Child Narrator/Wise Author

If you are writing a story/memoir in which the narrator is nine years old and you are wondering how you combine a nine year old's voice with the wisdom of a forty-something author, this blog is for you!!


The best example of this is Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women. I keep it on my desk at all times.

The character Del starts off as a nine year old just as you want to do. Del narrates the story and by the end she's about eighteen or so. So right away, it's a good model to show the developing narrator. It is told in first person, but 3rd is fine too if you're doing that lovely "limited third person" which is so close to first person.

So all lights are green. If you could just pay close attention to what Munro is doing in terms of narration, everything will be cool. It's a combo of young girl and this "other component" let's call it "the narrator." First, let's look at the young girl's voice. Here's an example from Lives of Girls and Women.

"Can you write?" said Uncle Benny to me, at his place, when I was reading on the porch and emptying tea leaves from a tin teapot; they dripped over the railing. "How long you been goin' to school? What grade are you in?"

"Grade Four when it starts again."

"Come in here."

He brought me to the kitchen table, cleared away an iron he was fixing and a saucepan with holes in the bottom, brought a new writing-pad, bottle of ink, a fountain pen. "Do me some practice writing here."

(Okay so the scene continues like that. Now let's look at a bit of narration).

He could read very well but he could not write. He said the teacher at school had beat him and beat him, trying to beat writing into him, and respected her for it, but it never did any good. When he needed a letter written he usually got my father and mother to do it.

Okay, notice the adult narrator voice never intrudes over top of the child voice. The vocabulary stays in a nine year old's grasp. The child is in reporting mode. So where is the wisdom coming from? Ahh, that's coming from the author/narrator. It's really subtle but what the author/narrator chooses to focus on is the key. The author/narrator is focusing on a serious topic: literacy.

So, in conclusion. The voice is the nine year old child's. The author's voice never intrudes -- only her wisdom, only her sensibility if you will.

Don't know if this helps you, but I hope so!!!

All you need is a COMPUTER to read an EBOOK

Here's how it's done if you want to read an ebook available on Amazon.com.

1. Go to Amazon.com
2. Put the author's name into the Search: Laurie Elmquist
3. Click on the book you'd like to purchase: My Mother's Dress.
4. On this page, you'll find details about the book such as a product description and editorial reviews. It's a good idea to read these so you know what you are buying. My Mother's Dress is a single essay (5000 words).
5. At the right of the screen are three options. (You will choose the third!!) The first is Buy it Now. The second one (scroll down) is Sample a Selection. The third option is: Read books on your computer or other mobile devices. (This is the one you want to click on to get the FREE app.)
6. You will see a list of options:

• GET KINDLE FOR PC





• GET KINDLE FOR IPHONE





• GET KINDLE FOR BLACKBERRY





• GET KINDLE FOR IPAD





• GET KINDLE FOR ANDROID

If you want to read ebooks on your computer, it's the first one.

There's lots of reasons why you might want to sample the experience of an ebook without the expense of buying a Reader. This blog tells you how you can be up and reading for as little as the price of a book -- 1.99 for My Mother's Dress (smile!!)

I hope this blog entry is helpful.

Novels do not take place on a regular day!

My new novel is underway, a delicious stage where anything is possible. It's a good time to consider that readers crave exciting experiences and extraordinary insight. They want to be taken on a journey. I'm trying to ask a lot of What if? as I go.

What if the ice on the lake isn't as solid as my narrator thinks it is? Or a question like this: What's the worst thing my narrator could do? Remember that novels do not take place on an ordinary day. They pull together all the extraordinary bits in a year or ten years and distill it into something full of tension and intrigue, and yes....even in a literary novel. Especially in a literary novel.

My Mother's Dress -- second ebook "short"

If you have ever crocheted or been given a blanket (poncho, vest, hat, sweater) crocheted by a loved one, you will enjoy My Mother's Dress. Besides being about a dress, it's a story about surviving Ontario winters. When my family moved from the city to the country, my mother wasn't exactly prepared for the adventure, especially the isolation of winter. You'll find the story on Amazon.com.

My ebook is for sale on Amazon.com

What a great feeling to post my first ebook. The collection is called Back to the Land and the first 2000 word memoir is called My Father's Parrot (available at Amazon.com).

I'm already hard at work on my second one, My Mother's Dress, which will be published by the end of the summer. I'm hooked on the idea of presenting them as ebooks. I like having input into the cover concept. I like seeing the books for sale on Amazon. I've been working on them for the last ten years, so it feels wonderful to publish them.

I hope you enjoy the books.

My Father's Parrot

Lately I've been blogging about my first ebook, a memoir called My Father's Parrot. I thought I'd post a picture from the 70s of my father with Lapa. He's feeding the bird a grape.

Parrots only bond with one other person (usually it's another bird but a person will do). My father brought out the best in our parrot. He could flip the bird over on his back and tickle his belly, he could get Lapa to dance an old-man shuffle, and he could get him to talk and imitate the noise of the vacuum.

Becoming an Indie Author

In order to publish my own books, I've established a company called Wildwood Ebooks. I've registered it with British Columbia. Name Search: $14.00 and Cost of Registration:$ 72.00 (You can do your name search for free, but I didn't know this at the time.)

I've applied for an ISBN number for my ebook.

Now onto preparing the manuscript!

I'm following the requirements as specified by Kindle Direct Publishing, but I've decided to upload an html document, rather than a .doc file. It's a bit more complicated, but I've gone this route because various people said that it will yield a better result.

Cover Art: I've given the following information to the designer:

Horizontally: minimum of 500 pixels
Vertically: minimum of 1280 pixels

Be sure to Save at 72 dots per inch (dpi) for optimal viewing on the web.

The cover will be delivered to me as a JPEG and then I'll insert it into my document.

So far so good!!