I went to hear YA author Lauren Oliver read from her novel “Before I Fall” (Harper) this weekend. You can check out her website here.
Most days I slob around wearing my comfiest jeans and a big sweater. Frequently it is lunch before I remember to brush my hair.
There are photos of me after the birth of my son in which the back of my hair sticks straight up, but not in a cool punk rock bedhead way, in a crazed woman on the edge sort of way.
However when I leave the house (whether it is just to run to the store) I make a bit of an effort these days. There was one mad dash to the drugstore a couple of years ago, I remember (hazily), in which bits of chewed oatmeal were later discovered spangling the back of my shirt.
So I brush the hairs, dress with more care, sometimes apply some powder, wear cool boots and jewelry.
Plus this Saturday, the husband was home and I was without children so I thought I should make some extra effort.
Lauren was reading at Barnes and Noble in nearby Kingston. I’ve done 3 readings there and Carol, the events coordinator is a pearl who keeps asking me back even though she’s seen me scattered and nervous, frazzled and sleep-deprived, dashing around the store madly after my two-year old.
Lauren is from the city (NYC). She looked effortlessly cool and she was very relaxed and amusing. Her book is at the top of my tbr stack.
I have no idea how I appear these days when I read. I’ve done over twenty public appearances including workshops since Feltus came out and I think I am more at ease and funnier. Funny is very important when dealing with a group of middle-graders. Also firmness. (I channel my professor mother).
But I have yet to read from my YA, since it’s not coming out until 2011. The thought of reading for teenagers is daunting to say the least.
For one thing, I may be cool(record label owner, boxer, old punk rocker) but I am an older person. I had a lengthy career before I began writing full-time.
I have noticed that a lot of YA writers are not so distanced from their readership by age. As a female writer, I am terribly excited by these twenty-something year olds. I wrote piffle when I was younger, although I was learning the craft. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted anything I wrote in my twenties to be published; most of it was very clearly influenced by other writers. But these young women—they are talented and ambitious and plugged in, and I think it’s fantastic.
(The amazing, astute Nicola Morgan has also blogged about whether a writer can be too old to debut. You can read that here).
If you look at the Twitter avatars, the websites and blogs of all these exciting debut authors, there is definitely an image, a style that threads through everything. It’s young and hip, and edgy, and smart.
It is certain that the face of authorship is changing. I remember noticing when I worked in a bookstore how author photos on novel jackets had changed from the stiff, posed, sitting-at-desk-with-pen pictures of serious writers- all of whom seemed quite mature (you know in a ‘your parents’ sort of a way)– to hip, outside the box, cool hair, clothing photos of interesting people who you’d want to be friends with. Even the mature male crime writers were donning floor-length leather coats and holding doberman pinschers on short leashes.
Think Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon and Stephenie Meyer’s hairdo.
I wonder if it’s possible that young female readers of YA in particular want to feel some close connection with the writer. Want to be visually assured that this author gets what it feels like to be a teenager, understands all the emotions, and is truthful. They don’t want to look at a photo of someone who looks like their mother. Perhaps because they associate that too closely with the authority figures already present in their lives (parents,teachers, etc…). People who, however loving or caring they might be, tend to tell them what to do with themselves.
Maybe a YA author should be (or at least look) more like a best friend. No preaching. Just understanding.
And perhaps younger hipper authors bridge a narrower divide?
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When did writers become so cool?
March 8th, 2010Mrs. Darcy versus the Aliens
March 8th, 2010At the end of this post you’ll find a trailer I received via Nicola Morgan’s blog.
Her topic was actually about what happens when as a writer you have a brilliant idea and shortly before you begin or are about to be repped or sign a pub deal, something else remarkably similar comes out. We’re not talking about plagiarism here but coincidence.
So anyway this is a trailer for a book called “Mrs. Darcy versus the Aliens” which was conceived at some point before “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” came out. The author (Jonathan Pinnock) decided after some hair- tearing-out to serialize his book. You can find that here.
I am fighting a cold this week and this trailer made me laugh, mostly because of the faux french speak dubbed in for Mr. Darcy. I grew up reading Punch’s ‘Let’s speak franglais’ column which was the only part of the magazine I comprehended and thought was funny. And being a bilingual canadian we mocked the british and their attempts to learn and speak french.
So something light-hearted…
You can click here to watch it.
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Scissor-wielding Tailors and the house around the corner
March 5th, 2010My mother swears she never read me the Struwelpeter (aka Shock-headed Peter) story about the tailor with the huge pair of scissors who leapt in through the window and cut off your thumbs if you sucked them.
I will choose to believe that it was a baby-sitter. Although our baby-sitter was an older Italian lady who didn’t speak much english, and had no books that I can remember. Lots of doilies and artificial fruit and Lawrence Welk which caused nightmares of another kind.
I sucked my thumb until I was about 5. So did my sister.
That story scared the bejeezuss out of me.
Much later, as a young adult I found a copy of Struwelpeter (long out of print for causing severe psychological damage to generations of children). You can read about it here. I thought it might be an interesting piece of history, a slice of my childhood, but I still found it disturbing and soon gave it to a friend who liked gross things.
What confounds me is that it is meant as cautionary tales for kids, to promote good behavior, but there is nothing child-like about it. No whimsy, no calming effect. The drawings are frightening and most of the children die in horrible ways. I never minded Hilaire Belloc’s cautionary tales but for some reason Struwelpeter was just so teutonic or something. There was gleeful aspect in it that made me think that all adults were happy when the precocious unmindful child(brat) burst into flames. Like, “See, we told you not to play with matches. You got what you deserved!”
There was another story book that gave me nightmares. I don’t remember the title or the author just the plot. A little boy who wanders is told by his mother (who seems to leave him alone a lot) not to go around the corner because there dwells a cannibal who will eat him. Of course the boy doesn’t listen, gets caught in the cannibal’s house, hides under the sofa and has to trick the cannibal in some way to avoid being eaten.
If anyone remembers that book (probably from the early to mid 1970’s) I’d love to know.
I read to both my kids although the 7 year old is on to Goosebumps, Horrid Henry and Junie B. Jones which delight in the horrifying and gross and uncomfortable but with lots of humor.
We have a stack of well-loved picture books and none of them have scary story-lines.
I think it’s interesting how that’s changed. Older kids are exposed to all sorts of horrors. Many teenagers are numb to shocking, gory, graphic violence. But what was ok for little ones twenty or thirty years ago is not ok now.
Maybe we’re trying to prolong the innocence a little while longer? I know parenting styles have changed. What I’m most curious about actually is why out of all the books I was read and have read since the age of 5 (which is when I started reading by myself) those 2 stories embedded themselves in my memory.
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Books I read (and books I won’t)
March 3rd, 2010I must confess something.
(Until recently) I always finish a book.
Even if it’s not a very good read.
Once, outraged with bad writing, weak plot, annoying characters, I hurled the book across the room. Disgusted. But half an hour later I picked it up, dusted it off and finished it.
Afterwards I had the same feeling I get when I demolish a bag of chips at one sitting or eat a whole package of red vines.
Sick.
Upset that I wasted the time.
I am certainly guilty as an author of over-writing (especially at the beginning of what I guess you could call my career), and I have a sneaking suspicion that there are some overlong (bordering on tedium) passages in my first book. Certainly in the manuscripts I have shelved, but that’s what editors are for, right?!
I won’t just read anything.
Although as a pre-teen I was stuck in my aunt’s house for the summer and all she had were those weird abridged reader’s digest compendiums of classic books bound in red leather. So I read those. Oh, and a whole slew of harlequin romances…which were much more entertaining.
I’m picky. I browse. I’ll read the back cover. If the cover design irritates me too much I won’t get it. The books that I pick up, choose and borrow or buy, I read. Every time. From time immemorial. Sometimes if they’re badly written or full of cliches but somehow engrossing, I’ll read them twice just to make sure of my opinion.
I’ve been reading a lot recently because I’m between projects and I’m tired of this long winter, and the almost-3-year old hellion lets me look at books because she loves them too. She cuddles up in the crook of my arm or my leg with her book, making announcements every so often about the monkey or the elephant or the scary scary shark. It’s all very domestic and cute.
I devoured three of David Almond’s boy-centric novels: Skellig, the Savage and Kit’s Wilderness. I read Ysabeau Wilce’s Flora Segunda and loved it. Cassie Clare’s City of Ashes. Maureen Johnson’s Devilish. Catherine Fisher’s Snow-walker.
Then (and I’m to going to mention titles or authors) I picked up and put down three books in a row.
They weren’t awfully written.
I just got bored.
It hurts to write that.
I could have made myself continue but you know, I’ve got a few stacks of glossy, shiny new books in my to- be -read piles beckoning, calling to me in those dulcet voices.
I’ll tell you something else.
I just finished Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. If I hadn’t read the reviews, had friends recommend and rave about it, I might have put it down unfinished. It took a while to get going. But I persevered and I loved Lisbeth and now I can’t wait to read the next one.
I don’t like books or movies or bands that win you over immediately. I like the books, bands and movies which slowly build up to something, are well-constructed, beautifully paced, they draw you in and then blow your mind. The other sort is kind of like a summer crush. Pretty insubstantial, frivolous and over quickly (and finally disappointing in a way).
But lately, I don’t know. I’m not so willing to hang in there and plow through hundreds of pages if nothing is happening for me.
How about you? Easy, patient, willing to go the distance? or ruthless, impatient critic?
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Unplugging
March 1st, 2010Used to be I was so wrapped up in my first book and its characters that I thought about it all the time.
You could call it obsessive.
The other day I suddenly realized– while explaining the gist of it to a friend who hadn’t read it– that I couldn’t remember some of the characters’ names.
Could have been a senior moment.
But I’m really not that senior.
Sleep deprivation?
Perhaps.
In my defense said book came out 4 years ago, almost.
Then I thought about the book I wrote last summer. Had another lapse in memory. Not of an MC but an important secondary.
And the book I just finished a few weeks ago?…sort of blurry around the edges.
Why don’t I think this is a bad thing?
A wise friend once told me that once your book is published you have to let it go and live on its own. You don’t sever the ties of course, but it’s out there, existing, without you.
Probably the same sort of thing I’m going to go through with my children at some point.
I guess I understood her, but it was my first book and I loved it so. I couldn’t help but think about it all the time. It seems like months before I was able to stop gazing at it (like Narcissus and the pond) and get to work on something new.
Now I have a book under contract and another one with my agent, and I’m working on the next thing (though half-heartedly because I need a wee break) and I just got a fabulous idea for something else, and scribbled down a bunch of notes about it.
Maybe because there is quantity (more things) my attention is spread out and I can let a finished book be and re-direct my energies to the things I can control. You know, like writing and re-writing.
Which brings me to the other reason I find I enjoy the fuzziness. The revision process. If I keep working, moving forward, finishing one project and going on to the next, then when the time comes to revise, I’ve gotten some distance.
Experts always tell you to put your WIP aside for 6 months and then start polishing, but I have never been able to do that. Much too excitable. Without even trying though, that is what has happened. Can’t revise until I get my editor’s notes and those aren’t coming until late spring. Can’t just sit on my hands. What to do in the meantime? Write a book.
When I turn my attention back to the novel, there’ll be some pages that give me pleasure (ones I can’t remember writing) and there’ll be many more, I’m betting, that make me wince but I’ll be able to fix them because none of it will feel quite so personal. It’ll be a piece of writing (as opposed to a chunk of my yearning soul) and I know what to do with that.
Make it better.
Perhaps the fuzzy memory sharpens the eye to all the flaws and clumsy bits. Maybe its the harder, rational side that has to come out to do justice to a good revision, and you can only get to that place by detaching yourself from the work and all that juicy emotion you pulled from somewhere inside you and becoming more…professor-y about it.
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Blockage? What blockage?
February 25th, 2010Lovely and immensely talented author Lucy Coats blogged about overcoming and doing battle with the dastardly writer’s block recently. You can read it and all the useful comments here.
Someone raised the question: do fantastically successful writers like JK Rowling and James Patterson ever have writer’s block?
While on my slippery- wet-and -generally -unpleasant- though- full -of -healthful- benefits morning walk I pondered this.
I have had experienced writer’s block but to a very small degree and usually when I am trying to force something which is not working. I think this is the way my snarky muse lets me know that I need to trash a particular passage/character/sub plot (or sometimes scarily, major plot) and try a different approach. It never lasts more than a day or two and usually a regime of energetic walks and a lot of venting (discussion), sorts it out.
I was always reluctant to call it writer’s block- something that Lucy points out in her blog- as if that would give ‘it’ more power over me. It has always seemed to me as well (and this is strictly a personal thing) that it was a sign that I was an amateur writer without the discipline and talent to write past it.
But my blockages (ewww) were more like stumbling blocks, small barriers, not a yawning chasm of emptiness leading to despair and depression.
My brain is quite frequently sludgy but it’s never been completely filled with sludge. I’ve always been able to dig myself out, mostly by putting aside whatever I’m working on, getting enough sleep, writing something new- blog, tweets, short story, other idea- and reading lots of books.
Easing myself back into the routine helps too. And banning guilt. Guilt has no place in a writer’s life. We are frequently entirely too hard on ourselves. A little easing off of the whip never hurt anyone.
I’m thinking that admitting the existence and reality of writer’s block might defang and declaw ‘it’ to some extent. Saying it out loud maybe makes it less scary.
And as for JK Rowling, James Patterson, etc…if there is any truth to that, I’m wondering if it’s more a question of confidence. If you’ve had wild success as an author and dealt with writing block (either on a small scale or large) maybe you know you can overcome it, know that it is perhaps a natural part of the writing process, know that you can obliterate it in a fair fight.
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Pie
February 22nd, 2010Sometimes it’s good to do something different with your hands.
I made this:
It’s an almond-crust apple pie. It’s very good with vanilla ice cream.
I am going to let my husband and kids eat most of it, because I’m a martyr like that.
Pretty hunh????
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Editorial Input
February 22nd, 2010When I first got my agent, and spent days gushing about him, a writer friend told me that wonderful though an agent is, the relationship a writer has with her editor is equally (or more) important. She confided that she maybe spoke to her agent twice a year- once when she submitted a new book, and the second when(hopefully) agent sold said book. Even though they both spend a lot of time in the same city, they met for lunch or a drink maybe every two years or so. Note: that sort of blew a lot of my pre-conceived notions about long, languid lunches with cocktails and conversation revolving around my particular brilliance.
But, she continued, I talk to my editor pretty often and see her far more.
Ok, plug clever, amusing, chic, or attractively worn editor into my daydream instead of agent, and it still works.
My first editor was located in another country, so all of our correspondence was via email or very occasionally telephone. Lots of word docs shooting back and forth with blue and red notes inserted on every page. It felt like being in the middle of a whirlwind. At the time I was working two jobs and had a 3 year old. I remember having nightmares that all the changes I’d made were lost through one mis-keyed computer command. I obsessively emailed the manuscript every evening to my beta reader with instructions to guard it with her life. At the end I was hollow-eyed, sleep -deprived and completely unable to speak in full sentences.
What got me through it? My editor who was precise, relentless and completely professional which allowed me to fall apart all over the place.
Over at Justine Larbalestier’s blog, guest blogger and Little Brown editor Alvina Ling gave us all some insight into the crazy number of hours and work an editor puts into a book. It is obvious that some editors (the good ones) are as passionate about our books as we writers are. Sometimes more, since they seem to be able to sustain enthusiasm through numerous re-readings, re-edits and all the convolutions of the publishing industry. There is such a personal and lengthy attachment that if the editor leaves the house, the book often founders without them.
Another writer friend of mine just had an awful experience with the new editor at the small indie which publishes her. Her previous editor was on maternity leave and they had hired someone eager but inexperienced. There was criminal thesaurus abuse and many passages were changed or altered. Eventually the author put her foot down, saying that the tone and feel of the book was no longer her own and that she refused to see it published. They let her change all the passages back to the original content.
I know this is unusual. Both the ingenue clueless editor part, and the publisher conceding completely to the author’s wishes.
Famously F. Scott Fitzgerald’s editor (whose name escapes me) obsessively examined each and every word and line in The Great Gatsby, and I believe thought he should get equal billing at the end of it. That might be excessive, and perhaps a clear indication that he should have been writing his own damn books.
A good editor is an enthused, level-headed reader with the ability to look at your book with more clarity than you might have. They understand what it is you are trying, sometimes incomprehensibly, to say and they help you get your words to the point where the reader understands too.
The difference between the book I sold to the publisher and the book which was published was immense, astounding, and unexpected (given that I was a zombie for most of the time I was revising it). Most writers would never show anyone their first draft. Philip Pullman doesn’t. Why? Because all first drafts are crap. The much-edited (and polished, vetted by agent) version which makes it onto the editor’s desk may no longer be crap, but I have never read or written a book which has not benefitted from the hand of an editor who knows what they are doing.
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Place Settings
February 18th, 2010
aka researching….digging…
Before I start writing, I amuse myself (for days and days) by surfing the web and printing pictures which I then pin up above my desk. At the mo’ there is a map of the Vegas strip, a photo of some sunning seals, a painting of a selkie, more maps of cape breton island, the welsh coast and the northernmost coastal area of california, a few foggy pics of seashore and fishing village.
I especially like to print maps. They have always held a fascination for me even when I was little and used to get terribly car sick (which must have been such a bore for my traveling parents) and used to amuse myself in between projectiling by looking at the names of small towns and making up stories about the people who lived there.
Now I have google and a printer and can capture and enlarge random chunks of land at will.
I always have a pretty good idea of where the action in my book will be set. But I operate visually so…
The printing of maps.
I always do it. Even if the place in which I am setting my story is imaginary or a completely new take on an actual location. So if I’m writing about a devastated New York, then geographically it still has to be accurate. It has to make sense even if an earthquake has shifted Central Park over a few miles, leveled the George Washington Bridge, or flooded Greenwich Village under twenty feet of muck.
Just seeing the shape of the existing structure lets me superimpose what I’m seeing in my imagination, and then mapping it out means I won’t forget what my MC can see from their tent or their bedroom window or the top of a tree.
It also—I don’t know makes the place more real. Means I can put myself there and smell the smells, feel the breeze, hear the suck of a tidal river, slog through a salt marsh barefoot.
My current WIP (although it is a mere babe at the moment and hardly deserving of the name) has some crucial juxtapositions: city girl + tiny village, desert+ coastal, urban life+ near-luddites, modernity + magic. It’s all aswirl in contrast. I want my heroine to be a fish out of water.
Ha ha ha. Sorry, I find that really funny. And no, it’s not a mermaid tale (tail). Ha ha ha again.
I have a window in my office. Which if you must know is a tiny desk in my bedroom. In my new house I will have a whole room, and a view out over the ocean. This is the plan, but the actual house is still an unknown. I can say with certainty that there will be an ocean, but not whether I will be able to see it.
I look at a bookshelf. The window is to the right. But it is east facing and the sun casts a glare on my computer which is distracting so usually I have the curtains closed. Plus I would only be able to see my car and the neighbor’s fancified (and slightly annoying) two-story house. Hello, simple country living here, folks. It’s ostentatious to have two big stories, humongous windows and a wrap around pine porch which faces my bedroom.
So I look at the pics I have pinned to the shelves and that’s how I daydream (and plot). Much of the detail doesn’t make it into the book of course- endless descriptions would slow things down and bore the reader–but just a taste, so that the reader can join me and the characters in ‘wherever it is’.
How much time do you spend placing your characters in a setting? Any? None at all? Are you unconcerned about such things and just want to get to the action?
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Leggo my Ego!
February 17th, 2010I’m sure all my readers are too young to remember this tv commercial. I can— barely…But basically it was for an Eggo brand waffle- which was in a toaster and when it popped up, two people grabbed for the same waffle, because it was soooooo delicious, you see…. and one of them yelled, “Leggo my eggo!”
So anyway, what does that have to do with anything?
Ummm…Nothing.
Except that it makes for a catchy headline.
However I have been thinking about ego. Writers’ egos. Mine.
And being controlled (adversely) by it.
I certainly need one. Without it I would never have the nerve or confidence to finish a book, or send it out, or be able to think of negative reviews with a brave face.
Ego is the reason we all think the world revolves around us. (PS- Only one of us is right.)
But there is a fine line between having a healthy ego and the sort that leads to all sorts of disappointment when one finds out that in fact we are all equally special (or un-special).
We have to strike a balance between being charmingly extroverted and secure, and being a pompous ass.
What my ego is doing to me right now, is chiseling away at my latest manuscript. Something that I think is pretty good. It’s sending me anxiety as I wait for my agent to phone. It’s worrying away at the tenuous security I’ve built up for myself- one published book, one on the way, ONE THAT WILL NEVER EVER BE PUBLISHED BECAUSE MY AGENT AND BETAS THINK IT”S TRIPE!!!!
See?
Ego is me (or more correctly from the latin for “I”).
I am obviously thinking too much about myself and I need to stop it right now.
Nothing gets me thinking less about myself than writing about other people, and therein lies the release from the over-active ego.
Feel free to comment and tell me all about yourself.
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IMP (Inert Mental Preparation)
February 15th, 2010Isn’t it amazing how quickly guilt sets in after finishing a book? The guilt of not immediately jumping into the next one, I mean?
I’m talking about writing books here, not reading them. There is NO GUILT involved in reading books even if you do have three going at the same time. Like I do right now– Beautiful Creatures / Garcia/Stohl, City of Ashes/Clare and The Islands of the Blessed / Farmer. Reading like a glutton cramming chocolates in her mouth (not that I would know anything about THAT) is perfectly ok. OK.
It’s weird though. I mean, I’ve spent six-12 months working like a fiend on a book, dealing with the immeasurable lows of writing–anxiety, fear, self-castigation (and sometimes flagellation), unrelenting suck-itis– and a few of those dizzying moments when it works effortlessly, and I’ve written “The End” which of course is never the actual END because there’s tons of revision ahead.
But still I have reached a completion point of sorts.
I should be able to relax. Fly to the Bahamas, drink sticky, potent cocktails with umbrellas by the beach, sleep all day, get massages, wear those fluffy robes I’ve seen in the movies.
Never happened. Probably never will.
I do have a writer acquaintance (Big big Scholastic author of mega-successful series) and she takes the whole month of December off and goes to Disneyworld. That’s her vacation. Her only vacation. The other 11 months of the year she is seriously busting her ass.
Pretty piddling, if you ask me.
I can’t ever relax because whenever I get near to the end of a book, another one is already nipping at my heels. It’s like being ridden by a hell hag, one of those toothless, wild-haired leering creatures from old myths of the British Isles. And it’s wearing spurs, and it invades my dreams. PS- those spurs really pinch.
But I am exhausted. And I fear that with a dull brain I’ll damage my story so I trick the hell hag and shove the guilt down with a couple of bricks and a burlap bag, and ignore the squeaks. Reading is work. Sleeping is work. Watching movies is work. Going for hikes is work. Spending time away from my computer is work. Blogging and tweeting and surfing and I-podding…..all WORK.
I call it INERT MENTAL PREPARATION or IMP. The title fools the hag into thinking the IMP is a cousin of some kind. It means that even if I am not ACTIVELY writing the next book, I am preparing myself to write it. I am doing lazy research. I am feeling the vibe, man. I am letting the next story seep slowly into my mind.
Do you knit? Play computer games? Lasso cows? Eat chocolate? Practice the lotus? How do you prepare?
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The Thesaurus Dinosaurus (Extinct?)
February 12th, 2010My other job (not including super mom in tights) is writing resumes for various professional types. I asked for entertainment industry or publishing job seekers because that is my background, but so far I’ve had everything from industrial engineers to general contractors to Vegas drinks managers to healthcare workers. Frequently I write in areas I have no knowledge and practically no understanding of. Do you know what lean manufacturing is? Nope, me neither. Although I have an amateur background in the whole Vegas drinks thing.
However the format is basically the same. A 1 or 2 page resume followed by a 1 page cover letter. And I have to use power verbs. No passive voice here.
I have a suggested word print-out hanging above my desk–interfaced, optimized, implemented, executed, stimulated, maximized, targeted, expedited… I have to cram as many of those in as I can and shunt the piddly connecting words as much as I can. (It might be similar to writing porn, perhaps?)
And I have my trusty Roget’s thesaurus.
I don’t use it much when I’m writing stories but for some reason after an hour or two trying to think up alternatives to ‘managed’ I reach for it. I’m allowed some leeway in the job. I think they like creative writers rather than someone who’s used to filling out forms. I’ve used cleaved, adhered and liaised quite frequently (and none of those were on the LIST).
Some writers (of novels I mean) abuse the thesaurus. Many novice writers are prone to this. It’s like opening a treasure box and it’s easy to lose your head when confronted with so much wealth of language. Oh glorious words!!!!!
But then you end up writing in a way that no one speaks. And the writer’s voice or rather the narrator’s has to sound natural inside the reader’s head. Almost like someone is sitting beside you (but not too close) and telling you a story in calm, modulated tones. Someone like Meryl Streep, maybe or Neil Gaiman.
But there are nuances within the synonyms. You wouldn’t casually pick any one at random. For example–shiny. The choices are: glossy, sheeny, polished, bright, clear, sunny. They won’t all fit. It depends on the context. You can play around to some extent (in a poetical sort of a way) but too much and you sound like an idiot. “Her hair was polished mahogany/ebony/cherry wood”.
It’s always tempting to go for the million dollar word. The one that shines/glitters/glistens/gleams AND sparkles and demands attention. And shows everyone just how clever you are.
So that with a sentence or two, you can edify, astound, enlighten, and divert, engendering complete, utter, consummate, aggregate, exhaustive worship of your words.
Or you can just write the story which has so much plot and such interesting characters that it begs for the simplest words possible.
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the ‘Good’ Nervousness
February 8th, 2010I’ve heard back from three out of four of my beta readers. I’ve made some suggested revisions. The last reader is my most formidable (plus she’s my mother).
I am nervous.
I am nervous because the YA I just completed is pretty depressing. Gritty. Realistic. A bunch of those other (stupid) adjectives that people use when talking about teenagers and unsettling subjects.
I pulled from a lot of different places to write this book. Some memories, some experiences, mostly made-up stuff. Painful to write. Hard.
It might make my mum sad. Actually I hope it does because it is a sad tale about two friends and what happens when it goes wrong. But I also want her to be left with some sense that the friendship was special and magical and important, and that there is hope at the end.
I don’t know.
When I think about the book, I feel sick. When I think about sending it to my agent at the end of the week, I feel sicker.
I want him to love it, like he loved my last book. Because finding a publisher might be harder with this one.
A teenage girl was one of my betas. She is almost 17. The characters are 17, almost 18. She was not shocked. She loved the two main girl characters. She accepted their world even though it is different from her own.
My husband said “the teenage experience is pretty much the same for everyone, whether they’re a jock or a punk rocker.”
I guess only the details change.
There are edgy books out there. Great, great books which deal with subjects that adults find uncomfortable, that adults find the thought of their children reading uncomfortable. John Green’s books (Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns), Ellen Hopkins (Burned, Crank, Glass-basically everything she writes plus it’s verse!), Laurie Halse Andersen (WinterGirls, Chains, Speak), Cheryl Rainfield’s Scars.
When I was 12, I read The Godfather, Henry Miller, and a lot of Pasolini because that’s what was on my father’s bookshelves. I read those books when I was ready to read them, when curiosity led me to open them up, and because YA as a genre didn’t exist then. I read at the level I was emotionally mature enough to handle. Some things I skipped over. Nothing gave me nightmares. I asked some questions.
Anyway, I’m hoping that the queasy tummy I feel, is due to digging deep and outside my personal comfort level.
And not because I wrote a bad book.
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Write What is True
February 8th, 2010Often the advice “write what you know” is bandied about. I always took this to mean that you must draw from your own experiences when you write. This is obviously good advice but not much use if you’re writing about someone living on the planet Pandora. It should go deeper and further than that.
I think the advice should be ” write what you know to be true” or “write from a place that is true to you” or “write what is the truth for the characters.” Actually all three of these statements are important.
I don’t know about you, but when I cop out or try to gloss over a piece of dialogue or a scene that I know isn’t working I get an uneasy feeling in my stomach. As a less experienced writer I would often try to conceal this with more words, but eventually you have to ask yourself “What the hell am I trying to say here?” and if you can’t answer the question, then cut it.
Meaning that no matter what the genre or the level of imagination and creativity involved is, be honest in your writing. Find the thread that resonates so that you can write about teenage speed freaks or serial murderers or beauty queens or bow-hunting or someone from Pandora.
I think it’s probably accurate to say that most writers are observant. That most find it possible to slip into someone else’s shoes (and thoughts and habits), but I also think that we have some kind of inner detector (a bullshit detector, if you will) and if we are not writing from a place of honesty, but rather taking the easy way, or not digging deep enough, then the detector sends a signal.
Unfortunately it is not an electric shock so it can be ignored. But to the detriment of the writing. It is not easy to peel away the layers until you get to the real feelings, but it makes for a better story and one that resonates on a deeper level than say, a Hallmark greeting card.
Going beneath the surface, gets you to the heart of the character, and gets you to a level where your characters can start to assert themselves.
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In Betweening
February 5th, 2010As many of you know, I just finished a WIP (FIERCE).
I am awaiting editor’s notes on my YA, LUCKY (to be published by Scholastic in 2011- sorry just have to mention that enough times that it sinks in!
I have made copious notes and rambling outline of new WIP (tentative title: BRINY DEEP).
Right now, the new story idea is like a soft little boneless animal, wrapped in blankets, and tucked in my lap. I peel the covers away from it every once in awhile, but I try to keep my self from looking or disturbing it.
It may get cold. It may stop growing. It’s doing things there in the dark and the warmth, away from my laser-bright gaze.
Making itself into something that will let me shape it, and pummel it, and knead it eventually into the form of a story. But first it has to be kept quiet.
And I have to leave it alone. Just let the occasional word or picture float into my mind. Most of the time I don’t even write them down, or add to the notes, because it’s about a feeling, a mood for the book that I am considering. Once I’ve inspected enough of these fleeting sensations, I will know which one best fits.
I know I want to start it with my heroine on a bus, leaving everything she knows, heading to nowhere, but beyond that I will not let myself travel.
Everything in me (the writerly bits) is yelping and surging against the leash, wanting to submerge itself. But I am exhausted from the frenetic schedule of the last six months which was FIERCE (and the six months before that which was LUCKY) and I know that if I dive in now, I will almost certainly screw it up.
So for a little while longer, I will keep myself from it, and read, and watch movies and have amazing dreams.
Do you go straight from project to project or do you pause for a while in-between?
Here’s a list of the books I am reading or will soon read:
Non-YA-
When will there be good news?/ Kate Atkinson
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/Stieg Larsson
Murder in the Rue Paradis/ Cara Black
The Eye of the World/ Robert Jordan
The Grand Tour/ Patricia C. Wrede
YA-
The Islands of the Blessed/ Nancy Farmer
Death at Deacon Pond/ E.M. Alexander
City of Ashes & City of Glass/ Cassandra Clare
Beautiful Creatures/ Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
The Poisons of Caux/ Susannah Appelbaum
Liar/ Justine Larbalestier
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