.'s initial experiences in HW and discovering what he would learn along the way.  Interesting that the story lines always seemed to write themselves, once I got going!

In the original preface, R.J.'s Story took place about 30 years ago; not many specifics about Heaven's Wait's residents were divulged. The remainder of the manuscript, however, which was now tucked away, was alive with present-day residents. So, my first task was to take the current characters back 30 years, when R.J. first arrived in Heaven's Wait. The present-day seniors needed to go back to being middle-aged, and the middle-aged folks needed to go back to being youngsters. Then new characters representing the older generation of thirty years ago had to be created to make R.J.'s story work.

I found it fairly easy to expand R.J.'s Story, once the new character base was established. I learned a lot about the new land and its inhabitants right along with R.J. As I envisioned the characters moving about in their environment, pictures of their original dwellings simply appeared in my head. And what a fascinating job it was to create the characters' history! I had the freedom to make it whatever I wanted it to be. I even got to make up their native language and dialects. While one clan's word for "I" was "Yi", another clan's word was "Ya", and still another's was "Yu". And, though the new details required more documentation so I could keep track of it all, I found myself loving the process.

I ran into difficulties, however, when I was faced with the complexities that accompanied writing about a world that existed between Earth and Heaven. My original intention in writing the tales was simply to share some of the things I've learned in life in a fun way. After all, this world I had created ended up in this location of Heaven's Wait purely on a whim.

Meanwhile, I did my best to stay away from any religious undertones that could easily have overtaken this project, since heaven and what happens after death are integral parts of the story. I tried to establish non-restrictive rules that would invite everyone into my fantasy world, regardless of their beliefs. Time would tell if I had accomplished that goal.

After 4 months of work, I was finally able to turn my 33-page preface into a 270-page story of its own. I was truly pleased with the overall storyline, and ready to send it back to story consultant Brad Schreiber for a second review.

 Learn more about Brad Schreiber at: http://www.bradschreiber.com/ and http://www.redroom.com/author/brad-schreiber