It’s been a busy week, and I feel woefully behind on so many things. My Google Reader, for example, has over 200 unread items on it. I’m hoping to catch up on my blog reading over the weekend. And maybe I’ll even get some writing done. So since I don’t have anything terribly insightful to say today, I thought I’d share a hilarious picture that my husband saw on jimmyr.com:
Have a great weekend!
The other day I was reading Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman and came across this lovely description about carving wood: “My father used to say that the carving was in the wood already. You just had to find out what the wood wanted to be, and then take your knife and remove everything that wasn’t that.”
When I applied that bit of brilliance to my current WIP (the fairy tale retelling that is going through yet another round of revision) I realized that my story knew what it wanted to be much earlier than I did. In one of the first drafts of the book, my writing group picked out a minor character and said: “Who is he? We want to know more about him!” I wound up giving him a slightly larger role, but he remained very much minor.
Now that I’m reworking the story again, I’m realizing that this character isn’t as innocuous as I always believed: in fact, he might have a pretty sinister role in the story. Once I realized that, it helped me strengthen some other elements that were always quietly there. It’s taken a lot of digging around in the wood, but I finally feel like I’m finding out what the story wants to be.
How are you all doing with your WIPs? Anything come out of the wood that you weren’t expecting?
It’s time for another installment of the “Letter to Myself” series in which authors write letters to their younger selves giving advice, encouragement, or words of warning. Today’s letter comes from children’s author R.L. LaFevers. I had the pleasure of meeting Robin at a signing she did in the Boston area not too long ago. Not only was she incredibly nice, she also showed everyone pictures of herself as a child with a medley of wild animals: the audience was hooked!
Dear Self,
You will hear, from many sources, that the path to publication takes a good ten years, but you will be certain it will never take you that long, your journey to publication will only be two or three years, or at the very most five.
You will be wrong.
You will tell yourself many lies as you work up the courage to put pen to paper. That you write so your kids will have the sort of books they want to read, to make a financial contribution to the family bank account. Those are all lies and the sooner you admit that, the better. You are writing to feed your soul. You are writing because that is what you have always wanted to be, ever since you were a child, and you simply didn’t have the courage to claim that dream. Claim it now. Own that dream, and be willing to feed and nurture it for the rest of your life. There is no shame in that. Honoring your dream does not diminish your love for others. By dreaming you do not cheat them, rather you give them the courage to do the same.
Enjoy your apprenticeship more. This is an exciting, wonderful, fertile time, if you let it be. Read thousands of books, experiment with genres and voices and structure. Learn the rules inside and out so that when your story demands that you break them, you understand exactly what you are gaining and what you are losing. Focus more on the journey and much, much less on the end goal. Contrary to popular sayings, focusing on the end goal will not necessarily get you there any faster. It might do precisely the opposite.
Have the courage to speak your truth and explore what fascinates you. Give that part of yourself that has been silent for so long a voice, then let it say what it needs to say, no matter where it leads.
There will be times, many many times, when you swear you will never write again, that you will give up this discouraging, frustrating, seemingly soul-destroying path you have chosen, only to have a new story idea arrive and wrap you in its promise and refuse to let go. Be proud of this. Recognize it for what it truly is—a sign that you are a writer, it is in your blood, part of your bones and sinew and soul, no matter whether you ever get published or not. Recognize also that sometimes, in the very moment we let go, we create the space for something new and wonderful to come into our lives. For that is what will happen to you; once you let go of the idea of publication, you will find it. The universe is perverse that way. Accept it.
R. L. LaFevers (Robin Lorraine when she’s in really big trouble) is the author of ten books for young readers, including Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos, and her most recent book Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist: The Basilisk’s Lair. She lives in Southern California with her husband and a demonic cat.
I’ve been working on a top secret project for the past few weeks, and it’s finally time to tell you all about it! Friend and fellow author Alisa Libby and I have created First Page Panda, a website that’s all about promoting books. Here’s our official spiel:
Did you know that pandas love to read? Well, they do. And we want them to read your books.
At First Page Panda, our goal is to offer a free outlet for book promotion where readers can browse book blurbs and read first pages of a wide variety of YA and children’s novels—not just the top-selling mainstream titles that crowd the shelves of the average chain bookstore.
We plan on featuring traditionally-published books released in the past twelve months as well as those coming out soon. We’re excited to share first-page excerpts from new and upcoming releases with pandas (and people) everywhere. After all, what could sell a book better than the author’s own words?
The site will be officially launching in September, so stay tuned! If you’d like to pop by and become a follower, it would make the little panda smile. And if you’d like your novel to be featured on First Page Panda, email us at contact@firstpagepanda.com.
Have a great weekend!
I’m almost finished reading The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass, and I think his chapter on tension is one every writer should read. Tension is what keeps us turning the pages. It can come from a variety of things, but as Maass points out, one of the most effective ways of creating tension is through conflicting emotions.
When I thought about the books that really gripped me, that made me keep reading way past my bedtime, I realized they were full of conflicting emotions. For example, in The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams, the main character must choose between marrying a horrible man and destroying her family – there is no “good” choice and she’s conflicted the entire time.
Then I started thinking about The Hunger Games. (No, I haven’t read Mockingjay yet, so shhhh!) We have the danger of the games, and Katniss’s struggle to survive, but there are also conflicting emotions. Katniss doesn’t want to kill the other contestants, but she doesn’t want to die. And, of course, there’s also the love triangle, which is the definition of conflicting emotions.
So here’s an idea: Grab a scene from your WIP, one that you think is intense and full of tension. Now look at what your main character is feeling. Is she conflicted? Does she have mixed feelings about what’s happening or about what she wants? If not, might that kind of conflict raise the tension? And if your character is conflicted, is it possible to pump it up even more?
Maass’s explanation is much more complex than my little breakdown here, so I recommend reading the chapter. The conflicting emotions approach might not be the answer to every problem, but it can be a good way to perk up some saggy middle scenes. And a bit of added tension is never a bad thing, right?
Here is the next installment of the “Letter to Myself” series in which authors write letters to their younger writer selves giving encouragement, advice, or words of warning. Today’s letter comes from YA author Jo Knowles. I have the pleasure of knowing Jo personally, and I can tell you she is just as warm and genuine in real life as she is in this letter. Enjoy!
Dear Me, sixteen years ago:
This is where I see you at your most vulnerable: You are sitting in the parking lot at Whole Foods (back then it was called Bread and Circus) in Hadley Massachusetts. You are crying, because when you tried to pay for your groceries with your bank card, it was denied. You are also crying because you just moved from the city to a strange place where the best job you could find was a part-time gig at a library for $6/hour. You are in love, but you are scared that you and your boyfriend are in over your heads. You just finished graduate school and this is not what you expected. You wrote 3/4 of a YA novel for your graduate thesis, but you’re pretty sure you will never finish it. And even if you do, it will never be good enough to publish.
Oh Me, you are a very sad sight. Let me whisper a few things in your ear. Stop crying a minute so you can hear me.
In a few weeks, you’ll be in that new library, trying not to cry again. You’ll be cleaning up the bulletin board and you’ll see a flyer announcing a meeting for children’s book writers run by a group called SCBWI, which you’ve never heard of. Trust me, this organization will change your writing life. Right there, under your feet, in the cold, smelly basement of the library.
That night, you’ll go home and open the book Robert Cormier recently signed for you. In the back, you’ll see where he wrote his address, telling you to send him your manuscript when you finish it. You’ll think he was just being nice, but later you’ll learn that, while nice, he was also sincere.
But focus on now. You will finish that novel and polish the first chapter. You’ll scrape together $2 so you can attend the SCBWI meeting at the library. You’ll go for three months before you get up the courage to read that first chapter. But when you do, you will be welcomed into the fold by a group of women who will become life-long friends. They will tell you not to give up. They will call you a writer. They will be there for you through marriage, the birth of your child, tearful rejection letters, and finally, your first sale.
You were right about that first novel. It will never be good enough to publish. But you will learn from it. Keep writing. Keep going to those meetings in that cold, smelly basement. Gather feedback from those wonderful writer friends.
Yes, there will be more bounced checks. More rejections. Struggles. Doubt. Heartbreak. Instead of letting those disappointments stop you, let them fuel you to go deeper. Take more risks. Hang on to what works and let go of the rest.
One day—and I’m sorry to say it’s a long, long way off—but one day, you WILL get “the call.” But only if you don’t give up. Only if you dare to write the stories you already know in your heart you need to tell. Be brave. Embrace the truths you uncover no matter how ugly or beautiful. Trust me. Everything is going to be fine. And when it is, turn around, look at the new writers you meet who want to know if and when it will happen for them, and tell them the exact same thing.
Jo Knowles is the author of the YA novels Lessons From A Dead Girl, Jumping Off Swings, and Pearl (coming Spring 2011). Jo teaches writing for children in the MA/MFA program at Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College. She lives in Vermont with her husband and son.
(The photo is of Jo’s younger writer self, sixteen years ago.)
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little obsessive when it comes to looking at the stats for my website. Google Analytics and I are very good friends. I’m especially fascinated by the search terms people use to find my website. Most of them are writing-related, some sound like students looking for help with assignments, and some make me stop and think.
I thought I’d share some of the more interesting search terms from the past few months. I love imagining what was going on with people when they typed theirs into Google. I feel like each one has a story behind it.
-don’t talk about distraction to me
-feeling stuck in a city novel
-giving myself some break
-how to revise when you are sad
-she enjoys your writing
-tragedy is when i have a hangnail
Now that WriteOnCon is over, my Google Reader is stuffed full of starred items! If you missed the conference, here’s a handy WriteOnCon roundup from the lovely ladies at Adventures in Children’s Publishing. And if your mind hasn’t already exploded from information overload, here are some other writing links you might find useful:
-The Spectacle has a handy post on how to create a dystopia
-Nathan Bransford gives a back-to-basics rundown on how to write a novel
-And Charmaine Clancy lists the 10 best links for structuring your novel
Okay, and now as promised in the title of this post, it’s time for taco dogs! No, it’s not a hot dog wrapped in a taco shell. It’s my dog, Emma, wrapped in a blanket and looking adorable:
She’d just had a bath and was a tad chilly, so I wrapped her up like a baby. Yes, I’ve officially become one of those crazy dog people.
Two posts in one day? Sure, why not? Here’s the next installment of the “Letter to Myself” series in which authors write letters to their younger writer selves giving advice, encouragement, or words of warning. Today’s letter comes from young adult author Beth Revis.
Dear Beth,
It’s what–the year 2000? And there you are, sitting in your dorm room, writing a story. You think it’s going to be a short story, but it’s not. You’ve got something much bigger there, and when you finish, it’ll be a novel.
And I hate to say it, even now, but it’s not a very good novel.
When you finish writing the sequel, you’ll actually consider publication. This is going to come as a surprise: no one but your parents and your boyfriend (Dude! You marry that guy later!) care that you wrote a novel. No agent does. No publisher does.
But it’ll be okay. You don’t love those novels. They were experiments, just to see if you could do it.
The next ones will hurt. A lot. They’ll make you cry. A lot.
And they’re still not going to be published, even though you want them to be. Not now. Probably not ever. And all these years later, that *still* stings.
So I’m writing this to you now, so that when you get there, you know.
It’s going to suck.
A LOT.
And there’s just no way around it.
And don’t think I’m going to tell you what to do right. Because, honestly? At first you do everything wrong. You don’t get anything right. You’re so clueless you don’t even know how little you know. You have no idea that you’re screwing up great opportunities and shooting yourself in the foot.
And I’m not going to tell you how to fix it.
Because in the end–and trust me on this, when you’re curled up on your bed crying because you’re afraid some dreams don’t ever come true–in the end, you wouldn’t change a thing.
Sincerely,
Beth
Beth Revis’s debut novel, Across the Universe, is coming from Razorbill/Penguin in Spring 2011. A former high-school English teacher, Beth can’t help but blog tidbits about writing, grammar, and publishing at her blog, Writing it Out. She is the founder of the new popular dystopian blog League of Extraordinary Writers, and blows off steam by trying to come up with something witty in 140 characters or less on Twitter or by lusting after books on GoodReads. Beth is represented by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House.
I’ve been working on my new WIP, and so far it’s been going pretty well. As I was getting my new pages ready for my writing group, however, I realized that I might have too many things going on in the story. This is something I often get myself into. In trying to raise the stakes and give the character lots of hurdles to jump through, I sometimes go overboard and pack too many things into the plot. I’m going to see what my writing group says, but I have the sneaking suspicion there’s going to be some simplifying in my WIP’s future.
How are you all doing with your WIPs? Anyone else have to remind yourself to keep things simple?
Also, if you have a minute, hop on over to my new post on the Enchanted Inkpot: Does YA Need Romance?
Happy Monday!
StoryBug Check back each week for a new writing exercise! Or click here to see previous ones.
About a third of the way through PARANORMALCY by Kiersten White and loving it so far! http://bit.ly/bmjrMN #
