update for the end of 2011

I am happy to report that I have been busy and working well in the last few months of 2011 and am ending the year on a positive note.

Several good things have happened since the end of the summer that have substantially benefited my writing life. Things that are helping to keep me moving along “the write road”.

First, my dear friend Valija, from my original writing group, the “dissertation writing group”, way back when I first started my novel, has moved back to town after a few miserable years in Kansas. Not only is she here, but in procrastination of her academic work, she’s writing a delightful young adult book! So we’ve resumed our weekly writing sessions, making Sunday morning one of my favorite times of the week.

In addition, we’ve formed a middle grade / young adult critique group, with another friend Karen. Karen is working on a YA novel as well, plus a charming chapter book, that I keep telling her to send out as soon as possible! We are hoping to eventually attract another one or two fellow writers who are excited about working seriously on their MG/YA projects.

Until then, we are having fun, the three of us, writing at the Barnes & Noble cafe (it’s the most central option), trading “must read” titles, planning to attend events together, etc. It sure helps with motivation and inspiration, having people to talk and laugh and commiserate with!

Another exciting thing is that this fall I officially joined the SCBWI – that’s the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. And I do have to say that somehow being a member of a professional organization does make me feel more… professional. Like what I’m doing, working on my book, is actually for a real purpose, not just some story I tell people to make my life sound more glamorous.

Also, on the last Wednesday of the month, the local SCBWI chapter has a critique group that meets at the Eric Carle Museum in Hadley. It’s great. You never know who’s going to show up there as the valley is inundated with successful and talented children’s book authors and illustrators. So far I’ve been able to share two of my picture books, with very positive feedback, which was thrilling. I’m waiting on the novel for now. I’d like to have a complete readable draft first.

My friend Chrysler and I have reinstated our weekly “fresh writing” time. We are now meeting on Monday nights for a two hour write and a hot drink, which you have to include to make venturing out on a winter night that much more acceptable.

Chrysler is working on her third novel now that the first is out at a contest and the second, THE HAWLEY BOOK OF THE DEAD, will be going out to agents shortly. I have done three in-depth line edits of the HAWLEY book this year and spent a lot of time talking to Chrysler about various plot, character, and voice issues.

It is incredible to be involved in the editing and revising process on a book that is not my own, as it shows me that there is hope! That slowly, bit by bit, edit by edit, draft by draft, the book gets better and better. That books don’t just come out perfectly the first time through. That they are made slowly with a lot of blood, sweat and tears. (Okay, hopefully not blood, but sweat and tears for sure, and maybe carpal tunnel or a stiff neck or something a little less dramatic than blood).

What else? Let me think…

I’ve been reading a LOT this year. It’s good but does suck up my time – because once I’m into a good book, it’s hard to do anything else. Still, it’s important. Again, proof that it can be done! And it’s amazing how good some of the books out there are… while others aren’t as good (in my opinion). I just want my book to be one of the REALLY good ones! I really, really do.

So quickly, to wrap it up, as I know I’ve been babbling on here… HAPPY NEW YEAR and best of luck in 2012! To you, to me, and to my journey along “the write road”.

three hundred thousand miles

This week my trusty Toyota Corolla reached a HUGE milestone. On I-91 South in Springfield, on the way to Connecticut for dog class with Boca, the odometer turned to 300,000.

First of course, I was very excited. I took pictures, I called my dad, I bragged to the people at class – But then the panic set in. The reality. My car has 300,000 miles on it (with the original engine and transmission, I might add)…

Holy toledo!

What’s going to happen now? How much longer can I reasonably expect even the most hardworking, reliable, martyr of a Toyota to keep rolling?

Yikes, I guess this means I’d better get moving on my book! I’m going to need to use some of that advance money to buy a new car!

Wish me luck :)

a celebration of her life

Last month, my friend Teri died after a courageous six month battle with a very aggressive breast cancer. She was forty-one.

I have struggled to write this post ever since.

At the Celebration Of Her Life, I joined her husband Caleb, her family, her doctor, and countless friends to honor and remember Teri, to comfort each other, to cry, to laugh, and to speak over and over again of her completely contagious smile.

Teri was one of those rare people that no one has anything bad to say about. She was strong and confident. She was creative and smart and constantly involved in projects that showed just how creative and smart she was. She was the one from our early twenties on, that always had a good job, doing something she loved, that was cool and also paid the bills. She was a rocking drummer, a loving wife, an accomplished television producer, a videographer, and as of late 2010, she had achieved her dream of becoming a lawyer, which she bravely worked at until her death in June.

Sadly, I was not an active part of Teri’s life during the last several years. The Northampton music scene of the 90s was where we spent most of our time together. When my band disbanded, I gravitated toward my quieter interests of writing and riding. I regret now not keeping in good touch, but you never think that one day it will be too late to reconnect.

I have her picture hanging where I see it often and she reminds me to not take my days for granted, to learn from the way she lived her life, to work hard for the things I want, to enjoy them when I get them, to smile, to rock, to make other people smile, to be brave.

It is humbling to see some one so young and so talented lose their life. It really makes you stop and think about your own life, and what you have to leave behind when you go.

As I work my way along “the write road”… I will think of Teri often. She will inspire me to put pen to paper and to work as hard as I can to create something with my time here in this life, that will last – always.

Thank you, Teri. We miss you.

(Theresa Anne Morris June 6, 1970 – June 9, 2011)

tornado warning

A week ago Wednesday, on June 1st, I had the chance to do some primary source research for my book when there was a tornado warning in my town. I ended up in the basement with my dog, listening to the thunder crash overhead and the rain and hail pound down outside, hoping and praying that all would be okay… and kicking myself that I didn’t bring a pen and yellow writing pad.

A tornado watch means that conditions are ripe for the development of tornadic activity and to keep a close eye to the sky and ear to the weather if you’re going to be out and about… but a tornado warning is serious stuff. It means that a funnel has been spotted in your area and is either on the ground already or could be momentarily.

Here in Northampton, we were very lucky. The funnel never did touch down. However, our neighbors in several other western Massachusetts towns were not so lucky, as a huge EF-3 tornado ripped through their communities leaving a path of destruction up to a half-mile wide.

As unusual as it is for Massachusetts to have tornadoes, it is a much more common occurrence in states that are a part of Tornado Alley… like Iowa.

My book takes place in a small rural town just south of Iowa City, Iowa, and as the plot unwinds, my characters have to face some severe weather of their own, including tornados. There is a scene where Jacy and Travis and Olivia are sitting in the basement at the Beal’s house, terrified, wondering what is going on out there, as the tornado siren blares from the direction of the fairgrounds.

So thank you Universe for keeping us all safe! And for helping me to write more detail and tension into the tornado scenes in my book!

my mobile writing studio

The best place for me to think about my book is driving in the car. It’s always been that way. I’m not sure why. All the better if I happen to be driving through a rural area with open fields, away from the hustle and bustle of town and traffic. The open space unlocks something in me. I feel free out there on the open road.

I’ve always loved driving. Maybe it’s the motion, the scenery zooming by. The anticipation of whats-around-the-next-corner.

When I was a kid, we often “went for a drive” after dinner. Just to see the sights. Sometimes we’d stop for ice cream or some other treat, but mostly we’d just drive. I of course, was always hopeful that I’d see a horse, any horse, in a field by the road. And maybe that’s the emotion that driving elicits in me still. Hope.

Then, there was always an undercurrent of excitement around our drives through the countryside. If I did see a horse, would it be a tall black horse with a long mane, a chubby pinto pony, a “lucky, lucky white horse”? Would my dad pull over? Would the horse come up to the fence to say hi? I’d trail my fingers out the window of our red VW Rabbit, feel the push of the wind, smell the sweet fragrance of cut grass or hay, and dream.

Now, I think driving still helps to put me in that dream state. The one where I can be with Jacy and Travis and Olivia. I can be in Iowa even though I’m in Massachusetts.

Maybe one day I’ll realize the dream of having my own little farm, and I won’t have to drive in the car to look out at beautiful open fields. I’ll just step out the back door.

Finding a place where you work well is so important for a writer. And I think I’ve found mine. It’s in my car. My good little car. My trusty Toyota Corolla with 296,000 miles on her. She’s old but she’s not dead yet. (I hope she sticks around till the book’s done and I get some kind of advance!)

I’ve taken to heading out with my yellow writing pad and pens, driving for a while, and finding a good place to park. With windows on all four sides, it’s better than any desk. And Boca contentedly snoozing in the back seat, happy, knowing we’ll go for a walk after I’m done scribbling. It’s great. I don’ t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.

My own private mobile writing studio.

And the hope and excitement and anticipation of whats-around-the-next-corner that came to me as a child on those drives with my family, comes to me now again while I’m writing.

thank you jamie ford

I am so far behind that I don’t know where to begin. I have been terribly negligent of keeping up here at On The Write Road and I apologize to those of you loyal supporters who come back to check in on me regularly!

It’s a case of something has to give.

I guess it’s a good sign in a weird way that I haven’t made blogging a priority recently, because instead I’ve been busy trying to keep my head in my book. And time, as usual is the dictator of when and how much. The laundry still has to get done, the dog groomed and walked, the snow tires taken off, and of course there’s always work-work. Something has to pay the bills.

The good news is that now it’s not the book that’s getting pushed out.

I’d say really for the last couple of years, I’ve been struggling. I wouldn’t call it writer’s block, per se… but more of a grudging reluctance to push forward. And I never really put my finger on why until I read this little bit of advice by NYT best selling author Jamie Ford.

A few years ago, I took an online writing class at the Gotham Writer’s Workshop (which I highly recommend!) And because of that, I still get their newsletter and check out their website each month. This tiny gem of wisdom came from there.

Jamie Ford was asked about “writer’s block” and said this:

“For me, writer’s block is my subconscious telling me that what I’m working on kinda sucks. And in almost every instance it has something to do with my ending—that my ending isn’t sound, or what I’m writing will ultimately conflict with the directionality of my story. I look at those two areas and figure out what’s not working, cut, go back to the taproot of my story and proceed from there.”

You know how sometimes you can hear something and it just clicks in your brain? And that thing that’s been evading you, lingering there just out of reach, suddenly comes into perfect focus? Well, that’s what happened for me after reading Jamie Ford’s words.

That grudging reluctance to move forward that I mentioned… it’s because what I’ve been working on “kinda sucks”. And certainly not all of it sucks. But I started writing this book six years ago and I’ve learned a lot since then. I’ve read a lot since then. My writing has improved. My taste has become more discerning. And when I go back to the beginning of my book now, I think, “Yuck!”

It’s all about voice. I know I’ve said that before and I’m sure I’ll say it again.

I believe I have all the ingredients I need to make a really good middle grade novel. I want it to be good enough to stick around for years. I know it’s a matter of using just the right amount of each ingredient, stirring it just so, cooking it for just so long. But it’s a delicate process and I’ve still got a lot to do to get it all right.

The other part of what Ford said that spoke to me was, “…go back to the taproot of my story and proceed from there.” So that’s what I’m doing.

I’ll tell you more about it in another installment. Right now, the sun is shining and it’s a beautiful day. I want to go to the park and walk the dog and then find a nice place to park and write (or more accurately, work on that outline :)

hard copy

A very exciting event has occurred in my writing life… I now have a printer! Thanks to a good friend of mine who gave me a brand new one.

The first thing I did last week when I finally got it plugged in was to print everything. I printed my picture books, my short story, my poems, my bits and pieces of future projects… and then I printed the novel.

I know it’s not done, the novel, but it’s long! And it took a long time to print.

There are nineteen different chapter files; a few have only one or two pages of single-spaced text, but others have twenty-five to thirty pages; there are at least a dozen “free-write” files, comprised of scenes that were originally handwritten and are now typed in but have not yet been inserted into the corresponding chapters; and then there’s the “miscellaneous notes” file that holds thirty-three pages of everything from one-liners to multiple-paragraph chunks, also not yet placed into the body of the text… or maybe waiting to see if they’ll be used at all.

It can be a little bit overwhelming to consider all of this material in a window housed in a twelve-inch laptop screen! But now, because of the miraculous workings of this wonderful thing we call “printer”… I can hold all of these pages in my hands. The hard copy.

Piled into a big stack, they feel like a book. They look like a book.

The stack is thick and heavy. I can flip through it. No scrolling! It’s very satisfying. Or, I can spread the pages out, everywhere, all over the desk, the bed, the floor. I can see all different parts at once. This is a really important part of the process for me.

So, I just want to say how grateful I am for this gift.

No longer will I have to fess up to people that, “Well, I don’t have a printer.” And they look at me and say, “Aren’t you a writer?” And I say, “Yeah, but…”

It’s just too cool, and it has already helped beyond measure. More about that to come soon, but it’s all very exciting.

a reading by alice hoffman

It’s fascinating to hear a writer talk about their book. It almost doesn’t matter what the book is about or whether or not it’s one you might choose to read on your own. There is always something to learn, some kernel of wisdom to be found.

But it’s a special treat when the writer is someone truly extraordinary.

On Wednesday night, I attended a reading at The Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA, by New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman.

Hoffman read from her new book THE RED GARDEN, which is made up of, in her words, “interlinked short stories”. These stories take place over a period of three hundred years in the small fictional town of Blackwell, in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.

Hoffman said she, “put everything she loves about Massachusetts into this book,” and mentioned as well that several historical figures wandered into the stories, including Emily Dickinson.

In THE RED GARDEN, there is a plot of land in the town of Blackwell where everything planted on it all blooms red. I love this!

And I think it would be fair to include this book in the ever-elusive genre of magical realism, where certain magical elements blend into an otherwise realistic world; although, I wish that I had thought to ask Alice the other night what term she was most comfortable using to describe the magic in her books.

My book will also fall into the chasm of magical realism. I know I don’t openly talk about this part of my book, and only a few of you know of the magic that is found in the Iowa cornfields by my characters, Jacy and Olivia and Travis. So it was nice to hear Hoffman reveal that she’s “a big secret keeper” and that she doesn’t share much while she’s working on a book. I’m not the only one!

In answer to a question about her writing process, Hoffman said that her initial writing is very “dreamy”. She doesn’t exactly know where a story is going until later on. She outlines, makes mood boards (with different color markers:) And then outlines again. She said she does, “a lot of revision”.

A great example of this is the way she worked on her latest book that’s due out in October, THE DOVE KEEPERS. She went into the book knowing that there would be four women characters, and she would write in each of their voices, and that by the end, two of them would die and two of them would live. But she didn’t know as she was writing along which two would survive.

I know I’m not that brave yet as a writer, and the book I’m working on now is a bit more plot driven, but I do love the questions that arise for me in my own writing when I just think about working this way.

Several audience members were clearly huge Hoffman fans, having read most if not all of her eighteen novels for adults and eight novels for teens and young adults. Many of them had special favorites and were curious if Alice had any herself. She said that often her favorite was the one she had just finished or the one she was currently working on. She said, “I learn the world of the book and then I exit it.” And I think that makes sense, to be closest to the one you’re living in on a daily basis.

One woman asked how it was possible to work on two projects at the same time, to go back and forth between two worlds, imagining it to be quite difficult. Hoffman’s answer was: “You’re in Paris, and then you go to Venice for a few days; then you go back to Paris. It’s more like that.”

I do agree. Working on multiple projects is wonderful. You can then take a vacation from one and go to the other – and still be working!

One last thing that stuck in my head… Hoffman said, she believes “where you live does change who you are and what you become.”

Now that’s something to think about, isn’t it? Am I living in the right place to become who I want to become? Do I know who I want to become? Can I write the book I want to write, living where I’m living?

no more keeping time

I started working on my novel six years ago in January.

I’ve always kept track of my hours. Initially, it was because I had weekly hourly goals for my writing group. By the time that group disbanded, two years later, it was habit. I have an exact hour count for each of those six years.

To date, I have logged 1,434 hours on my book. That is equivalent to working an eight hour day, every day for six months. Or maybe more realistically, a four hour day, every day for one year. So in terms of how far along I am in accordance with the number of hours worked, I appear to be right on schedule.

There’s something I like about knowing this. I think it would be dandy to finish, have a published book in hand, and know exactly how long it took to write it.

And the perfectionist side of me hasn’t wanted to let go of this possibility, hasn’t wanted to stop counting those hours. I mean, I’ve done it for such a long time already. I’m so close…

But the reality is that keeping time is extremely limiting! You heard me, extremely limiting. I do not advise it at all.

On the one hand, it’s a good way of making sure you visit your project for a certain amount of time each day or week or month or year. It can keep you honest. And there’s no doubt that if you work, you will make progress.

However – it means that every time you go to write, you have to look at the clock. You have to look at the clock when you stop. You have to write it down. And you have to do it again the next time, and the next. This can get tiring.

I keep track in one hour blocks but I can note half hour blocks and fifteen minute blocks as well. So, what happens if I want to just grab my manuscript and sit down for five minutes? Well, that would be a royal pain in the butt in terms of keeping track… so, I don’t do it.

I don’t bring my work with me to the laundromat because there would be too many distractions, too much stopping and starting. I don’t think about the book when I’m driving in the car (which I do a LOT of) because I’m not on the clock. If I have five minutes before work, I don’t sit down and read through the scene I wrote yesterday. And if I wake up in the morning, I don’t roll over in bed with my yellow pad and scribble a few lines down… Because how do you document that?

You can see how this requirement of keeping time might hinder the process of actually getting the book done.

I don’t do it with my other projects, with the picture books or the flash fiction or the blog. I will not do it with my upcoming novel projects, with Mira or Miguel or with Jessie and her marbles. No way. I don’t watch the time when I do agent research or read books in my genre, or when I go to the library or the book store to see what’s out there, or to readings to hear authors. Nope.

So, the other day, I had a realization. I just have to stop.

And I did. I have.

I recycled the notebook where I write down my hours. It’s the old one, the one I started with back in January of 2005 when I had my first writing group. I kept the cover, put it in the art cabinet. It’s orange plastic and I think I can make a cool frame out of it some day.

But the rest is gone. Except for the total number of hours which will be recorded here for posterity, it’s all gone. And I feel liberated. Yesterday I worked on the book several times, here and there. I couldn’t tell you for how long. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters now is going forward, gettin’ her done.

Because of this change in my work habits, I will no longer be able to make weekly hourly goals. Oh well. You understand.

eagle’s eye view

There are so many different ways to tell the same story.

Initially, when you start working on a new project, it’s all about discovery. Your job as a writer is to learn everything you can about your characters and what happens to them in the course of the story you’re trying to tell. You might have to scratch and dig deep below the surface to find some little bit, some buried jewel that makes all the difference.

You’ll want to meet each character face to face, hear what each one has to say in his or her own voice, contemplate each individual character’s take on the events that transpire and their part in them.

It’s really only after you, the writer, knows everything, that you can make wise decisions about how best to tell the story. And this process could easily take several drafts and much revision; as you organize your thoughts, sift through the facts, substitute subtlety for forthrightness, settle on the right voice.

You have to determine where to start. Is this story best told chronologically from the beginning? Is it more intriguing to start at the end and then go back? What about jumping around in time? And where do you sprinkle in all that back story?

Which of course leaves us with the question of, who is telling the story?

I am now at the point where I know a lot of what happens in my book – but not everything. I still have some things to figure out, to uncover. And I’ve been playing with my characters, trying to get a feel for whose story it really is. Am I sure that it’s Jacy’s? I think so.

But I am eager to have that first completed draft, the one where I just get everything down. And although I realize that that’s where the real work begins, I’m excited to be there, to look at it from above. I’m excited to see it in its entirety.

I want that eagle’s eye view.

And when I can see it all… when I’m able to soar, to glide, on my great outstretched wings, when I can gaze down at the story I’ve unearthed and see each minute detail… then, I’ll know how it should be.

But for now, I keep on pluggin’…

new year’s eve

The New Year is always a powerful time for me.

The days are getting longer. The light is changing. The cards have been sent, the presents opened, the cookies eaten, the trips returned from. The busyness of the holidays is finally receding. There is suddenly space again, to do things.

Like have time to work on your book!

For me, the New Year is about hope and possibility. It’s about all of the exciting things that are yet to come. It’s about dreams. Making up new ones and watching the older ones begin to come true. It’s about good health, good wealth, and good cheer.

This year, in particular, I have reason to be grateful.

In early December, I got sick with what my doctor believes was Ehrlichiosis from a tick bite. The weeks before the holidays, I got nothing done. (And I do mean nothing!) So, to be feeling better and able to write and sit at my computer again is truly wonderful.

A few days ago, I was bemoaning the fact that I had not posted on my blog in ALL of December. I was beating myself up about it and wondering if I should continue with the blog at all. It does take up quite a bit of time that I could be working on my novel, I reasoned.

But then I got a phone message from my dear friend Louise from North Carolina. She mentioned that she knew I had my writing group on Monday nights because she read my blog.

I was so touched. I had no idea she read my blog. And there, just like that, I was reinvigorated. So, thank you to Louise, and to all of you who read my blog. It does make a difference to me to know that you’re there!

I also want everyone to know that I have built in a schedule for writing on my novel for the coming months. After being sick, I realized that I just don’t want to be constantly rushing around and so busy that I can’t see straight. It’s not healthy. So, I’ve decided to drop one of my nights at work.

By doing this, I will be able to write six days a week, two hours a day, at least until spring when the horses come back into the picture. And I should still have plenty of time to breathe and make sure that Boca doesn’t get short-changed on her walks. We’ll be poor but hopefully productive!

So, with that, best wishes to you all for a fantastic 2011!!! Go follow your dreams!

unplug the phone

I have a new plan. I’m trying out a new strategy. After all, it’s time for more desperate measures, right? The stakes are higher it seems.

So, this morning I affected a new level of security around my writing time. After breakfast, I put the kitty outside and locked the doors. I made sure to wrestle and play ball with Boca for a good fifteen minutes to tire her out. Then I unplugged the home phone. I put the cell phone on silent. I even went so far as to record a new greeting.

It said something to the affect of: “Hi, this is Aimee. If you are calling on Friday between the hours of ten and three, I cannot hear the phone ringing because it is on silent, so that I can work on my book. At three o’clock, I will check my messages and get back to you as soon as I can.”

Wow! Is this liberating!

I’m not the kind of person who lets the phone ring unanswered. I don’t glance at the caller I.D. and then ignore the call, or listen to a message and just not call back. Maybe I’m old fashioned. If I’m busy, I’ll answer and tell the person I’m busy. That doesn’t seem like too much of a hardship.

But of course, sometimes I do talk, when instead I should say, “I’m busy writing!” And this not only eats away at my writing time, but it can take me out of the space I was in, change my mood to where there’s no going back. This is no one’s fault but my own.

I don’t want friends and family to think they shouldn’t call me. That they dare not risk disturbing my writing. I want to hear from people. I like to check in even though I know that time is a precious commodity in the world these days.

But now I think I’ve found a way to say: Hey, here’s what I’m doing. I’m not blowing you off. I’m glad you called. And I’ll call you after I’ve done my work for the day (or night).

And it feels great. Really good. Very peaceful.

It only takes a minute or less to change that message back and forth, so that’s what I’ll do. Just imagine how impressive it would be if an agent called and heard it…

my new writing group

This past Monday night was the first meeting of my new writing group!

We met at the Barnes & Noble store in Holyoke, which seems to be central for all involved. The cafe there provides a nice atmosphere. It’s spacious and surrounded by books and handy reference materials. It has free wireless internet. And it offers the opportunity to indulge in the occasional red velvet cupcake and hot drink of choice. Can’t complain about that!

There were four of us in attendance and three others that may come next time; so it will be a nice number, not too big, not too small. We’ve decided to meet every other week. I’m hopeful that this will be just the impetus I need to really get cooking on the novel… maybe it will be just the push I need to finish it this winter. Let’s hope so!

We’ve got quite a bit of variety in the group so far, which is nice – Everything from picture books to mysteries to literary fiction to middle grade. And all of us are at the submission stage with at least one project. Which is great.

We’ll critique each others work, provide support and encouragement (as well as maybe a necessary whip-cracking here and there), and I know that I’ll especially benefit from making weekly goals to the group.

There’s nothing more motivating for me, than knowing that I’m going to be held accountable for those weekly goals. That I’m going to have people checking up on me. And also, that if I work hard, my good energy, enthusiasm, and productivity will help to encourage others to do their work as well.

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to read THE MOUSE IN OUR HOUSE aloud to the group, since the plan is to send it out before we meet the next time… And although I had mistakenly brought a hard copy that was from before this last round of revisions, everyone seemed to enjoy the story anyway… and they laughed in all the right places!

It feels good to be inspired as we move towards winter :)

here i am

Wow, has it been a busy summer and transition to the fall!

It’s gorgeous here in western Massachusetts in early October. The leaves are vibrant shades of red and gold and orange, and driving north on the highway to go work the horses in Vermont, is a breathtaking experience.

I admit, I’ve fallen a bit behind on my blogging. I apologize. And you can expect that in the coming months, I will be back on track, posting much more regularly :)

The good news is, that during this time, I have not been idle. A couple of months ago, my fortune from a Chinese fortune cookie read, “Idleness is the holiday of fools.” I know, it’s one of those that’s not really a fortune, but it’s good advice, and I have taken it to heart.

I’ve been back writing on the novel. In August and September, I actually amassed quite a lot of new material, and am now in the process of inputting it. Most of my new material comes in the form of handwritten free writes, and later, as I enter those scenes into the computer, I add to them, expand, embellish.

I’ve churned up a lot of new ideas. I’m hearing the story in different ways. At this point, I think it’s important to just make it messy. Let everything in. And later, during revision, I can worry about cleaning it up.

At the same time, I’ve got to keep working on the picture books. THE TIME TROLL is undergoing revision. I am preparing to submit THE MOUSE IN OUR HOUSE to my chosen agent. And I am considering sending THE LOUDEST FOURTH OF JULY EVER out to publishers myself. It’s the sort of book that I feel comfortable doing that with.

I am also in the process of co-creating a writing/goal/critique group which I am very excited about. More on that later.

So, on that note, I’ve gotta go get writing! I’m trying to work out a schedule for 12 hours a week on the novel… not including the blog, twitter, picture books, agent correspondence, publisher research, or reading time.

I’ll be sure to keep you updated.

the groove

When I’m in the groove with my writing, when I’m sailing along in the fast lane and all is clear ahead, when words are spilling out of me onto the page so fast that it’s all a blur… there’s nothing finer. And when this happens, I know that I have to take advantage of it big time.

Stop everything. Stay home. Write, write, write!

Because I also know what can happen in an instant. In the space between one second and another. I know it can all disappear. Just slip away. Go back to that place where stories come from, where they live when they’re not with you, where you can see them but they’re impossible to reach.

And it doesn’t take much to effect this change.

Writing is such a fragile process. It’s temperamental. It runs hot and cold. And we, as writers, are susceptible to the many maladies that keep us at a distance from our work.

It could be the simplest thing. Just a tiny little thing. Something that settles into your mind and gets stuck there like an unwelcome thorn. Something you can’t let go of. Something that takes over, in the same way that a pebble in your shoe might very well ruin a lovely walk.

So my advice to you is this… if you’re writing, and you’re really on a roll, don’t stop! Don’t answer the phone. Don’t check your email. Don’t go out. Don’t talk to anyone unless you’re sure they won’t rock the boat. Unless you’re sure they won’t upset the delicate balance that is your connection to this thing, this place, this story that has entrusted itself to you.

And remember to have fun, and enjoy it!

a summer tale

I guess I have to face facts. My book is more plot-driven than character-driven. There is no way around it. It’s true.

I think it’s because I came up with the idea for the plot first, and then created the characters to go along with it. And it’s unique, the plot… at least I think it is… so I worry about making the right decisions, staying true to the story.

That’s not to say that my characters aren’t likable. That I don’t listen to them. They are. And I do. In fact, I think I listen to them quite a bit. But I also know that there is a major event coming up at the end of the book, and everything has to build up in such a way as to take us there.

It’s just the opposite of my Mira project, the book I’ll most likely write after this one. Mira is a great character. She’s opinionated and it’s easy for me to hear her voice. In fact, I have to be careful, because she’d like to talk to me all the time. But I have absolutely no plot to go along with her. When it comes time to work on Mira, I’ll just turn her loose and let her rip. See where we end up.

Right now though, in this book, Jacy and Travis and Olivia have things to do, plot pieces to carry out. I can’t let their individual personalities run the whole show. I can’t let them make all of the decisions.

This morning over breakfast, I finished reading THE PENDERWICKS: A SUMMER TALE OF FOUR SISTERS, TWO RABBITS, AND A VERY INTERESTING BOY, by Jeanne Birdsall. It was a 2005 National Book Award winner, and deservedly so.

I’d say Birdsall’s debut is one of the best examples I’ve ever read of a story that’s truly character-driven.

In fact, not all that much happens in this summer tale. It’s the personalities of the four Penderwick sisters, Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty, that really spirit the story along.

The girls don’t actually go anywhere or do anything that exciting. They spend their time playing soccer, shooting bow and arrows, baking brownies, visiting bunnies, corralling the family dog, writing books (well, just Jane), and worrying about the fate of their friend Jeffrey.

Nonetheless, each page is pure pleasure to read. Each page brings you closer to these delightful characters, until you begin to feel like you’re part of the family (or you wish you were.) So you turn one page, and then another… It’s great.

Tomorrow, I think I’ll do a free write on what all of this means for my book, for my characters. Maybe I’ll let them have a little more freedom. See if they take me somewhere I didn’t expect to go. In a way, it’s what I’ve been doing already these last few weeks.

So, back to it.

(A note: Kudos to Jane, the third oldest Penderwick sister for writing and finishing another book. Ten year old Jane’s enthusiasm and dedication to her dream of becoming an author was very inspiring for me. Thank you, Jane!)

it’s all about voice

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been having a lot of fun free-writing each of the characters from my novel in the first person.

I started with Jacy. He’s the main character. I’m writing the book in close third person, so I’m telling the story (for the most part) from his perspective. I’ve always felt like I had a good understanding of Jacy, and where he’s coming from, but I wanted to hear his voice more clearly. I wanted to hear what he sounded like.

In the first part of the book, Jacy isn’t as talkative as the others. He’s just lost his mother, his only parent, and been uprooted from his life in California to return to his birthplace, a small town in rural Iowa, to live with relatives. He just doesn’t have that much to say. Not until later…

Then, I began to write Olivia and Travis, Jacy’s cousins, as well. They were easier, freer, willing to spill it all out.

For several days, I wrote first one and then the other two, rotating through the three of them. I let them tell me whatever they wanted to… about things that happen in the book, what they think of each other, how they feel in different situations, what they’re afraid of, what makes them angry, happy, sad, what they dream of.

Sometimes it was only a line, sometimes a paragraph, or a whole page. But it was all great. And I couldn’t believe how much I learned, about the characters and about the story…

So I kept going.

I did Joe, the strange older man that lives by himself on an abandoned farm; Harry, a young scientist that the kids befriend; Frannie and John, the kids’ grandparents; Jack and Ruby, Travis and Olivia’s little brother and sister; Buzzy Hoyt, the grumpy police officer who threatens to lock them up if he finds them snooping around where they shouldn’t be; and the list goes on.

It’s interesting work, because I think for the first time since I started this project, I’m not trying to get somewhere. I’m not writing with any goal in mind; I’m not trying to finish the book, or wrap up a chapter, or rewrite a scene.

Instead, it’s like I’m taking time to hang around with friends. I’m listening to them talk. I’m hearing their voices. They’re telling me things I didn’t know before. All kinds of things. Things that will ultimately help me tell the story better.

And that is a gift.

Because I really believe, that in the end, it’s all about voice.

every little thing

The last couple of weeks, I’ve spent carefully reading a newly finished 350 page novel written by a friend of mine.

I did edits as I was reading, and also took notes… on continuity, structure, character development. On any and every little thing that came to my mind as I turned those pages; anything that put a ripple in an otherwise seamless read; anything that was so great, I wanted more of it.

And then yesterday, we met for coffee and scones, to go over it all. We discussed it from beginning to end, from top to bottom, from inside out to outside in. It was great fun. At least for me. But then I’m not the one who has to go home now and dig into the revisions!

There is something special about reading a draft of a novel.

I picked it up from the copy store, 350 loose pages nestled in a box, heavy, unwieldy, like a novel should be. Still raw. Full of things that will yet need work. But so much promise. Just holding it made me tingle. Excited and hopeful.

Like it is possible after all.

The whole process made me think a lot about voice and point of view. All the different ways you can tell a story.

It’s been a very inspiring time for me in my own writing, and I know that’s no coincidence. There’s no mistaking why. Seeing that next stage, being a part of it, helps to make it real in a way that nothing else can. And now that I’ve been there, I know I can find my way back. This time with my book.

I want to share about what I’ve been doing, because I’ve been having a lot of fun… But I think I’ll save that for another post.

Soon, I promise.

make it messy

I don’t know what it’s like where you live… but here in Northampton, this summer has been jam-packed with road construction. One of the projects they’ve been working on, the seemingly needless addition of a major rotary, is on the road that runs between my house and everywhere I have to go.

Because of this, I’ve been spending a lot of time in my elderly Toyota Corolla, sitting in stand-still traffic, in the blaring sun and 90 degree heat.

When we finally do get moving, it’s a slow, bone-crunching, bumping along over the rough, temporary surface.

And every day the road changes.

They rip it up and put it back. They open the left lane and close the right. They open the right lane and close the left. They rip it up again.

Now, the blinking electronic sign tells us that this coming Monday, they intend to close both. “Seek alternate route”, it says.

I am amazed by this process.

Don’t they get tired of moving everything back and forth? Of digging a big hole every morning, only to fill it in, cover it up, and pound it down enough that we can drive on it overnight? It seems tedious, to say the least.

But today, while I was enduring the ten to fifteen minute wait, watching the bulldozer fill the dump truck with dirt it scraped from the hillside, and trying not to worry about being late to work again, it hit me.

I am doing the same thing with my novel.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the big things, the things that stretch like thready skeletons through the entire book… voice, point of view, character development.

And when you’re thinking about those things, it can get messy. Bone-crunchingly messy.

I’ll need to rip it up. Pull parts out, write new parts to go in, move things around, get rid of debris, consider the slopes, the angles, go back and forth over it again and again to smooth it out. Work on it every day. Even if it’s not convenient.

Even if it’s tedious.

I’ll need to jump in and make it messy. And if I get stuck, I’ll need to seek an alternate route.

so important

It’s so important for writers to have community. Or at the very least, one good writer-friend.

A friend who will call you in the morning and ask, “Are you working?”… and mean… are you working on your book?

A friend you can bounce ideas off of, who will read a chapter for you and tell you whether it’s any good, point out where it might need work.

A friend who will tell you to just keep going. No matter what. Get that draft done!

A friend who will take you out to dinner to celebrate the fact that you submitted your work to an agent, not wait till after you hear back from that agent… when it might be too late to celebrate at all.

A friend you can call when you don’t know for sure whether you should use “lay” or “lie”… and even STRUNK AND WHITE doesn’t make it clear.

A friend who will go to readings with you.

A friend who will meet you at Barnes & Noble every Sunday for weeks, so that agent and publisher research can actually be fun.

A friend who will be there to write when you’re not writing, and to keep you writing when you are and she isn’t, because you both know that at least one of you has to be… writing.

And most importantly, a friend who will tell you, sometimes on a daily basis, “Everything’s going be okay, we just have to finish our books!”

I am lucky. I have one of those friends.

Thank you, Chrysler.

dear genius

In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of activity along “the write road” and I’ve been a bit out of touch about it. So let’s do some catching up…

For one thing, I’ve been reading DEAR GENIUS: THE LETTERS OF URSULA NORDSTROM, collected and edited by Leonard S. Marcus.

Ursula Nordstrom directed the Department of Books for Boys and Girls at Harper’s from 1940-1973. She is regarded as “the single most creative force for innovation in children’s book publishing in the United States during the twentieth century.” (This quote comes from the jacket flap of DEAR GENIUS… and it is no exaggeration.)

Nordstrom was responsible for books such as: THE GIVING TREE, GOODNIGHT MOON, CHARLOTTE’S WEB, HARRIET THE SPY, and WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, to name just a few. She actually found Maurice Sendak painting a window display at F.A.O. Schwartz, a children’s toy store in NYC, and helped him launch his career.

Nordstrom’s letters, for the most part, are written to her authors and illustrators. Some of them are filled with glorious praise for a job well done, others with suggestions for changes to text or illustration, often in minute detail, and still others voice concern that a project is not viable, or in her words, “not good enough for you.”

And some of them, like this one, bring tears to my eyes… From a letter to Maurice Sendak, dated September 23, 1963, Ursula wrote:

“When you were much younger, and had done only a couple of books, I remember I used to write you letters when the books were finished, and thank you for ‘another beautiful’ job – or some such dopiness. Now you’re rich and famous and need no words of wonder from me. But I must send them, anyhow, when I look through WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. I think it is utterly magnificent, and the words are beautiful and meaningful, and it does just what you wanted it to do. And you did just what you wanted to do.”

Let those words sink in for a minute… those are the words dreams are made of. Sparkly, glittery words, filled with hope. Ringing with satisfaction and pride, love and respect.

And now, on to the rest of my news.

Those of you who follow my twitter probably know that I had finished THE TIME TROLL (my third picture book) to the point where I thought I could send it off to my agent of choice. This is after a winter of researching agents, reading interviews with agents, reading books agented by those agents, etc. You probably also know that I wrote that query letter and that I actually emailed it off!

What an exhilarating feeling it was to do that!

Then, during the inevitable waiting period, I read more of Ursula’s letters.

“If I can resist a book, I resist it.” Ursula was known to say.

Well, I heard back from my chosen agent in eight days! She wrote a very nice note voicing her concerns about the underlying theme of THE TIME TROLL and whether or not it would be relevant to the intended audience… young readers. And as it turns out, in the end, she was able to resist it.

Ouch!

But she brought up a very valid point, one that I will have to sit with, and really think about as I work on the revision of this manuscript. And I am eager to do this, as I truly value her opinion (which is of course why I chose to submit to her in the first place.)

Suddenly, I really “get” how this is all part of the process; how this is the way that ideas grow and shift and change; how through revision the text gets better and better; and how ultimately, great books are born… and this leaves me ever so grateful for her words.

It’s funny, because nothing could have prepared me more for receiving that email than reading DEAR GENIUS; nothing could have prepared me better for the differing opinions, advice, criticism, and rejection of others, especially those in the agent/editorial role. The response of my chosen agent could easily have been another page in that book!

So, just for fun, let me leave you with another quote from a letter Nordstrom wrote to author Natalie Savage Carlson, on June 13, 1952:

“I never want to forget that if Lewis Carroll had asked me whether or not he should bother writing about a little girl named Alice who fell asleep and dreamed that she had a lot of adventures down a rabbit hole, it would not have sounded awfully tempting to any editor.”

So, with that… Onward!

into the beautiful…

I just got back from The Odyssey Bookshop where Luis Alberto Urrea spoke tonight, and read from his new novel, Into the Beautiful North. Luis is one very funny guy and he’s had an extraordinarily interesting life. If you ever get a chance to hear him, I highly recommend it.

Luis told us all about his family history. About his blond, blue-eyed, macho, Mexican, musician father, and his white-gloved, Victorian-style mother, born in Staten Island, who was a “doughnut dolly” in World War II, and always referred to him as “dear boy”.

Much of the material used in Into The Beautiful North came from Luis’s father’s home town of Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico. Many of the characters were inspired by real people, some relatives, some townsfolk that Luis met while working with the poor in the Tijuana garbage dumps.

Urrea also talked about his non-fiction book, The Devil’s Highway, which was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005, and his experience going out with the border patrol during the research for that book.

Into the Beautiful North “is being shopped around for a movie right now”, Luis told us, and the most exciting part of that news is that, “Niki Caro from New Zealand wants to do it”. Caro wrote and directed the 2002 hit indie movie, Whale Rider.

Luis said of this time in his life, “things are just bubbling up everywhere [right now]… it feels like perpetual springtime.” And he spoke of how he believes “the world is ours”, meaning (I think), that potential and possibility and greatness are out there… and we just have to be bold enough to dream, and to reach out for them.

Here’s to that!

Urrea described himself as a “binge writer”, who does “a lot of reading”. He might not write for stretches of time, and then he writes like crazy. But he also said that, he’s always writing, even when he’s not writing. This, I can relate to.

Like a vegetable garden, Luis said… you have to plant the seeds, water them, and let them sit in the sun for a while before anything can grow.

I feel like this past year, I’ve been working hard in my garden, and some of those novel “bulbs” that I planted last year, are starting to poke their way up and out of the dirt. I’ve been busy on “the write road” recently, lots of traffic there, all good… but I am yearning to get back to my regular writing schedule, and I’m looking forward to tending to those little buds.

But first, it’s query letter time for The Time Troll…

Luis said of his father’s home town, they don’t say hello, they say good bye. “It’s one of the quirks of the town.”

So, here I go, ¡Adios!

a little more danger

The other day, I was driving to work, and I turned on NPR just in time to hear Michele Norris interviewing John Grisham about his latest book.

The international bestselling author is well known for his legal thrillers, such as The Firm and The Pelican Brief. He’s written 24 of them. Grisham is one of those super productive people. He churns out about a book a year. But this latest one is a first for him.

It’s called Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer… And yes, it’s a legal thriller for kids. There’s a murder, an unknown witness, and thirteen year old Theo, a lawyer wannabee, trying to put all the pieces together. It sounds intriguing to me. Especially because I’m eager to see how Grisham handled switching over to writing for children.

When asked about this, he told Norris, his biggest challenge was “to try to tell the story without talking down to kids. Because I think that’s what a lot of writers do, and… kids don’t like it.”

He also commented, that in all of his years of writing, he’s never had to ask himself, “Who am I writing for?” He’s always just written for the adult audience without thinking too much about it. Not this time. “This is a lot different, ” he said, “I think this is a tougher crowd.”

The most interesting part for me, was Grisham’s discussion of his reluctance to put Theo in actual physical danger. He said, in the first draft, he toned down the suspense because of this. But then, when he was working with his editor at Penguin, she told him, “It’s okay in kid’s books… to have the kid in danger”. And so, in each subsequent draft, Grisham said, he added in, “a little more suspense, a little more fear, a little more danger”.

Looking back, Grisham remembered reading his favorite book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, at the age of twelve, and loving it. He said, “Tom and Huck were always in trouble, often in danger, and it made the story that much more entertaining.”

And of course this is true.

Think of Harry Potter. There isn’t a time when Harry is free from mortal danger, all the way through seven books. J.K. Rowling didn’t hold back. And it worked. We all loved it, kids and adults alike.

So, I will not go easy on my characters… on Jacy or Travis or Olivia. I will ask a lot of them. I will put them in dangerous situations. I will place enormous responsibility on their young shoulders. I will push them, even while they are terrified, to press on. And the whole time, the clock will be ticking.

happy anniversary

I love anniversaries. They mark the passage of time. They provide opportunity for reflection. A chance to look back, take stock. Acknowledge all that has happened. To notice how the little things you do, begin to stack up, and become something bigger.

They show growth, progress, change.

Anniversaries are a time to revitalize. Renew focus. Check the compass to make sure you’re still sailing in the right direction. They are also a time to accept a pat on the back for a job well done.

So today, the 29th of May, I’m taking a moment to celebrate the one-year anniversary of my blog. And as a part of this celebration, I’d like to ask you, my readers, to go back to the very first post, “The Write Road”, and read it again. In this post, I think you’ll find out where I’ve been this last year, and where I’m heading.

I also want to thank you all for your support. Your comments and notes of encouragement help keep me at it. They make a difference. It’s wonderful to have company on this journey.

So, here’s to another year on the “write road”. I think it’s going to be a mighty one. I can feel it in my bones…

And I hope you’ll stick around for the ride.

A

three minute fiction

It was Sunday night. February 28th of this year. About 6:00 PM. I was driving in the car. Delivering pizzas. I turned on NPR. They were talking about the Three Minute Fiction contest. Entries were due by midnight that night, they said.

Wow, I thought… I could still make it. Wouldn’t that be a great exercise? Try to come up with the story while I’m driving in my car. Jot down notes. Get home about 10:00 PM. Feed the animals. Do the chores. Then make a mad dash to write it up before the clock strikes twelve.

The prompt for the story was a photograph that was posted online, which I obviously couldn’t see. But they described it a bit. Here’s what I found out. It was taken in a cafe. There was a table by the window with a newspaper on it. That’s about it.

The stories had to be under 600 words.

The one thing the judge said that really spoke to me was… the entrants should try to show as much of a “life” in this short-short story as possible.

So, I drove around. I jotted down notes. I went home and fed the animals and did the chores. And at 11:15 PM, I sat down at my computer.

Now you’re dying to know what happened, right?

Well, I finished it. But not till 1:00 AM. So, I missed the contest. But I did get a short story out of it! And I should tell you, that this is the first short story I’ve ever written. As in adult fiction, short story.

It’s called, “On The Run”.

My original draft was 598 words. However, in the last three months I’ve reworked it a bit, and since I no longer had to abide by a maximum word count, I’ve fleshed it out to a robust 685 words.

And I think it’s pretty good. I like it.

In fact, just an hour ago or so, I submitted it to Glimmer Train‘s Short Story Award for New Writers contest. Glimmer Train is a journal with an excellent reputation. They strive to “publish literary short stories that (are) emotionally significant.”

So cross your fingers for me.

First prize is a whopping $1200… which to me would mean a trip to the Midwest… to visit my parents in Wisconsin, and to sit and write in some Iowa cornfields. (Remember, my novel takes place in a fictional rural town south of Iowa City.)

Results by July 31st.

plotting parties

YA fantasy writers, Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, rocked The Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA last Tuesday evening with their dual reading and lively question and answer session. The place was packed with young women, fans that traveled, some of them more than two hours to get there.

Both of these women write fantasy fiction FULL-TIME! In other words, they DON’T have a day job! Good for them. And they sure do seem to be enjoying themselves doing it. Lots of laughs and positive energy from these two.

Clare told us that she writes every day, 2000 words, or tries to, but of course there are days when that’s not possible.

A friend of Clare’s added that there is never a day when Clare isn’t working on some aspect of her writing life. She said, she’s seen Clare on vacation, she’s seen her deathly ill, and she’s never seen her not thinking about or working on her writing, every single day! (Just so ya know…)

Clare agreed. “There’s a ton of stuff that isn’t (writing) that you have to do… the process is continuous,” she said.

Then, Black joined in telling us how busy she is doing tasks that relate to her career but aren’t actually writing. She said, sometimes it feels like answering emails is her job, and writing is something she gets to do when she has the time.

When she’s in the writing phase of a project, Black says she writes about 1000 words a day, and confided to us that she’s “slower” than Clare.

Each of them told a funny story about the hazards of researching for their books.

Clare had traveled to London to do research for her upcoming release, The Clockwork Angel, set in Victorian times. She quickly snapped a picture of a window that her friend told her was a perfect example of the period, and the next second, noticed the naked man standing behind it.

Black’s new book, White Cat, a “dark fantasy caper”, required her to learn all about mobsters and organized crime. Clare kidded that now that Black is “a master of lying, cheating, stealing, and manipulation”, she can no longer be trusted.

Black told us how at some point in every crime caper novel, one of the characters gets locked in the trunk of a car. So, she had to learn about what that was like… and she asked her friend Kelly Link if Kelly could lock her in the trunk of her car while she was in Northampton running errands. Kelly said, “Sure.”

What we do for our art!

One audience member asked, do you know what’s going to happen in the book before you sit down to write, or do you make it up as you go along?

Clare answered, “I outline”.

As it turns out, what she does is called “micro-plotting”. I’d never heard of it. The idea is that you outline the entire plot of the book in one very long session, it could be a day or more… And you do it as a “group activity” with “a whole bunch of friends”.

“It’s unpleasant”, Clare said, but “we all do it”.

Black, who recently tried it for the first time, explained… your friends ask you “a series of truly horrible questions”. And then they “refuse to let you leave the room until you tell them every single thing that happens in your book.”

Yikes…

These questions are meant to provoke you, to make you think of every possible angle, to put you in the hot seat and fry you till you’re done, literally. The attendees of these plotting parties don’t give you their ideas. They aren’t there to answer the questions for you. They’re just there to push you, and of course, to not let you stop.

It sounds wonderful and horrible all at the same time. And it leaves me incredibly impressed. What a truly great circle of friends these two writers have. I am envious.

My question for Holly and Cassie is this… Can I come to the next plotting party?

keep sitting down

Last Thursday night, I went to Broadside Books in Northampton, to hear Frederick Reiken read from his third novel, Day For Night.

I remember several years ago when Reiken shared an old farmhouse in Cummington with a writer friend of mine. I remember his dog, Boz, a Basset Hound cross.

It’s amazing how things change, how life moves on. People get books written and published. They get teaching jobs at places like Emerson College in Boston. They go on book tours. And on the book tours, they see people that remember them from back when.

I know this will happen for me too… one day in the not so distant future.

It was a great reading, warm and intimate. He took his time. He laughed with us. The place was filled with old friends, all wanting to help celebrate the new release, and genuinely eager to hear what Rick has been working on these last several years. And we weren’t disappointed.

Rick read one section to us that he said he won’t ever read again in public. In it, one of the characters buys a house that ends up being infested with dangerous mold, and in turn, makes her seriously ill. Unfortunately, the basis for this does come directly from personal experience.

Partly due to time spent battling mold-related health issues, Reiken pondered how long it actually took him to write Day For Night. Was it ten years (with a big break in the middle)? Or four months?

It started with a short story written ten years earlier, one that he had no idea would one day become a part of a novel. And it ended in a four month long writing spree that he referred to as “that beautiful manic phase”.

Reiken said he was just lucky that the beautiful manic phase coincided with his sabbatical, so that he was actually able to take advantage of it… because you can never plan these things, as we all know.

A few weeks ago, Rick told us, he was in Colorado at the AWP Writer’s Conference. His new publisher, Little Brown, overnighted him a box of books fresh off the press, so he would have them for his signing the next day. But when he took one out to look at… he noticed that a section of the book was printed upside-down! He called his publisher in a panic, and incredibly, they told him that in fact only one box had been printed with an upside-down section.

What are the odds, he joked, that out of all the boxes of books, the one they ship to the author in Colorado at the writer’s conference, turns out to be the one with the upside-down sections? This is one of those things you don’t think to worry about… but now maybe you will?

And sure enough, as Reiken read to us tonight from his own copy, he reached a point where he had to turn the book upside-down in order to keep reading. Laughing, he said he wasn’t sure he really believed them, that it was only one box… and he told us to keep our eyes open for the other misfits.

Lastly, in answer to a question about his writing process at this point in his career, with three books in the bag, Reiken answered, that now he knows he has to “keep sitting down and writing, knowing that it’s not always going to work”, but doing it anyway.

I like that. Good advice. Here I go.

the vampires who were not

Dr. Susan Jarek-Glidden spoke at the Wilbraham Library last Monday evening about her lifelong passion… vampires in New England. And I went to hear her, mostly because it sounded so interesting, but also because vampires seem to be what everyone is writing about these days!

Now, let me just say that I am no vampire expert. I haven’t read any of the Twilight series… (or seen the movies), and believe it or not, I haven’t even read Bram Stoker’s Dracula In fact, my only vampire association is watching David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger while I was at Smith.

So, I was enthralled when Dr. Jarek-Glidden began telling us some facts from New England’s vampire lore. For instance, did you know that there are twenty-one “known” cases of vampires in this country… and only three of them are NOT in New England? And, did you know that all twenty-one of these cases span only 108 years, from 1784 to 1892?

Where are all the modern-day vampires?

Then, Jarek-Glidden told us some stories… “The Story of the Seven Trees”, “The Story of the Two Brides”, and “The story of the Heart and the Stone”… these stories are all supported on some level, through town records, newspaper articles, oral history…

By this time, I’m all excited, thinking there must be something to this vampire thing…

But, no. As it turned out, in a disappointing X-Filian twist… despite her obvious love of vampire lore, Dr. Jarek-Glidden finished her talk by debunking all of these lovely stories.

Her theory in a nutshell… that tuberculosis, or “the white death”, described as such because it caused your skin to turn so pale and translucent, was actually the evil sucking the life right out of these people… not vampires. Her explanation, of course, was far more detailed than what I am sharing here.

But I’m still not sure… I still want to believe…

Here’s one theory… Between Dr. Jarek-Glidden’s spiky red hair and her animated story-telling style… she does a VERY realistic snarl… and her extensive knowledge of vampires, I started to think…

Maybe SHE’S a vampire! Perhaps descended from one of our very own New England vampires… and she doesn’t want to be found out!

I guess this is why I’m writing books for children…

a writing workshop with jane yolen

Last Saturday, I attended a writer’s day workshop at Bay Path College with well-known children’s book author and fellow Smith alum, Jane Yolen.

After writing in just about every available genre… and I’m not kidding about that! Picture books, poetry, fantasy, YA, playwriting, screenwriting, graphic novels, you name it… as well as working on the other side of the desk as an editor, and teaching the Children’s Literature class at Smith for seven years, Yolen has a lot to say about writing for children. And while not all of it was inspiring, it was definitely informative.

Here are a few things she said that for me were a bit of a downer:

Publishers, these days, want picture book stories preferably around 500 words but definitely not over 1000.

What gets a picture book sold these days? “Pink covers and sparkly things”.

Do you HAVE to have an agent or can you still submit on your own with a chance of success? You HAVE to have an agent.

There was a time when an editor could buy whatever manuscript she liked and give it to the marketing people and tell them to find a way to market it… but today, the marketing people tell the editor which manuscripts to buy based upon the editor’s “proof” that the book will do well. If one vampire book did well, then maybe another vampire book will do well too.

And subsequently, many well-known authors, herself included, are having to go to smaller and smaller presses to get the kind of books they want to write published.

Finally, she impressed on us that many of the classics we all know and love, and read over and over again, including Yolen’s own Owl Moon, would probably NOT be published today. ARRRRGH! WHY NOT?

Yolen doesn’t believe we should dumb down the vocabulary in picture books, that children learn by hearing interesting words that they don’t know and asking what they mean. She said, she’s never seen a boy who loves dinosaurs that cannot read tyrannosaurus rex. They maybe can’t read the “and” and the “the”, but they can read the “tyrannosaurus rex”.

She talked about her three least favorite books, one of which is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Yolen said it really should be called The Taking Boy, not The Giving Tree. This made me laugh, as a few years ago I had my own realization about that book and its example of a terribly dysfunctional relationship. (No surprise that the tree is female)… But it was one of my favorites growing up!

In regards to middle grade novels, she spoke about “the getting of wisdom”, how your main character has to learn something. He or she has to make choices, sometimes difficult choices, and in the end come to understand his or her place in the universe. I loved this bit and will definitely be spending some free-writing time on it soon.

And this is interesting – Yolen told us that Owl Moon, which came out over twenty years ago, is still selling 40,000 hardcover copies a year. Sweet!

I’ll end with this. Yolen said: “There’s a difference between a wannabee and a worker bee, and (if you want to be a published author) you’ve got to be a worker bee.”

Okay, okay :)

a night out in chicopee with kelly link

On Thursday night, I drove down to Chicopee to Elms College to hear Kelly Link read from her YA short story collection, Pretty Monsters, out on Penguin’s Viking Press.

All I knew about Kelly Link before I went to the reading was that she lived in Northampton… and with her husband ran Small Beer Press and put out the fiction zine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. I thought, here is a cool local woman, doing a lot… I’d like to meet her and see what she’s all about.

Well, now I have to jump on the Kelly Link bandwagon, along with gazillions of others, probably everyone who reads her stories, many of them very successful writers. Kelly is great, and I don’t say that lightly.

The story she read, titled An unexpected campfire guest, was a hoot. It was fresh, funny, instantly inviting, and the use of dialogue was fantastic. We laughed out loud, all of us in the diverse audience of students, literature professors, budding writers, and who knows who else.

The next day, I was still chuckling with a friend, reciting some of Kelly’s memorable lines from the story… a part where the monster (who talks just like a regular human person, which in itself is hysterical) questions a boy he is considering eating… about hot dogs… whether before we eat them we worry if they were good dogs or bad dogs, and the boy informs the monster that they aren’t dogs at all, and the monster says, oh, I didn’t know that.

During the question and answer session, Kelly warned us to stay away from expensive MFA programs unless funding is available, or go somewhere instate to save money. She also said something about the degree not being that useful…

And she told us that every time she works on a story, she starts over at the beginning. Every time! I love this idea but I don’t think it would work for novels. You’d need several hours just to get to where you left off the day before :)

Link said, someday she would like to write a novel but short stories are where her heart is.

After the reading, when we were milling about talking, Kelly suggested as an exercise, typing out a short story by some one like Alice Munro… to really get how it’s put together. Maybe I’ll try that.

All in all, a wonderful evening, complete with brie, grapes, and big, red strawberries (my first of the year)… perfect.

good bye to a friend

There are things that happen in the course of a lifetime, that leave their mark on you. That forever alter you, in some small, yet still very significant way. Things that you never forget. That you carry with you always. And that over time, shape who you are… and of course, what you write.

I deliver pizza to many people. Hundreds of people. Maybe even thousands. A number of them are regulars. Some order daily, others not so often. But of all the pizza-craving customers, there are only a few who I really talk to.

Perhaps there was only one.

Sandy was a regular customer. I delivered to her for probably three years. She lived alone in a house she was remodeling herself. She was an artist, a painter. She always had a smile and a kind word.

Friendship comes in many forms. Sometimes you find it where you least expect it. And that was true of me and Sandy. We never talked on the phone, or met for lunch, or went to a movie. None of the things you might typically to do with your friends.

But there was a connection there – a camaraderie.

We both wrestled with trying to earn a living while still having the time and energy to work on our art. While I deliver pizzas, she drove a taxi. I used to tell her she should switch over, that pizzas are better, they don’t try to talk to you. And eventually she did for a time.

Sandy always asked me how the book was going. She often said she couldn’t wait to read it when it was done. Her support and enthusiasm for my project never wavered. I realize, only now that she’s gone, how important that was to me.

Just over two weeks ago, on March 2nd, I knocked on the door of Sandy’s house to deliver a pizza ordered by her mother from North Carolina. When she didn’t answer, I peered through the slats of the venetian blind that covered the window in the side porch door. First to the right, towards the kitchen, and then to the left. And to the left, on the living room floor, is where I saw Sandy’s body.

At this time there is no definitive cause of death.

My heart goes out to Louise, Sandy’s 82 year old mother, as she struggles to come to terms with the terrible loss of her only daughter. And to me, as I mourn the loss of a special friend.

half full

Just a little catch up… I spent much of my free time during the drab gray of February, revising my picture book, The Mouse In Our House. I am thrilled to say, that after a year of thinking it impossible, I cut the story almost in half. And I still like it!

This feat seems almost unbelievable to me.

I had made numerous attempts last year to do just that, with no luck whatsoever. Everything I did seemed to kill the story for me, leave it like a half eaten carcass… no that’s too vivid and meaty… it was more like just the bones, broken, crushed and dried by the sun. (Okay, I’m having a little too much fun here.)

But seriously, I didn’t think I could get my nearly 2000 word “picture book” manuscript sized down enough to make anyone want to read it, while still maintaining the narrative arc of Mary’s story. I am proud to say that as we speak, the word count rests at 1040.

It does seem that at times in writing, there is some sort of magical intervention, some sort of other-worldly involvement.

I picked up that manuscript after not looking at it for a couple of months and thought, I’ll just read through it before I go to sleep. And the next minute, I’m furiously crossing out paragraph after paragraph, and scrawling all over the back of the paper copy, writing a new scene here and a new line there.

What made that happen? What made the stars align just so, right then?

This mystery is what I love about writing. It’s what makes the unbearable parts bearable. Knowing that one day, when you least expect it, it might all just solve itself.

But not without a lot of hard work first… so on that note, I’m off to labor on the novel.

hmmm… the devil

On Tuesday night I braved the snow, and traversed the barely visible route 47 to South Hadley, to hear Joe Hill read at The Odyssey Bookshop. (Joe Hill is Stephen King‘s son… but shhhh!… he didn’t talk about it so maybe we shouldn’t either.) There were plenty of other people there who thought it worthwhile to risk their lives to hear him read as well… and we had a lot of fun.

Joe’s a very funny guy. He read, as he said, from the only part of his brand new book, Horns, that wasn’t too dirty to read in public. And he passed out battery operated flashing devil horns to anyone who asked a question after the reading. Bummer that he ran out just when I raised my hand.

I asked if he wrote chronologically, from beginning to end, or if he jumped around in the story (like I seem to be doing with my book), or if it was different with different projects. He said that he doesn’t usually know what’s going to happen as he’s writing, so he goes from beginning to end on the first draft. He’s character driven. He lets the characters take him through the story. He said he does NOT outline and does not believe in outlining. (I’m paraphrasing here. I forgot to bring my notebook and pen in with me. Just so you know.) Joe said he always does five revisions. Two big revisions and three smaller ones.

But the thing that stuck in my head, the thing I went home thinking about, was what Joe Hill said about the devil. He said he’s realized that the devil has to be in every story. Somewhere. Lurking. He has to be there to rock the boat. (Again, my words.) And now I’m sitting here thinking… is the devil in my book? I’m not sure he is. And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

And then I have to tell myself: Onward! Just finish. The devil can always be added in on revision 1 or even revision 2… Don’t worry about it right now. And I won’t. But it does give me something to think about, especially late at night… when everyone else is asleep…

the underneath

I just finished, literally ten minutes ago, reading Kathi Appelt‘s debut novel, The Underneath. It was awarded a Newbery Honor in 2009. All I can say is…

Here is an unusual book. A beautiful book. A book to live by. To breathe in. A fragrance so sweet and delicate that only the flowers might recognize it as their own. The phlox and spiderwort, the indian blanket and meadow pink. If I was to be imprisoned, solitary. Locked up tight for one thousand years, or more. And I could turn the pages of one book. Only one book, for all that time. It would be this book. This beautiful book. This tale of love and courage, of anger and longing, of missing, and of love again. Spoken in words as fresh as the early dawn. That first gray light. The sun peeking out. Orange and pink and gold. Before the scurry of the day. I would choose this book. This ageless book.

Ironically, The Underneath breaks the “No talking animals!” rule. The one we hear and read about over and over again. This serves to remind us that all good rules are made to be broken.

Truly inspirational. A classic.

Thank you, Kathi, for sharing it with us.

clipping poodle feet

It’s likely that not very many of you have had the occasion to clip the hair off a poodle’s feet with electric clippers. But as I was doing just that the other day, I had the thought: “This feels exactly the same way as trying to put a chapter together!” Now you’re probably thinking, “Uh, what in the world is she talking about?”

It’s about the moment when you first take hold of that hairy foot and turn the clippers on, the moment when you have to decide where to start, the moment when you have to just plunge in, whether it’s the right place to start or not, and run the clippers up one of the toes. But don’t go too far up the leg or it will end up looking ridiculous!

It’s the moment when you’ve run the clippers up each toe several times and tried to take down the hair in between the toes as well, but there are still straggly hairs sticking out around each nail, and no matter how hard you try, there seem to be places you can’t reach yet. You wonder if you ever will.

It’s the moment when you delve into the bottom side of the foot and carefully maneuver the clipper blade around each pad, and you have to hang on because this tickles the poodle and they want their foot back! But you’re still not done. It still looks ragged, and you know you have to keep going.

And although it seems impossible, like that foot will never clean up, it slowly does. Miraculously, somehow, if you keep clipping and re-clipping the same spots, if you do one side and then the other, if you do the top and then the bottom, if you pay special attention to the hair around the nails, to the crevices between the toes, eventually it begins to look good. And if you keep going then, you’ll finally feel like you’re putting on the polish, and contrary to all of your early fears, you’ll end up with a poodle foot that could strut down the red carpet at Westminster!

It’s very satisfying.

a delicious sandwich

This week I’ve been working on chapter 8.

It’s interesting, because I’ve never had the opportunity to put together a chapter that’s sandwiched between two that are already “done”.

Chapter 7 and chapter 9 have been “finished” for a while now. And although almost all of chapter 8 is written, it’s still sitting in pieces, chunks, scenes that need to be sewn together. And no natural order has appeared.

I just know that I have to get from where I leave my characters at the end of chapter 7 to where I pick them up at the beginning of chapter 9. And in the space between, the space that is slated to become chapter 8, a few things have to happen. I know what those things are, but even still, the way they come to pass is vitally important.

What to include or exclude, what to highlight or subtly bury, what to reveal now or save for later… all of these choices are knocking around in my head like I’m a pinball machine. And each one will make a difference in the recipe, the flavor and texture of the chapter. But I’m sure, if I keep putting the quarters in, I’ll figure it out.

I just have to remember… it’s not about the bread. It’s about the peanut butter and jelly. Do I want chunky or smooth? Strawberry or grape?

thoughtful consistency

In contemplating my New Year’s resolutions, which I always enjoy doing, I found myself thinking about a piece written by Ann Patchett for the Washington Post. The part I especially liked went something like this:

…whatever you do with thoughtful consistency for the first 32 days of the year, sets the course for the entire year…

I love the phrase “thoughtful consistency”. And it’s been in my mind often these first three days of 2010. To me it is all about where you put your focus, your energy, your I’m-really-excited-about-this-and-can’t-wait-to-do-it-each-day energy. But at the same time it exudes a calm simplicity. A peaceful confidence. And that’s what I’m feeling right now.

In 2010, I vow to embrace simplicity. I know what I have to do and I believe I can do it. I just have to go about doing my job until one day I realize that I’m done. One line at a time.

It is easy to get distracted with all the talk, the “I have to finish ASAP!” talk. This is especially true since, as of January 1st, I have been working on my book for 5 years… but I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m giving it up. Now I’m just going to keep my eye on the ball, so to speak. It seems so straightforward, so obvious. Like, why didn’t I think of it before?

Less talk, more thoughtful, consistent writing.

So with that, Happy New Year to you all!

clarification

I feel compelled to share that I’ve had feedback from a couple of people that seem to have the idea that I am not enjoying my writing… and they’ve come to this conclusion from reading what I’ve posted on my blog. This is the first time I’ve felt a little misunderstood in doing this project (the blog), and it made me think, oh yeah, you’re putting yourself out there.

Much of the time my writing for the blog is a bit tongue and cheek, and it’s meant to question and explore the issues that writers (myself of course included) deal with in working on a project, especially a first novel. A post might delve into feelings I was having on a particularly long and tiring day, or conversely, a day filled with the high excitement of passionate creation. They often spring from thoughts or moments that might have passed in private, except that I voiced them here. I tend to write about the extremes, the humdrum, every day going along, is not what makes a good post.

There is no question that sometimes it can be hard to sit down and write… but I know for me it is most likely because I am tired from work and my busy schedule and the general chaos of today’s world… and it can be challenging to plunge immediately into my book in the only 45 minutes I have to myself all day. Sometimes I simply need to just stare into space for a while, or call a friend I rarely get to talk to, or read a book.

I do get caught in periods of frustration over not having the time and space I want to have to work on my book. I get tired only having snippets – an hour here, 30 minutes there. I much prefer having six or eight hours where I know I can get lost out in the flat fields of Iowa with my characters, without worrying about when I have to come back and be here.

But of course as the song goes, we can’t always get what we want. So, I’m not complaining, I’m just explaining, clarifying my experience. And hopefully letting all of you know that I DO ENJOY MY WRITING!

writing is hell, or is it?

I just came across this quote and I had to share it with you all… it’s from an interview with author William Styron… He wrote Sophie’s Choice, among other novels and essays.

The interviewer asks:

“Do you enjoy writing?”

And Styron responds:

“I certainly don’t. I get a fine, warm feeling when I’m doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let’s face it, writing is hell.”

Well, I can safely vouch for the fact that when I’ve been away from my project for a time and have to somehow ‘get back in’… it can be pretty awful. I don’t want to wallow in exaggeration here but it feels something akin to walking a hundred miles with cement blocks for shoes… and that’s just to make it over to where the computer is :)

Sometimes at readings, I’ve heard authors asked the question, how do you keep going? And they respond with an “I can’t not write… I don’t have any choice… It’s a part of me…”

And I think to myself, really? Are you for real?

It would be so easy to just kick back and never write another word. And then I think, maybe I’m the one who’s not for real. Maybe I don’t have what it takes. And I hear the voice of a friend of mine saying, “So you must really enjoy writing…” And I’m thinking to myself, “Well, I don’t know if I’d put it that way…”

Often it is hell to make myself sit down and do it. But after I’m in the groove, it feels great. And sometimes when things are really flowing it feels downright exhilarating. It’s those moments of utter exhilaration, when everything is coming together and words are flowing out onto the page from I don’t even know where… and I’m as excited to see them there as hopefully one day a reader will be… that’s what makes it worth it. That’s why you put on those cement shoes and trudge a hundred miles to the computer.

And, in case you’re wondering… as of today, I’m back in.

like a cyclops

The story of how I became a cyclops is baffling, even to me… one minute my eye was fine, and the next minute I blinked and thought I had an eyelash in it. I never did find an eyelash in there (or anything else for that matter) in all of my mirror probing… but it was tearing and blurry and red and irritated… and it hurt.

Needless to say, it does not bode well to attempt to write for twelve hours with one eye. I did write for two hours but then common sense prevailed. My eye simply did not feel like staring into a bright computer screen any longer. Or doing anything else that might have been fun… like reading a book, watching an X-File, driving to a Thanksgiving dinner. No, all my eye wanted to do was rest, preferably shut.

It didn’t stay red or blurry for long. By Friday, you couldn’t tell by looking that there was anything wrong with it at all. But still it felt scratchy (or scratched?). And it felt tired and strained. Like the last thing it wanted to do was to focus.

The good news is that I can say it’s better now, finally.

Someday in the future when I’m done with my book, maybe I’ll remember back to 2009, to the year I was a cyclops for Thanksgiving. The year I ate way too much turkey pot pie instead of fulfilling my goal of writing to excess. Maybe I’ll remember all of the ups and downs I went through in bringing this book to completion. But then again, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll be too busy working on the next book…

thanksgiving day write-a-thon

It might be said that Thanksgiving is all about excess. Too much turkey, too much stuffing, too much pie. The stretches and groans that emit from around the table at the end of the meal are proof plenty of this gluttony.

And it’s not that I object. I don’t. I love it. I fully intend to eat my share of Thanksgiving day fare… but I have decided to up the ante. This year on the fourth Thursday of November, I pledge to have a Thanksgiving day that’s filled with too much eating AND too much WRITING.

My goal is to write TWELVE hours on the day that most people are contentedly sprawled on the couch, eyelids drooping, valiantly fighting off the tranquilizing effect of all the tryptophan. I will write to EXCESS this Thanksgiving day.

My stretches will sound from where I sit hunched over my laptop, and my groans will be those of frustration over how to fix an awkward passage or which word is exactly the right one to express my character’s inner thoughts and feelings. I will happily munch my way through helping after helping of my novel :)

I’m scheduled to start at 4:30 AM! I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

young adult novel discovery contest

Wow, do I have a lot to catch you up on…

For one thing… on November 5th, I submitted my entry to the Young Adult Novel Discovery Contest. The contest is in its first year and is being hosted by Serendipity Literary Agency, in collaboration with Sourcebooks (a publisher), and Gotham Writers’ Workshop (where I took an online writing class this past spring.)

The winner will have the opportunity to submit an entire manuscript to literary agent Regina Brooks (from Serendipity) AND receive a free ten week writing course courtesy of Gotham. (I’d love to take the Advanced Writing For Children class :)

The top FIVE entrants will get a 15 minute telephone pitch session with Regina Brooks, as well as commentary on their submission by editors at five publishing houses: Dan Ehrenhaft, head Acquisitions Editor at Soucebooks Fire; Alisha Niehaus, Editor at Dial Books for Young Readers (Penguin); David Linker, Executive Editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books; Michele Burke, Editor at Knopf Books for Young Readers (Random House); and Evette Porter, Editor at Harlequin. The top TWENTY entrants will have their submissions read by these same editors in order to determine the final five.

So, if I make the top twenty, it will give me a personal “in” with these five editors at these five houses. And in future query letters to say Dial Books For Young Readers (a Penguin imprint), I could address my query directly to Alisha Niehaus, and remind her that she judged my submission for the YA Novel Discovery Contest, etc. These kinds of connections supposedly make a HUGE difference in generating interest in a book or an author. It could be the way out of the proverbial slushpile.

The YA Novel Discovery Contest only requires entrants to submit the title and the first 250 words of their novel or idea for a novel… for young adults. Now my book (when it’s done), will definitely be categorized as “middle grade” (along with the Pullman trilogy, the Harry Potter books, the Narnia books, and so many more). It wouldn’t be appropriate to enter in a young adult contest…

So I took a character that I’ve had in my head for a few years now, Mira, and entered her… She’s a very strong character with a very definite voice… and the web page clearly says, “If you’ve written a novel for young adults—or have an idea for one that you would like to write—we invite you to enter our contest.” Well, I’ve always wanted to write a novel about Mira… so why not?

I’m happy with how my entry turned out, and because I haven’t yet shared any of my fiction writing on the blog, I’ve decided to include the first 250 words of “From The Diary Of Mira Bell Boom” on the comments page of this post. That way I’m not shoving it down your throat, but if you want to look at it, you can.

The entries close on November 30th at midnight and the winners will be selected by January 29th of 2010. The winners will be notified on or around February 2nd.

So… I just have to add this as an addendum to my last post about astrological predictions… the Astrology Zone wrote: “The full moon on January 30 may bring exciting career news… There’s a strong possibility that what happens at the full moon on January 30 may be tied to future events coming up March 10…”

Wow!!!! So, maybe I’ll win (or be in the top 20) of the contest, and then I’ll send out my novel to one of these publishers in March, and they’ll accept it? Who knows…

astrological predictions

In June of 2008, my mother happened to see my horoscope in the newspaper, and because it was a good one, one that would encourage any struggling writer, she read it to me. Mars was coming into a position to be very powerful, and bring A LOT of creative energy my way for the next SEVEN weeks… I won’t bore you with too many details, but the long and short of it is this… I proceeded to take several nights off work and write FIVE chapters in those seven weeks! So that left me with a great big warm and fuzzy feeling for Mars being anywhere near me.

Fast forward to this year… October 16th or maybe a day or two later… my mother calls to tell me that Mars is coming back! It’s going to be with me for NINE weeks this time. Note that mid October is exactly when I started writing well again, really being on a roll and feeling connected to the story and the characters. So, I went online to astrology sites to see if I could find out more about this Mars visit and it looks like VERY good news. Here’s what I found:

“Mars, your ruler, is now in the leadership sign of Leo, touring your tenth house of fame and honors until June 7, a place Mars entered on October 16…”

And…

“Keep up the good work, dear Scorpio, because you will reap the rewards soon… This is the most sustained attention you have received from the cosmos in two years, so enjoy it…”

What does this mean??? Well, I am no expert in the “science” of astrology, but from what I read at the Astrology Zone, I would typically only get Mars in this delightful position for seven weeks (as I did in 2008). But this year is special. Mars will be staying with me in the house of FAME and HONORS for EIGHT MONTHS!!! This is very unusual. I believe they used the word “extraordinary”.

Although Mars’s power will wane a bit from December 20th to March 10th… it will come back STRONGER THAN EVER from March 10th to June 7th. This means that I will have a BIG boost in creative energy and that I will have a lot of success in the career department. They strongly advocate having a big project ready to go during those three months. Hmmm, a big project…

Okay, I will! It seems like March 10th should be the perfect time to start sending the novel out to agents. Don’t you think? If you read my last post, the one entitled talent, luck, and discipline, I think you might agree that this falls perfectly into the “luck” category :)

talent, luck, and discipline

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon believes that three things are required for success as a novelist: talent, luck, and discipline. He says: “Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.”

I got the above quote from a bio on Chabon’s facebook page, but I heard him say almost word for word the same thing in an interview on NPR a couple of weeks ago. And it greatly inspired me. He said his goal was simply to: “get my butt in the chair and get a thousand words a day.” And he spoke of the “incredible feeling” he has after accomplishing that goal.

Well, here’s to that! I heartily agree.

I know I have been somewhat absent from the blog lately but I can tell you that it’s only for good cause. I’ve been writing up a storm and am in a very good head space with my book. I’ve learned over the past four years that when it feels good, you’ve got to grab it and go. You’ve got to take what you can get when you can get it. So that’s what I’m doing. But I do have a few blog posts brewing and will be posting them soon.

Happy fall everyone! Enjoy the beautiful leaves if you have them where you live :)

festival notes

I’ve been using most of my free time to work on the book this last week since I seem to be on a roll, but I did just want to share a few of my notes abut the writing panel I attended a week ago Sunday as part of the Brattleboro Literary Festival. It was called, “Writing It Down: The Writing Process”, and in this session, children’s picture book author and illustrator Anna Dewdney, poet and biographer Paul Mariani, and novelist Robert Olmstead shared some of their experiences as writers and spoke about their creative process, moderated by novelist Suzanne Kingsbury.

Here were my highlights:

Paul Mariani said, in response to a woman’s question about what she should do if she’s stuck in the middle of a manuscript and can’t seem to push forward with it… “I back the truck in.” He said, if you get to a point where you can’t proceed forward in the plot, because you’re stuck, you should pass over that part and come from the other side. You can always go back later. His metaphor of “back the truck in” is great. And he was great too. Made me want to go to Boston College just so I could take a class with him.

Robert Olmstead had a quiet, dry sense of humor. He described himself as a “voracious reader” and in answer to an audience member’s question about what kept him writing (pre-publication), what kept him going, he said it was the reading. Another thing I loved that he said was: “I sort of think of novels, not as a thing that I do, but a place where I go.” Isn’t that great? I can relate to that. And as a reader, you certainly want that experience.

Olmstead also admitted that he had to drag himself to the computer on a daily basis, that it was always a fight to make himself sit down to write, but that once he got there it was fine. I can relate to that too!

Anna Dewdney spoke about how she is careful who she shares her work with in its early stages. She will only show it to people she trusts and who “get her”. She doesn’t show it to others, including her agent, until it is much more polished.

And in answer to my question about what it was like to work with an editor, Paul Mariani said: “That’s where the real tug of war begins.” In other words, you go in with one vision of how you see your book, and the editor usually has another vision. And the two are not always the same. Yikes! Let’s not talk about that yet.

advance the story

On Friday, as a part of the Brattleboro Literary Festival, I had the pleasure of hearing Peter Abrahams, who writes the juvenile mystery series Echo Falls, talk about his books and answer some questions for a group of middle school children.

Abrahams said one thing that really stuck in my head. He said that when he’s done writing each day, he makes sure he has left the book in a different place than he left it the day before. This seems like such a simple concept. So obvious. But for some reason, it makes me excited.

Perhaps it’s because I haven’t worked on my book in a linear fashion. Even now, while you all wait to hear that I’ve finally finished chapter eight, I find myself working in the big important scenes near the end of the book…

But that doesn’t matter. Linear or not. It’s just a great practice. Asking yourself before you quit, have I advanced the story in some way? Have I moved things along? If not, then back to work.

That’s what I’ll be doing from now on.

banned books week

Banned Books Week 2009 starts tomorrow, September 26th and runs through October 3rd. During this week, the American Library Association celebrates the freedom to read without censorship. This important issue impacts us as writers, allowing us to write without censorship. We cannot take this democratic right to read (or write) for granted, because every day, all over the country books are being challenged and banned from schools and libraries. If you haven’t heard about Banned Books Week, take a minute to look at some of the links.

I read through the list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books: 1990-1999 and I am going to use some really dramatic language here to describe how I felt. I was SHOCKED and APPALLED. A challenged book is one where attempts have been made to restrict access to it or to remove it altogether from libraries and/or classrooms. Here are some of the highlights.

The Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson, one of my all-time favorite books as a kid and as an adult, and which won the Newbery Medal in 1978, made the top ten. It came in at a whopping number 8, beating out Sex, by Madonna at number 18. I’ve been straining to remember all the terrible things that must have been in that book to get it in the top ten. Was it that Jess’s friend Leslie’s family didn’t go to church? And they painted their living room gold? Or that Jess and Leslie invented an imaginary land called Terabithia where they were the rulers, and they liked to go there and, yikes, pretend? Maybe it’s the sentence where Paterson writes about Lesle: “She was more at home with magic than religion.” Hmmm.

Maurice Sendak‘s picture book, In the Night kitchen, charted at number 21, a whole three slots ahead of The New Joy of Gay Sex, at number 24. The reasons cited for the inclusion of In the Night Kitchen were: nudity, offensive language, and that it was sexually explicit. I’m going to have to go back and read that one again, because I think I’ve forgotten something.

Cujo, by Stephen King, a psychological horror novel about an adulterous mother who was trapped in a car by the family’s rabid Saint Bernard, until her son finally succumbed to heat stroke, was listed at 49, nestled in between the Harry Potter series at 48 (that’s understandable, witches, wizards, a gay headmaster…), and James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl (another of my childhood faves), at 50. I don’t think Cujo has anything on that peach! (Before you think that J.K. Rowling got short-changed, remember that this list only goes to 1999. She is way up in the top ten in more recent years, never fear.)

I have to apologize for the sarcastic tone of this post. But really.

So, in taking all of this in, I have come up with a new goal for myself. I want to be on the 100 Most Frequently Challenged books list. Wouldn’t that be great? Right up there with Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, Toni Morrison, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King. And the list goes on. (Check out the list of Banned and Challenged Classics.)

But seriously, do something this week to celebrate Banned Books Week. I’m doing my part reading The Amber Spyglass. It’s the third book in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and was in the Top 10 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2008. Number 2 to be exact. Reasons cited were political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence. Go Lyra and Will!

writing is a practice

It always amazes me how much it matters that I write every day. The difference between writing daily and being “in the flow”, and taking a break, intentionally or not, is huge.

It’s all about connection for me. If I’m able to visit with my characters and step into my story on a regular basis, then when I sit down to work, I’ll feel like I’m “write” there with them. Words come naturally, easily. Ideas gurgle up freely, as if from some underground spring of creativity. And the resulting feeling is powerfully uplifting. It’s like being mentally unconstipated.

But in this busy world, full of things that have to be done, it’s not difficult to become detached. It’s often unavoidable, in fact. There are days when I simply don’t have time to write despite my best intentions. And if those days pile up, feelings of estrangement and guilt creep in, and suddenly, it can seem impossibly hard to return to my story. But I always will, of course.

I think this back and forth is just part of the natural course of writing a longer project. It’s the bumpy, unpaved part of being on the “write road” versus the smooth, glide of the freeway. In the end, it’s all part of the journey.

But I’m happy to report that I’m currently whizzing along, covering a lot of ground. I’ve been jumping all around in the unfinished chapters, writing scenes, adding to existing scenes, finding scenes that I didn’t even remember I’d written. I love that! So, onward.

not being lame

Time is a tricky character. I actually have a picture book about him called, The Time Troll. (It isn’t done yet. It still needs a little more “time” to germinate :) But seriously. You would do well to befriend Time if you can. With Time’s help, you can make an hour seem unending. You can write for miles, accomplish mountains. But if you get on Time’s bad side, watch out! Hours can slip away into days, and days into weeks. We won’t even talk about what can happen after that.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been in a bit of a slump. The days are getting shorter, the nights cooler. And even though I love the fall, I now seem to experience a feeling of dread at the coming of another winter. But I don’t think it’s all about the freezing and shoveling and slipping and sliding (although who wouldn’t rather be having some fun in the sun)… I think it’s about the passage of Time. And these signs of fall make it very clear… the summer’s over and MY BOOK IS NOT DONE!

Now, Time is watching me closely to see how I’ll handle this disappointment. He’s hoping that maybe I’ll throw in the towel and lose this week too. And next week. But I’m not going to give in that easily. I can’t afford to hang my head in shame. I’ve got to get back on the horse, so to speak. Again.

One thing that helps me in times like these, is to consider the lives of truly inspirational people. People who appear to be tight pals with Time, who accomplish significantly more in their lifetime than the average individual. And one of those people has been in our minds and hearts a lot recently. Senator Ted Kennedy.

A friend of mine called the other day after watching Kennedy’s funeral on TV, and she said to me, “I’ve decided I’m not going to be lame anymore.” Now I realize there are all different levels of being lame. But it’s your own personal level of “lameness” that matters. That’s the one that will weigh on you if it’s not where you want it to be. That’s the one that will keep you up at night. Or in my case, not keep me up at night (writing:)

So, in memory of Ted Kennedy… I too, vow to not be lame any more. Wish me luck!

once upon a picture-book publisher

As you may remember from The Mouse In Our House post, I have decided to submit my picture book directly to publishers. And then, when I finish the novel, I’ll look for an agent.

I’m happy to report, that PHASE ONE of researching publishers has been completed. It consisted of me going through 86 pages of publisher listings in the 2008 Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market. (But yikes, you say, 2008! That Writer’s Market’s out of date! I know it’s true, but it’ll have to do. So here I go, on to phase two. :)

In PHASE ONE, I came up with 34 publishers that fit my criteria thus far. PHASE TWO will have me visiting the web sites of those 34 publishers to study their submission’s guidelines, to make sure they’re still a good fit for me, and that they’re still accepting unsolicited material from “unagented” writers. To look at their catalog to see what books, what authors, they’ve published. To jot down notes on these books, so that in PHASE THREE, when I set off to find them at the library, at Barnes & Noble, at The Odyssey, I’ll be able to.

That’s one of the biggest things publishers want you to do. They want you to study their catalogs. Know what kinds of books they put out. Be familiar with specific titles. Decide if your book truly fits in with the “style” of these titles. You need to be able to write in the dreaded cover letter, why you think your book is a good match for them. And as my friend Chrysler pointed out, it’s a fine line, it seems. They want your book to fit in with their other offerings, but at the same time they don’t want it to be too much of the same thing.

Some of the publishers want query letters, but for picture books, most want you to submit the complete manuscript. Some will respond to queries in a month, some in 6 months; to manuscripts in as little as 6-8 weeks, or as long as 6-9 months. Some will return your story and grace you with a rejection letter, if that’s their decision, as long as you include a S.A.S.E. (self-addressed-stamped-envelope). But others “will not respond unless interested.”

A few will accept submissions via e-mail, but almost all of them seem to want it the old-fashioned way. Some accept simultaneous submissions and others want to look at it exclusively. My favorite was one that said, “hesitantly accepts simultaneous submissions”. Well, that’s okay. I’m willing to hesitantly submit.

Some will publish your book in a year, some not for 2-3 years. Some will pay the authors royalties based on the retail price, some on the wholesale price. Some want to purchase the work outright. (No thanks.) Some offer advances. Some don’t. Many publishers are located in New York. Some aren’t. Does it matter? Probably not. I don’t think you usually have to go there. My mom never did.

The average word length for picture books varies a lot as well. Some are under 500 words, many are around 1000 words. A few are as high as 1500. You might remember that my story is a beefy 1800 words. But I feel like I’ve cut it down as much as I want to without an editor’s input. And in the end, I guess I have to follow my gut.

Enough said. I just wanted you all to see some of the tricky terrain we’re navigating here these days on the “write road”. But keep in mind that the most challenging is yet to come. It’s gonna be a wild ride. So, hold on! Isn’t it great?

growing giant pumpkins

I’m working my way through the stack of Iowa fiction that I brought home from the library last week. I just finished reading Squashed, by Joan Bauer. It’s about a sixteen year old girl who is a giant pumpkin grower… and as I said in my tweet tonight, I never realized how much growing giant pumpkins had in common with writing a book. Here is a quote from page 6 of Squashed:

“I grew giant pumpkins because I liked battle, and growing one was an everyday fight. You had to be in it for the long haul. Rain, frost, bugs, and fungus could strike at any time and stop you dead. Only certain growers are cut out to handle this pressure – tough people of steel who can stand against the odds. Richard says giant-pumpkin growers are the spawning salmon of agriculture, since only the strongest make it upstream each year for anything worth mentioning.”

Squashed was Joan Bauer’s first novel and was published in 1992, after winning the Delacorte Press Contest for a First Young Adult Novel. This contest is held annually by Delacorte Press to encourage the writing of contemporary young adult fiction, suitable for readers ages 12-18, and it offers publication, as well as a $1,500 cash prize and a $7,500 advance. The Delacorte Yearling Contest for a First Middle-Grade Novel offers the same prizes, but is open to books suitable for readers ages 9-12. Hmmm, maybe this is something to consider when the time comes.

For now though, I just hope I can persevere as well as Bauer’s main character Ellie does in Squashed. Mightily tending her giant pumpkin, day in and day out, coaxing him along, urging him to greatness, through all of her own hang-ups, as well as all of the other stuff that life dishes out just because it does. And looking forward to harvest time, to the big weigh-in, I hope to move past the sweat and tears, as Ellie did, and experience some of the joy and excitement of her thrilling victory. That would be great.

That – and some pumpkin cake would be nice too :)

are we there yet? are we there yet?

At some point when you’re on a long trip, you get restless. You’re tired and achy and you just want to get where you’re going. The child in you starts nagging, are we there yet, are we there yet? And you have to tell that child something, right?

You have to satisfy their curiosity about where you are, and when you might arrive at the anticipated destination. Then, the child can go back to looking out the window and enjoying the scenery. Or in my case, blissfully writing, and not worrying that I might be a pizza delivery driver for the rest of my life!

So, lately, I’ve been asking myself, are we there yet, are we there yet? And I’ve been contemplating, how much of this book do I actually have done? How far along am I? I’ve got nine chapters out of eighteen. But that can’t be right. I’ve GOT to be more than halfway there!

And here’s what I came up with.

For this purpose, I divided my book into four parts. I realized that in the beginning, when I was working on the first part of the book, I was also working on the second part, the third part, and the fourth part. I was conceiving ideas, jotting down notes, looking up facts, and even writing entire scenes, that really belonged later on in the book, in one of the other parts. Later, when I’d completed the first part of the book, and was working on the second part, I was still working on the third and the fourth parts. And so on. Only when I reach the fourth part of the book, will I be working on just one part.

This is exciting! Do you know what this means? It MUST mean that the second half of the book will NOT take as long to write as the first half, because much of the work, the conceiving, the researching, the organizing, even some of the writing of scenes, is already done.

To illustrate this, I assigned values to the four parts of my book… let’s say that the first part is worth 4 points, the second part is worth 3 points, the third part is worth 2 points, and the fourth part is worth only 1 point… Using these values, and considering that I am “done” with part one and part two, I have completed 7 points out of 10. That would mean that I am 70 percent done with my book! Only 30 percent to go!

Now that certainly makes the trip feel like it’s whizzing by!

support your local book store

I drove over to South Hadley tonight to The Odyssey Bookshop, a most wonderful place that if you follow my blog you’ll be hearing plenty about I am sure. The reason for this is that they are incredibly dedicated to hosting author events, and as you might have read in my first post “the write road“, going to readings is one of those things that is very important for writers.

For one thing, it’s inspiring. It doesn’t matter what the book is about, whether you like it or not, or whether you have even read it. What is important is that these people, or gods as we might call them, have actually survived the process of writing a book and come out on the other side. Perhaps a little worse for wear, but still alive and kicking. You see, it is possible.

And it’s not only possible once… When you hear them talk, and you ask them questions, you find out that they are willingly doing it all over again. Even, again and again. It’s unbelievable. Eye opening. Life changing. This is probably the most important reason to attend readings if you are a writer.

Of course there are other reasons.

It’s great to hear other writer’s talk about their process. How do they write, what time of day, do they ever get stuck, what works to get them unstuck, how much do they research, how long did it take them to write this book, what weird little story do they tell about those final days of push, how did they find an agent, how fast did it sell, are they happy with how it turned out?

And then there’s always the little nugget that I wait for. Because it always seems to come. I’m never disappointed. It’s the thing I came to hear, the thing that that particular author was meant to tell me on that particular night. Tonight, as I listened to Jacqueline Sheehan talk about her new book, Now & Then, it was about motivation. She said something to the affect of how “you need to understand the motivation of your character to do what he or she is doing”. Now there’s something to think about while you eat your cheerios.

The other thing she said that was great is: “If I’m really stuck, I take a nap.” And on that note, I’d better get to sleep. I’ve only got a few hours left.

Thank you to The Odyssey and all the people who work so hard there to keep this independent book store thriving. Please, don’t forget to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BOOK STORES!

no spoilers here

The other day, my friend Katie O. wrote and asked me if I was ever going to blog about what happens in my book… The blood drained from my face as I read her words, and then reread them. I broke out in a cold sweat. Staggered to the window, gasping for air, as I contemplated this horrific idea… you mean people are actually going to know what I’m writing about?

But the answer is no. I mean, not yet. Not till it’s done, and then really done. For one thing, I don’t want to be a spoiler. I want each of you to experience it page by page with no longstanding trumped up expectations to get in your way. And the other thing is, truth be told, that I’m a little paranoid about some one stealing my idea before I can get it out there. So for now, it’s best hidden in stacks of yellow legal pads and on my laptop and three back-up jump drives.

However, to help build some anticipation and to make you feel like you’re a part of all this. Which you are! You’re my support system for finishing this book. There are a few things I can tell you.

My main character is a twelve year old boy named Jacy. His best friends and confidants throughout his adventures are his cousins, Travis, twelve, and Olivia, eleven. Jacy is living with them now, on their farm in rural Iowa, after losing his mother (his only parent) in an automobile crash. Her death, and Jacy’s consequent return to his birthplace in Three Rivers, Iowa, take place about three weeks before the beginning of the book. When we meet Jacy, he is sitting in the cemetery by his mother’s grave. And then a bunch of things happen out in those flat fields of Iowa that we won’t talk about yet :)

The end.

the big screen

For me, the “write road” also leads to the movies. It’s partly because I am interested in film and acting and screenwriting. It’s also partly because I can see my book eventually becoming a movie.

I grew up with an uncle who was a screenwriter and still is. He teaches in the film school at Columbia. My uncle Nick, whether he knows it or not, was a huge influence on me as a child. He led a different sort of life, far from the hum-drum of nine to five. Always traveling, off writing somewhere. Spending summers in Nova Scotia, Greece, Montauk. For me, it was very exciting, very romantic.

I mostly only heard little snippets. The kind that kids pick up from adult conversations when no one thinks they’re listening. Words here and there, about “this script” or “that director”. But I took them in and carried them with me like they were valuable treasures. What they were was proof to me that it’s possible to lead an artist’s life.

And here I am a tryin’ :)

Last night I treated myself and went to the theater to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was great. Much darker than the bits and pieces I’ve seen of the other Harry Potter movies over the years. But what astounded me was the special effects. What they can do. It’s truly amazing.

And this realization totally inspired me. I believe that my book will make a very good movie one day. Before I started writing it, I went back and forth about whether to write it as a screenplay or a novel. I’m glad I chose to write it as a novel. But in the back of my head, I still see it on the big screen.

And last night, while I was blissfully munching popcorn and watching the magnificent larger-than-life-sized witches and wizards scream across the Quidditch pitch in front of me, as though I was really sitting in the stands at Hogwarts, I was awed by what is possible.

It sparked something in my imagination. These very visceral images came to me and filled my head, of my story, my characters, up there on that screen, and it made me tingle all over with excitement to get back to my writing.

So today, I am enjoying a newly revived energy towards my work. This is when it’s good :)

uncovering the story

I am fascinated by how stories reveal themselves. I would say “reveal themselves to me”… but I’ve heard many other writers describe a similar experience. It feels like the story is already out there, somewhere, in a complete form, and I am just accessing it. Some days I get closer to it than others and I get the opportunity to see big chunks. And if I’m lucky, to take them back with me to this world, the one where I can type them into my laptop.

Stephen King, in his book On Writing, gives the best description of this I have ever heard (or read). He believes “…stories are found things, like fossils in the ground.” He writes: “Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered, preexisting world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.” I love this!

And this is my challenge right now (write now!) I have seen enough that I know the basic gist of the story, I know mostly what happens in all of the unfinished/unwritten chapters. But I have to be careful. I don’t want to overlook some beautiful fragment that is buried just below the surface. Or rush blindly forward and accidentally tromp on and break some important skeletal structure.

I was reminded of this the other day when I found, during a free-write on chapter eight (the chapter you’re wondering when is she ever going to finish!)… a scene that I had never noticed before. But it was the scene I needed, the one I’d been missing, knowing that something just wasn’t right yet. And now I have it. It’s such a great feeling, such a sense of discovery. So, it won’t be long, just a few more days, before I can label chapter eight “readable” and “done for now.” :-)

my mom, the published author

As I sit here contemplating my decision to send out The Mouse In Our House to publishers myself, I remember this. My mother’s picture book, Old Blue Buggy, was published by Dutton Children’s Books in 2003. She was an unagented, first-time author. You go mom! Knowing that it can be done, inspires me daily.

the mouse in our house

Lately, it seems, I’ve been focusing all of my time and energy on writing (or trying to write anyway… or trying to try to :) But writing is just one part of being on the “write road”. And there is so much more I have to do.

For one, there is my picture book, The Mouse In Our House. I started it four years ago and finished it in February of this year, in time to put it up for critique in my Writing For Children class at Gotham.

Since then, it’s just been sitting here.

I argued with my father today over whether it’s ready to send out. He said, “You don’t want to just leave ‘product’ lying around when it could be sent out.” And I said, “It’s not ‘product’. It’s a book.” And he said, “It’s a product. It’s something you can sell.” (Pause). “Well, it’s not really ready to send out.” I said. And he said, “It’s ready.” “It will take a lot of time,” I said, “to research where I’m sending it.” “You already did that.” He said. “But I’m not done. I haven’t decided yet.” I finish up. “Just send it!” He shot back.

Of course, before I can send it anywhere, it needs another round of revision. I have to decide if I should try to shave off 500 more words so that it actually fits into the picture book category. Right now it’s weighing in at a hefty 2000. Maybe I can get away with a very convincing query letter?

And then there’s the question of publisher vs. agent. In the children’s book genres, the opinion seems to be split about 50/50 when it comes to this question. From what I’ve heard, I could easily spend just as much time and effort looking for an agent as getting the book sold to a publisher myself. So why would I bother with an agent? Well, for one, they take care of all the money. Two, they know how to get the best deals. Three, they know how to read contracts. Shall I go on?

Nonetheless, my strategy is leaning towards trying to get the picture book published on my own. My theory being, that the agent I want for my novel is not necessarily the agent who will be interested in the picture book. But, if I can get the picture book sold, the agent that I want for the novel will be that much more interested in me. Right?

So, off I go to re-research publishers. Particularly ones that are open to good read-aloud picture books that happen to be just a wee bit long. (If any editors from Candlewick happen to be perusing this post and are suddenly and inexplicably interested in reading my book, let me know!)

[Note: Gotham Writer's Workshop offers many online writing classes as well as classes taught in person in NYC. I highly recommend taking one.]

show, don’t tell

I’m taking a theater directing class. It’s on my only night off, but it’s drop in, so I won’t go every time. I figure it will give me a chance to do a little acting, as well as learn something about how to move a project from script to stage (or screen).

The first class was last week and the first exercise the instructor gave us was a writing exercise. She asked us to write a plot in a paragraph. I admit that at this point I was thinking to myself, oh my god, if I’m just going to be sitting here writing, then I might as well be home working on my book!

But after that, it got interesting. Working with a partner, we took our paragraphs, and made a list of all the ways we could convey what happens in our plots to an audience. With no speaking. Then we each had the opportunity to direct our own piece.

And here’s where I learned something.

In writing classes, you often hear the phrase, “show, don’t tell”. Sometimes this makes perfect sense to me. Other times I lose my grasp on what it really means. But that night, as we worked our way through the exercise, I had a moment of clarity. With no narrator and no dialogue, we were able to get across a LOT of our story, simply with physical movement.

So, think about writing your characters in a way that shows their actions, their feelings, their desires, through physical movement. It’s cool to think about anyway.

forcing yourself to write

Some people would say that you shouldn’t force yourself to write, that you should wait for the creativity to come to you. I tend to disagree. I think that writing most often comes out to the tune of bad, bad, not so bad, pretty good, great. And that riff might repeat itself over and over. So, it’s best to start whistling while you work.

My brother just sent me an interesting link to a web page that advocates “contingency management”, as a way for writers to avoid procrastination and stuckedness. Here it is: http://jimgibbon.com/2006/08/05/one-simple-technique-to-help-you-overcome-procrastination-and-start-writing-now/

The idea is that you choose something important to you. It has to be something that you feel you can’t live without on a daily basis. And then you make it contingent on your completing your writing goals. For instance, the writer of the above page determined that he would write three double-spaced typed pages each day before he could check his email.

This requires a LOT of discipline. It means you have to be somewhat anal with yourself. A part of you will have to play the bad cop. But it’s worth it. If you write every day, you WILL progress. I KNOW this. And yet it’s hard to do when I’ve had a long day of work and errands and chores and I still have to feed the dog at almost midnight.

But I’m up for the challenge. Especially since I’m sliding behind on my schedule of a chapter a week. So now I just have to decide what I should use as my contingency. It seems like I’ve already cropped all the fun and enjoyable extras out of my life. Hmmm…

Okay, why don’t I say that I’ll free-write every morning for 30 minutes before I can talk to anyone, on the phone or in person. That way I can get my ideas flowing first thing, before I’m barraged with outside stimuli. I think that’s when you’re most connected to the dream state, that world where all the stories live. At least that’s what I’m hoping. I’ll start tomorrow. And I’ll let you know how it goes.

learning life-play

Sometimes there are stops along the “write road” that you don’t plan and would never think to look for, yet they end up helping you out on your journey. Life-Play was one of those.

A few weeks ago, Carman, a friend of mine from acting class, told me about a new improv format that he’s been working on with longtime improv master David Shepherd. It’s called Life-play and it’s a series of games they’ve developed to be played over the phone. A few of us were then lucky enough to be invited to Carman’s house, along with David, so they could teach us the games in person. It turned out to be very enjoyable and a real learning experience.

My favorite of the games we played is called Zoom Story. It gave me a whole new perspective on my writing. In this game, there is a narrator and a guide. The guide comes up with the first sentence and the narrator uses this first sentence to begin to improvise a story. Then, as the narrator tells the story, the guide directs the narrator, using phrases such as: zoom into feeling, zoom into object, zoom out to action, zoom out to environment, zoom forward in time, or zoom back in time.

What struck me was how the energy of the story changed with each new direction from the guide. Sometimes, the guide seemed to come in at just the right moment, making the energy leap and the story flow vigorously, and other times, I found myself longing for the guide to intervene and move the narrator along.

Now, when I’m at home working on my book, I think of those ebbs and flows of movement and energy in the storytelling. I play both narrator and guide, the voices in my head battling each other to try to find the sweet spot in the story. It’s great. I thank David and Carman both for this new awareness. It was one of those unexpected twists in the “write road” that will stay with me all the way to the end. Wherever that may be.

Carman actually recorded the session that day at his house, and believe it or not, has posted my zoom story on the Life-Play site as a podcast. So, if anyone is interested in checking it out, you can. Just go to this link and click on play: http://www.life-play.com/2009/06/24/podcast/scissors/

an hour late and a penny short

Okay, here I am, slinking back with my tail between my legs. It’s been WAY too long since I’ve posted because I kept telling myself, I’ll just finish this chapter tonight, and then I’ll post. But I guess that method doesn’t always work. So, here’s something I’ve learned.

If you are on the “write road”, and you are doing a blog, you have to post no matter what. Even if you have not accomplished your goals. Even if you are a lazy sloth. Because if you don’t post, it is just another goal that you have not accomplished. And pretty soon, the pile of goals that you have not accomplished is so big, that all you want to do is crawl into the closet and hide amidst the dirty socks and underwear. (Well, maybe not really, but staying in bed sounds like a good idea.)

Conversely, if you do post regularly, you will learn to keep deadlines, a skill which will come in very handy when you’re working with your editor or your agent. And most importantly, you will feel GOOD about yourself. And when you feel good about yourself, you will be able to WRITE YOUR BOOK. So, from here on out, I post no matter what. I confess my sins, if need be, and move on.

Ready? Here goes.

I am supposed to be doing a chapter a week. It’s now been two weeks and five days and I have completed only one chapter. I finished chapter nine. Yay!!! This means I’m at the halfway point. I really believe I can finish chapter eight by Sunday night, which will put me exactly one week behind schedule. Oh well, I had two extra weeks at the end of August anyway. Better not to beat myself up and just get back to work :)

dogs are the best

Here is a little piece of advice to help you along the “write road” if you should happen to find yourself there. At least it sure helps me. Get a dog.

A dog’s calm presence in the room with you while you write is wonderful. A dog can keep you going. Help you to not feel so alone and isolated while you tackle your goals. Finish a chapter. Write a query letter. Go through The Writer’s Market with your highlighter again, making sure you didn’t miss anything. All this while your normal friends are at the beach or a BBQ or relaxing in the recliner watching Dancing With The Stars.

At the same time, a dog can make you stop. Take that much needed Break. Get away from the computer. Take a walk. Sniff the air the way they do. I am grateful for my dog, that’s for sure. When I say, “Come on, let’s go work on the book!”, she happily runs into the bedroom and jumps up on the bed, tail wagging. (Okay, I admit it, I write on the bed :) And that’s great. It makes me feel like we’re in this together. Granted she then goes to sleep and dreams of splashing in the river or chewing on a bully-stick (i.e. dried bull penis tendon), and I am left scrawling out pieces of my story on yellow pads or copying and pasting chunks of text from one chapter to another.

Still, she’s doing her part. The sweet sound of her little snores makes me peaceful as I work. And I can’t imagine doing it without her. So, enjoy your four-legged friends. Cherish every day you have with them. And keep on writin’.

can you read while you write?

Can you read while you write? I don’t mean this literally. Obviously. But one thing that all writers are supposed to do is read. Read, read, read. That’s great. I love to read. The problem for me is that if I’m reading a good book, I don’t want to do anything else. And I mean ANYTHING else. And that includes writing. So for me, following this particular bit of “write road” advice is fraught with conflict. To read or not to read, that is the question.

So, I have to confess, that during this countdown to completion, I don’t think I will be able to indulge in reading novels. I just don’t see how I can and still find time to work. I have one left to finish and then that’s it. I’m on the wagon, so to speak, until the end of August.

the big stretch

For the last couple of years, I’ve been working with a twelve-chapter outline for my novel. Since at one point I had nine chapters “done”, I was at one point three-quarters of the way to a complete draft. But last week I stretched my outline from twelve to eighteen chapters. I had so much in the unfinished chapters already, with so much more that needed to go in, that I was feeling constricted. So constricted that it was hard to think about writing.

Now I have LOTS of SPACE. And it feels great. Really refreshing. Rejuvenating. It feels like there’s room for me to write again. The only bummer is, that since two of my “finished” chapters needed some work, and there are all those new chapters to fill up, I suddenly found myself with only seven chapters “done” out of eighteen. That’s not even half way there!

The good news is, that the first week of my countdown to completion is now over, and I managed to successfully work my way through the revisions and additions to the new chapter seven. Yay! So that means I have chapters one through seven and chapter eighteen “done”. Only ten more chapters to go, one a week. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

This week I have to take the old chapter eight, break it up, and put half in the new chapter eight and half in chapter nine. And then write the rest of the new chapter eight. Eeeks, I’d better go get to work.

edit for your friends

Yesterday my friend Chris asked me to look over a personal essay he wrote to go with his application to a University program. I think he was surprised at how much ink was on his paper when I gave it back to him. Not that it wasn’t good writing… but that’s what editing is all about, right? One draft, two drafts, three drafts, four.

The cool thing is that when I got home and went to work on chapter seven in my novel, I immediately saw something that put the chapter in a whole new light. It was something similar to what I had suggested to Chris for his paper. My point here is, it’s worth it to you to help out your fellow writers. And of course, the more you read and critique the work of others, the better you will be at doing it for your own stories. (Ouch! I’m not saying it still doesn’t hurt.)

the on-ramp

I’m taking an acting class, and my teacher Lisa (who is incredibly awesome and talented), had us do this exercise to loosen up our face and lips and to get us vocalizing.

We were to pretend we were an old car. And we were to start up the car, vroom vroom…, maybe it’s a little hesitant to get going, back out of the driveway, chug chug down the little street to the highway, get on the on-ramp, burripity burripity…, merge onto the highway accelerating to highway speed (eek!), take the next exit, slow down on the off-ramp, drive a couple blocks on a smaller road, putt putt…, and pull over and park at our friend’s house, turning off that ole engine. We were to do all of this by making that buzzing-lips-together noise that you make when you’re a kid.

So why am I telling you this, you’re wondering? Because I feel like I’m that old car right now, trying to get started writing again. And I’m not even rollin’ those tires yet. I think I’m still warming up in the driveway. But at least I’ve got gas (figuratively speaking) and the ole engine, she turned over and started right up. So here’s hoping that tomorrow I’ll back out of the driveway and start to chug chug along the little street. I’ll let you know when I get to the on-ramp.

the countdown to completion

How is your book coming? People always ask. And I always say the same thing. “It’s coming.” But I can see it in their eyes. They wonder if I’ll ever finish it. Or maybe I’m just projecting…

It’s my first long fiction project. A middle grade novel. I started working on it in January of 2005, although I didn’t officially start writing until October of 2005. Luckily, I will never again need nine months to pick out character names, research geography, and decide on family relations!

I have to admit that for the last eight months, I’ve been in a slump. But that’s over now. It’s back to work time. I am determined to have a completed draft by the end of August. So that’s three months. A chapter to “finish” a week for eleven weeks. And two weeks at the end to go back through everything and do revisions.

If Stephen King can write a 1000 page draft in three months, surely I can stumble through my 200 pages or so in four years?

Anyone want to keep me company? Write like crazy all summer? Let me know if you’re in the same boat. Or else feel free to just stick around and help hold me accountable.

Wish me luck :-)

my dissertation writing group

It all started when I realized that my two friends, Christine and Valija, were both writing dissertations in Medieval Art History. And they were at exactly the same stage. Panic. Despair. Crying daily at their computers.

I suggested that the three of us get together at the Haymarket for coffee and they immediately hit it off. They became excited about the prospect of starting a goal group and convening weekly to report on their progress. When they asked me to join them, I said, “But I’m not writing a dissertation.” (Thank god!) But they said it didn’t matter, I could set goals on whatever I wanted.

And that’s when I decided to write a novel.

We met almost every week for three years, sometimes doing three-way conference calls on the phone if we couldn’t make it in person. We read “How To Write A Dissertation In Fifteen Minutes A Day”. We made ourselves pay fines to the group bank if we didn’t complete our goals (and then every now and then we took ourselves out to eat on all the money we had in the bank :-) Our group was an incredible source of support and motivation and good times.

Congratulations to both of them for finishing their Ph.D.s and going on to be great professors. It sure is harder working here alone though!

Valija, Christine, I love you guys!
A

the “write” road

“If you want to be a writer, then write.” I still remember that advice given to my mother by a family friend back when I was in middle school. On the one hand, he was right. It’s amazing how if you sit down every day in front of your computer or with notebook in hand, and scrawl out your ideas, eventually something will start to take shape. And you can honestly call yourself a writer.

But the day will come, whether you like it or not, when dreaded phrases like query letter and book tour will start to buzz around in the periphery of your consciousness. And you will know, deep down where one knows these things, that being a writer is not enough for you. Now you want to be an author. A published author. And this is where the buzzing in your head becomes a din.

Be well read. Know the books in your genre. Research publishers. Research agents. Be familiar with the books put out by the publishers and represented by the agents. Go to the library. Go to Barnes & Noble. Attend conferences (if you can afford it!) Attend literary festivals. Go to readings. Meet authors. Join a writing group. Or a critique group. Start a zine. Or a blog. At the same time, don’t forget to finish your book. And start the next one. Maybe you’ll be able to pull off that three book contract. One can always hope.