Working Title

Back to work on my YA desert adventure story. My "elevator pitch" (you know, you step onto the elevator with Steven Spielberg and have until the next floor to sell your idea) describes it as "Patty Hearst meets Lawrence of Arabia." You may have to be a Baby Boomer to get the references. I'll hope the agents and editors at the writing conference grasp the concept.

Anyway...I'm back to chapter one and slimming down the existing draft. And I'm implementing a technique that I've considered in the past. I am "journaling" the personal thoughts of each main character in the scene. I'm hoping this will make the writing better represent the "voice" of the characters and more vividly convey their thoughts through their actions.

The main character is Jezhene, the 16-year-old daughter of a powerful Water Lord of the Nezhadd Desert, a setting that resembles Oregon's high desert. Jezhene is good at heart, she's just lived a spoiled and pampered life in a palace where water flows freely in reflecting pools and fountains. She is only days away from leaving for her wedding when her prescribed life takes a detour. Jezhene has a few lessons to learn in the desert and, by the end of the adventure, she is less self-absorbed and has a new respect for the desert and the nomadic Badawi that roam it.

The story, of course, includes beautiful desert horses.

It would be nice to have a new draft nearly completed by the Willamette Writers Conference. But since the agents and editors generally ask for only the first three chapters, I'll try to make sure those are fairly polished by August 1.