Today, Writer Friends, I’m beginning the road trip to New Mexico. Where, exactly? To Ghost Ranch, the place that inspired Georgia O’Keeffe to do this:
I’m hoping it inspires me to do a lot of this:
The conference/retreat this time (AROHO — A Room of Her Own) is named for a small book I read WAY back when – and I re-read every once in a while just to remember to be fierce about this whole writing thing. Check it out.
I’ll be back in eleven days or so. And yes, I do know how cool this all is. Thanks to my mom for the “grant,” my husband for watching the kids solo, my colleagues at work for covering my classes, and my Writer Friends for all the encouragement! Oh, and the Muse, too, for sending the idea that I’m taking with me. Gotta pack now!
What a lovely week! Why so lovely? Well… I spent mine in the Caribbean, cruising around, petting dolphins and paddling near white sand beaches. Hard life, I know. But right before I left, I also found out some amazing news!! Shelli Cornelison, one of the people I love the very most in the Entire World, whose manuscripts I have critiqued and adored, whose children I have taken on mission trips, the woman who took me to my first SCBWI conference and force-fed me chocolate and encouragement when I was about to Give Up on the Whole Writing Thing a while back… just signed with her agent.
Congratulations to Karen Grencik, of Red Fox Literary. You probably don’t know yet how lucky you are to work with Shelli Cornelison. But you will.
Oh, frabjous day!
In Other News: As if that weren’t enough, I got home to an email from my own darling agent, with positive notes on my Next Manuscript! The Dark House will be on its way to Editor L so very, very soon.
And, um, while I was on that cruise? I snuck in some writing time. I’m in love again, Writer Friends. In love with my own words.*sigh* and LOL
This one will be tragic and dark, fairy-tale-ish and magical realistic, beautiful and heart-breaking. I. Can’t. Wait.
But I will have to. I’m leaving for the AROHO conference in New Mexico in four days!! Laundry, laundry, laundry…
An excerpt: “(S)chool librarians notice what kids are reading, and hand them the next book they might enjoy, point them to the right internet site, encourage them to take the next step on the path to knowledge, education, and the immense joy that comes from reading.”
This is what we’re giving up when we remove librarians from libraries: the path to joy — the joy that comes from the books that touch a child’s heart, stretch a child’s imagination — and the knowledge of how to get there.
It’s been an interesting summer. My first book, The Sinister Sweeetness of Splendid Academy, is off at copy edits right now. I’ll admit, on the final round of line edits, I found myself almost physically unwilling/unable to hit send. To declare myself DONE! There had to be something I could do to make it better, right? Maybe just rewrite that first chapter one more time? It was — and remains — a scary thing, that letting go of a manuscript, handing it over to an editor/copyeditor. (And someday soon, it probably will be just as difficult to know it’s in the hands of a critic/critical reader. Excuse me while I wet my pants now.)
But it had to be done. I cashed the check.
And I wrote another book.
And then got even another idea. An amazing idea that gives me the shivers.
Now I’m in that prayerful time, the last weeks leading up to my total immersion in that New Idea. There’s only one thing –I shouldn’t call it new. This one is a manuscript I’ve started and stopped so many times, rewritten in different points of view — different genres, even! — that it feels like an old friend.
An old friend I wanted to poison with arsenic at times, but an old friend. You know what I mean.
The thing is, I just realized — it wasn’t the story that was at fault. It wasn’t weak, or flawed, or any of that other nonsense that can lead to the manuscript graveyard. It was me — I had the story muddled. I’ve been telling it from the POV of the wrong character. Now that I’ve realized that, it all seems so… obvious. Natural. But I had to let go of my original idea, my belief that the story belonged to this other character.
If I made this “realization” sound easy, it wasn’t. I’ve been fooling with this one for a long, long time. I just couldn’t let the other POV character go.
Do you find yourself doing that? Staying married to one idea of how a story “should” go, when the story itself is telling you something else entirely? Does it derail you? Does it invigorate you? Does it drive you to drink copious amounts of gin, and flirt with a diabetic coma brought on by too much British chocolate?
Or is that just me?
Maybe you find yourself feeling like this in your writing life:
What Texas kids do at rodeos: Mutton Busting.
I know I do, and often. But usually it’s a good scared.
Stay scared, Writer Friends. Terrified even. Hold on as long as you can.
In other news, I am busy entertaining company from Scotland, writing Christmas greeting cards (gotta love those holiday deadlines in July!), and enjoying my kids.
I’ve been reading, too! Just finished Boys Are Dogs, by Leslie Margolis. Lots of fun, and funny, too. The perfect “beach read” for an eleven-year-old girl. Er, or for me. (I’m secretly reading middle-grade girl books now. Just wait.I have a reason.)
There’s a been a bit of a furor on the Internet/Twitter/Author circuit about the Terrible Darkness that’s infecting the Young Adult bookshelves at Barnes and Noble.
I am SO not going to weigh in on this argument, folks. Not that my opinion would make a difference. Let’s just say I’ve been shaking my head a lot.
And wondering what in the world they’re going to think once the Darkness Police get their hands on my current manuscript.
Why do I wonder this? Well, to give you a very vague, non-spoilerish hint…
I was at my dad’s house the other day. I’d dropped in for a cup of coffee and a chat, and he very politely asked what my next book was about. (He’s good that way — he knows all his writer-daughter really ever wants to talk about is ice cream and/or her novels.) When I told him, he smiled, hopped up, and said, “Oh! That sounds great. I think you might need a book I have.” And then he went and got this for me:
A Handy Reference for All Middle Grade Authors. Don't You Have One?
What would those Wall Street Journal folks think of that? We may very well find out.Won’t that be fun?
So… what awesome books have you collected for your research, Writer Friends? Anything scary/weird/dodgy?
(Oh, and my dad is a Methodist minister, so it’s totally all right that he had this book in his library. Don’t want you all thinking he’s some sort of devil-worshipper. Hi, Dad!)
I had a wonderful dinner last night with a Writer Friend* who was unstinting with her ideas, encouragement, and advice. I think one of my favorite pieces of advice was this: Use your super powers.
At first, I wondered how she’d heard about my ability to hear my children plotting mischief from two miles away, but that wasn’t what she meant. We were talking about the individual skills each writer brings to the process — touching on the fearsome topic of publicists and book “extras” like curriculum guides — and I mentioned that I had been a teacher. And that I had written curriculum for years.
Oh, yeah! THOSE superpowers.
It started me thinking. I spent a long time NOT being a writer. I was a GT and a music teacher, a salesperson for expensive glass art and jewelry, a Director of Family Ministry (which meant weekly public speaking, curriculum planning and SO much more), and a mom. (Well, I still am a mom, which entails a whole host of superpowers, but that’s not the kind I’m talking about here.)
I’m used to my life experience creeping into my work — if I hadn’t been a musician from the time I was four, would I have written a main character who loves to sing? If I hadn’t taught music to kids, would I have written a witch-like music teacher who loves to kill defenseless children? Oh wait. — but I hadn’t really thought about how those experiences would pertain to the publication/publicity process.
So I’m taking inventory this week, Friends, of what I have in my Bag of Tricks that I may not have thought about. Wondering how my acting credits might come in handy at school visits, for instance.
Break it down, Peeps. What do you have in your shady pasts that might help you onto the NYT list?
* The NYT best-selling type of Writer Friend, from whom advice about the pre-publication process is invaluable. And who happens to be one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
** No, that’s not me. But it could be. It could be.
Today, let’s talk about joy in the writing life. And why not its red-headed, cross-eyed cousin, happiness, too?
I know, I know. Happiness isn’t in vogue, is it? We’re supposed to be all post-post-modern and deconstructionist, supposed to be too cool to care about such things.*
Here’s the thing. As writers, especially writers seeking publication/external validation/an audience for our work, we need to forget being cool and look for happiness wherever we can find it. Because, honestly? The publication process has plenty of the other stuff for us all. Dish after dish of hot, steaming rejection, tables full of despair, and wafer thin mints for the “successful” in the form of brutal reviews from Kirkus, etc.
Happiness matters. Even little scraps of it. Maybe Lolcats do it for you. That works.
For me? After a bad day of writing, all it takes to bring me back is a margarita with a friend. An inappropriately funny website shared with my older son. Belly farts on my eight year old’s stomach. (Hold that thought. I have to go do that now. Back in a minute.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Happiness. I’ve been meditating on happiness in general and Writer Happiness in particular because I’ve been thinking about why so many writers avoid the page – including me, at times.
I think it’s easy to take all the rejection to the page with you, to open up your WIP file while you’re playing your Soundtrack for Failure in the background.
I think, maybe, we forget how to experiment with the words, how to build the worlds we’ve imagined with a sense of joy and wonder, rather than fear and foreboding. We forget it’s supposed to be fun, and joyful, and more about the process than the product.
We forget how to play.
When was the last time you wrote with abandon, with joy, with a smile on your face and your fingers flying on the keyboard? That feeling? It’s heaven.
I think, maybe, that’s part of what my favorite storyteller was talking about when he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
I wish you all joy this week, and happiness, too. Play with your words!
And if any of you need a margarita with a writer friend? You know who to call. 😉
***
Nikki News: My flash fiction piece is still up! Thanks so much for the comments. I have another story coming out next month – links in a week or so. And I’m almost done revising Dark House… my next story is impatiently nudging at me. Can’t wait to cut loose on it!
* I never was cool. I always cared too much. WAY too much. I teared up in my graduate lecture when we were discussing Toni Morrison’s Beloved. My tears brought the class to a halt. “Wow,” said one of my classmates. I can’t remember the last time I cared that much.” I thought that was kind of sad, actually.
I wish I could say that it was only great works of literature that gets my tear ducts working, but it’s not. I also cry for Hallmark ads, seatbelt PSAs like this one, and when my kids are on stage anywhere, anytime.
(So, do you think I should have changed the name of my Eternal Crush in this piece? I mean, it’s on the Internet now, with his Real Name. Will he be embarrassed? Shocked? Will his wife and kids be all “ICK!” ?)
As most of you know, I’ve been hip-deep in alligators and line edits. (I’m convinced that term does NOT mean what I thought at first. I had visions of small, piffly, “which word would work better” changes. Not so much, in my case. Eek.) Oh, and I did almost all of those line edits at South Padre Island on vacation with my family. Fun times.
(Actually it was fun. Seriously awesome in fact! Hinky Punky caught a sting ray! Dave took amazing pictures that he will turn into artistic gold! I learned how to line edit BEFORE drinking the pina coladas!)
So, no major blog post. Just this, my author picture.
I look mahvelous, darlings. Ah, the wonders of Photoshop.
Thanks, Mom, for taking the picture. Thanks, Dave, for taking out the wrinkles and gray hairs.
