R. L. LaFevers

Some Book Giveaways!

2011-11-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to give people a head's up that there are some giveaways of my books taking place. Small Review and Ruby's Reads are hosting a historical fantasy month ( I KNOW! Awesome idea, yes?)

There is a giveaway here of your choice of any one Theodosia or Nathaniel Fludd book, so a good opportunity to round out the series.

And there is a chance to win a Grave Mercy ARC here.

(There is also a terrific deconstruction of the Grave Mercy cover here, in case you're interested.)

Good luck!

More Maps

2011-11-19T12:00:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love so much about these early maps is that they weren't just directions from Point A to Point B. The maps themselves were intricately illustrated and often reflected the worldview of the time. I love this Ebstorf map.

This kind of map is called a mappa mundi, which is a medieval map of the world. This one was made on a number of stitched together goatskins. I am especially fond of the detail at the top and bottom of the map, (warning: large image!) as well as the left and right sides. You can see the head and feet and hands of God as he holds up the world--a reflection of the science of the time.

For Budding Cartographers!

2011-11-12T12:08:00.000-08:00

One the things I thought would be fun here is to occasionally post pictures of the various elements that inspired me in the writing of my books. As I researched the Nathaniel Fludd books, I became fascinated with all the different maps that man has made over the years. Here is a picture of the world's oldest map:

It is Babylonian, and you can read more about it HERE on Wikipedia.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2011-10-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

Hello! You’ve probably noticed all the remodeling going on here. That’s because my poor author website was so old and outdated that it was WAY past time to update it. Thus all the updating and remodeling. I actually love this new look quite a lot, with all the little literary sidekicks smiling at me from the fringes.

In related news, as it stands now, I will be publishing my YA, GRAVE MERCY, under Robin LaFevers rather than R. L. LaFevers, so I am building a second website and will post that link here when it is done. Because the YA is so much older and darker than my middle grade, it seemed easier to have two separate websites. This blog will now become attached to my R.L. LaFevers website and be a place mostly for updates, news, and appearances.

So that’s the plan! Until then I will be posting any non-middle grade book related stuff (like thoughts on writing, marketing, or human nature studies) over at Shrinking Violets, and I will be sure to post a link to the YA site when it is ready.

Best Friend Festival and Book Signing!

2011-06-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Carpinteria's First Ever Best Friend Festival & Book Signing!

Theodosia has Sticky Will.

Nathaniel Fludd has Greasle.
And Effie Malone has two best friends!
Not to mention that Mary and Robin have been BFFs for over a decade!

In honor of Best Friends everywhere,
you and your best bud are invited to
a special celebration and book signing on
Sunday, June 26th, 2011
2pm- 4pm at the Curious Cup Bookstore
929 Linden Avenue, Carpinteria.

Featuring Real-Life BFF
R.L. LaFevers & Mary Hershey
signing their new books,
each packed with BIG adventure
and BIG friendships.

Love and Pollywogs from Camp Calamity
Theodosia & The Last Pharaoh
Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist: The Unicorn’s Tale

You don’t want to miss the F-U-N!

Take the BFF Compatibility Quiz
Share your best story about your best friend
Pose for a special photo together
Enter to Win the Best Friend Prize Package!
Refreshments and giveaways.

(A BFF is not required for admission,
and best friends of all ages, genders and species are welcome!

Looking for Themes In All The Wrong Places

2011-05-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

Hello!

I was going to come back here and tell you all how I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had two seconds to rub together, let alone time to blog, but you know what? You all are smart cookies. I bet you figured that out on your own. Plus? It is fairly boring to talk about.

So instead I thought I’d talk about something that’s been occupying quite a lot of my mental space lately, namely themes. As in the core themes of our work.

[Warning: Possible navel-gazing ahead.]

Part of this was brought about by the fact that I am having a teensy bit of an identity crisis, genre-wise. I was able to straddle a young middle grade and an older middle grade series fairly well. But I am now pulling a dark, older YA into the mix and it kind of tipped me over in terms of understanding who my audience is, what my relationship to my readers is, how I pull all of those various wildly different parts of the authorial me together. Do I talk about the book that’s out now or the one that I’m working on? Does it matter if they’re two separate age groups?

The inside of my head has felt far too much like a hamster wheel for my liking. However, one can only flounder so long before it gets way old and all that’s left to do is get over it and move on. So here I am. I will be having my identity crisis in public and hope that it will be a learning experience for the rest of you.

My website is also due for a massive makeover, and before I could do that, I had to understand the answers to some of the above questions. Actually, I had to figure out the right questions to even ask.

When looking for a story theme, the questions I use are:

What life lesson does your protagonist need to learn?
Where, in her/his emotional landscape, will this journey take her? Will she/he be facing old fears? Discovering new ones? What will they be?
What issues will most of the book's conflict be arising from?
What direction is her/his growth going to take? Learning to accept, forgive, redeem oneself, stand up for what they believe in?
What will they have struggled with by the end of the book?
Also, look at your protagonist’s goals and motivations. What direction are they pointing in?

And while those questions work well for finding themes in a given book, they weren’t helping me step back and get a better picture of how all the various themes I work with tie in.

So I had to go looking for new questions.

What truth am I telling? What is my core truth, the one I go back to time and again. I searched my books, the school talks I give, my work on Shrinking Violets and over on GeekMom. Hell, I looked high and low. I kept stepping back, further and further away thinking if I could get a distant view, I could see the patterns and landscape better.

But I neglected to look deep, deep inside, to that place we all try to hide from the world. Which is highly ironic since that’s one of my biggest messages to kids when I do school visits—that their unique quirky self is their biggest most powerful weapon. Even if it’s the part of themselves that gets them in the most trouble or they find most embarrassing—that core is where all the best stuff in their life will come from.

And then I stumbled on this quote from Caroline Myss (found via Justine Musk's Tribal Writer blog) “You cannot live for prolonged periods of time within the polarity of being true to yourself and needing the approval of others.”

And my immediate thought was, you can’t? Because I have been doing that since I was old enough to breathe.

And it occurred to me that I have been engaged in a battle between being true to myself and pleasing others my entire life. An epic struggle for self acceptance.

Duh. There’s my core theme. Once I named it, I could recognize it in all of my work. It wasn't just about accepting our quirks or turning our weaknesses into strengths, but the constant polarization of opposing needs: that for self acceptance and that for pleasing others. Poor little Nathaniel Fludd, struggling between his innate timidity and wanting to please the intrepid Aunt Phil; Theodosia, needing to do something about all the magic that swirls around her, but not wanting to upset the apple cart with her parents.

Gawd! No wonder I’m exhausted all the time!

The other thing that occurred to me was that I will likely never have this fully mastered. Like a recovering alcoholic, it will be a one day at a time kind of thing. Maybe, at some point, it will be a week at a time or I will even be lucky enough to have a month long reprieve from this struggle. But I suspect it will always be a part of me, and even more, that that is a good thing because that is where my core story juice and passion come from. Putting characters in situations where they can experience transformative change that brings them one step closer to true self-acceptance.

So that is my core truth and one that all of my characters struggle with as well. I also think it’s why my stories tend toward middle grade and YA—because those first steps towards self acceptance and separating ourselves from our family and peers’ expectations for us come at those ages. (Also, clearly I am emotionally stunted. But in a productive way at least.)

The thing is, by recognizing our core journey, every daily challenge can have deeper meaning and be one more step on an ongoing path to the next stage of transformational change.

So that’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot the last couple of weeks. How about you? Are you guys all way more evolved than I am and have known for a long time your deepest, most core themes?

L.A. Times Festival of Books

2011-04-29T16:50:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to say I'll be signing at the L. A. Times Festival of Books on Saturday, April 30. I'll be in Mysterious Galaxy's booth, #372, at 1:00. Hope to see some of you there!

We Have A Winner!

2011-04-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

And the winner is . . . #5, wldhrsjen3!
(Chosen by Random Number Generator*)

Jen, email me with your address and I will get those in the mail to you!

Also? Because my publisher is pure awesome, they have sent me a few extra ARCs so I can give them to any teachers or librarians who entered this drawing. From looking at the comments, I think that means Mrs. Katz and Kari. If you two will also email me, I can get those ARCs in the mail to you!

Thank you so much for participating everyone! And for your enthusiasm for the new books. :-)

*I numbered all the comments here and over on GoodReads one through forty-one, then hit generate.

Official Release Day x 2!

2011-04-05T15:24:00.000-07:00

Ta da! It is the official release of BOTH Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh AND Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist, The Unicorn's Tale.

Phew. And I have to tell you, it's true what they say about twins! It's twice the work. But worth it.

I'm also thinking we should have a giveaway. So...if you'd like to put your name in the hat to win a signed copy of both books, just say so in the comments to this post!

Also, if you'd like to read the first chapters of each, they can be found here and here.

*The contest will run for a week so I'll close comments at midnight on Tuesday, April 12.

Writing is a Harsh Mistress

2011-04-02T18:08:00.000-07:00

I was cleaning up a pile of papers that has sat next to my computer forever, and stumbled upon this quote that I'd printed out. I had not made a note of where it came from, so spent half an hour googling and searching and found out that, of course! It was from the brilliant Barbara Samuel//Barbara O'Neal's speech that she gave at RWA Nationals in 2004. If you haven't read it, please do. If you have read it, go ahead and read it again. It always moves me--often in new and different ways.

"She wants your experiences. Your brain. Your heart. Your soul. She wants to know that you will give her everything you have, whatever you have, when she needs it. She wants that secret you’ve never told anyone, ever. She wants that wound that can still bleed if someone brushes it by accident. She wants your pain and your bone marrow and your joy and every desire you’ve ever known."

Yes. This. Every time I read this I am reminded that I truly must give everything to the page in order to produce my best work.

Guest Blogging Today

2011-03-18T08:15:00.000-07:00

I was very excited to be asked to guest blog today over at the official Save the Cat blog! As you guys know, it's one of my favorite plotting tools ever.

A Whopping Dose of Random...

2011-03-11T22:16:00.000-08:00

I went to the chiropractor today as part of my Full Body Tune Up so that I can still be writing when I'm seventy. As we were chatting away, he asked me if I felt I'd 'made it', which had me stopping to think. With as much as I think about this stuff, you'd have assumed I'd have a firm marker in place for that, but I didn't. I started to say once a person hits the bestseller lists, but even that must seem tenuous, once you're there. But as we talked, I realized that I've started to feel like this whole wonderful gig isn't going to be snatched away come morning. Maybe that's as close to feeling one's made it as one gets in this business.

###

I also happened to notice my chiropractor's hands today. He's a big, burly guy--a record holding power lifter and it shows in his hands. They actually reminded me a lot of my husband's hands, who has worked as a heavy equipment mechanic for a number of years. I realized that made a strange sort of sense since a chiropractor is pretty much a mechanic of the human body.

###

An unanticipated consequence of having two new books out next month as well as two new paperback editions is that I have author's copies piling up here in my living room at an alarming rate. At last count I had a combined total of NINETY books! I feel a number of contests and giveaways coming soon....

###

I think I forgot to post my very cool news here! I mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook, but I don't think I talked about it here.

Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist: The Unicorn's Tale is on the Spring 2011 Indie Next List! Hurray, Indies! And thank you!

And Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus has been nominated for an Agatha. Yep, that's my name next to John Grisham and Kathy Reichs! Huge thanks to Malice Domestic for this honor.

###

Oddly enough, literally everyone I met and talked to yesterday was in a horrible mood. I'm wondering if it was the impending earthquake we were all sensing.

Also? In spite of the three of us here in the house having had horrible, rotten, foul mood days, within about 5 minutes of sitting down at the dinner table, we were laughing. There is no miracle like that of a wonderful family.

Peeking Out of My Hermit Cave

2011-03-05T20:37:00.000-08:00

It has been brought to my attention that I have been very quiet lately, and yes, I have. This book is being a bit of a bear to start—for many reasons. A primary one being that it is dark, dark, dark. And I shrink from all that darkness. But try hard as I might to pull it in other directions, that’s where it wants to go. So it has taken me the last two weeks to give myself permission to write the first draft as dark as I need to then, I assure myself, I can lighten it up in subsequent drafts. I mean, that IS the advantage to being a multiple drafter, right?

But I feel like I’m stumbling along in fits and starts, feeling awkward and cumbersome. To help me through this clumsy, graceless stage, I am rereading the classics: BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott and ON WRITING by Stephen King. They are hugely helpful and I am very much enjoying and soaking up these gentle encouraging voices full of bone deep wisdom. It is wisdom that I seem to need right now. Lamott, in particular, seems to be speaking right to me.

But also, as I struggle to hear the faint glimmerings of these new characters in my head, I need to tune out some of the voices on the outside because that noise and commotion draws too much of my attention. When I turn down the volume of the external world, it is much easier for me to hear my emerging characters. So I am alive and well, just…pensive. And quiet.

I’ve never needed quite this much psychic exclusion to start a book before, but I’ve also never written anything this tortured, so it makes sense. It is probably not surprising that these books did not demand to be written until my children were grown and self sufficient. To counteract all this sturm und drang, I am spending lots of time walking in this world, enjoying my family, reminding myself that old wounds do heal, lives that seem dark can find hope, essentially doing whatever I need to do to keep the nature of this book from overwhelming me, while still giving it the nurturing attention it needs to be born. A bit of a juggling act, actually.

Also? I am trying to be ergonomically savvy. The older I get the more aware I am of the wear and tear the act of writing and mousing and typing and sitting for hours on end has on my body. I had an ergonomics specialist come the other day and evaluate my process and stations and retweak everything. I want to be able to do this for another twenty or thirty years, so I need to make sure I’m not over stressing various joints, tendons, and muscles. Which is pretty much guaranteed if you spend nine hours a day on the computer, so I’ve just been cutting back in general.

Children: Natural Born Storytellers

2011-02-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has ever watched children play knows they are not merely building with blocks, squishing clay, or coloring with crayons. They are telling themselves a story the whole time, building a world and creating characters as they “play”. Because of that natural born love of a good story, it often doesn't take much to nudge a kid into a full scale writing geek.

I am often invited to schools to do presentations or author visits, usually with the hope that meeting an author will help get kids fired up about their own writing. Whenever I do these visits, I always ask the students the same question: Who likes to write? Around 50% of the kids raise their hands. When I ask the question again, this time adding, “Who likes to write if you get to ignore all the rules,” 98% of the kids raise their hands. Hugely different response!

The following tips are designed to help remind your child—and yourself—that writing can also be a form of play; to help turn them into a story geek rather than a writing robot suffocating under too many rules. The goal is to reinforce those parts of writing that equal play in your child’s eyes and ignore the rest.

Let them give rein to their natural enthusiasm and sense of play by ignoring the writing rules that make it feel like work. You want them to get in touch with that intuitive part of themselves that recognizes that writing and creating can be play. Rules can always be taught later, but a sense of joy, once lost, is very hard to recapture.
Invest in nice quality notebooks and pens. It’s easy to dismiss the very kinesthetic pleasures of writing—the feel of a silky pen flowing across thick, smooth paper. High quality pens and notebooks can bring that extra pleasure to the act of writing. Plus it signals to them that this is a valued activity, one that can feel good physically and one that the adults in their lives value enough to indulge them in.
Give them permission to not show anyone their work if they so choose (even you!). Some people need absolute privacy in which to experiment and risk failure, especially children who are used to doing exceptionally well at things.
Do not critique their writing, even if they beg you. If they are dying for feedback, let them know what they did really well. Or better yet, ask them which part they had the most fun doing.
As hard as it is for us adults, do not weigh down your child's writing with your desires, dreams, and ambitions. If you child loves to write and spends hours writing, do not begin pushing them to become a writer or enter writing contests or in any way burden their writing with expectations of careers or publication. Let writing be one area of their lives that is process oriented rather than result oriented.

[Originally posted at GeekMom.com)

Bag of Tricks

2011-02-19T17:48:00.000-08:00

I talked the other day about my handy dandy back of tricks that I use to coax my characters and stories to reveal themselves to me. As promised, I’m going to detail some of those in this post.

One of those is the brilliant old faithful by Debra Dixon, Goal, Motivation, and Conflict.

It’s a simple concept, one that is often overlooked due to its very simplicity. If you haven’t read Deb’s book, do try to find a copy to check it out because the depth with which she explains the concepts are very worth it.

Basically, Goal, Motivation, and Conflict (GMC) is making sure you know your characters EXTERNAL goal (what she wants) MOTIVATION (why she wants it) and CONFLICT (what’s standing in her way). IN ADDITION to knowing and understanding her INTERNAL goal, motivation, and conflict. The thing is, lots of us might want to be writers or senators or nurses, but chances are we all have very real, very unique, very private reasons we want those things. Doing this exercise ensures that you know what makes your character tick.

When thinking of an INTERNAL goal, it helps me to reframe that as the question, What is lacking in my character's life? What does she need to be fulfilled as a person? What Life Lesson does she need to learn?

I think of the internal motivation as the reason she needs to learn this lesson or the reason she has this great, gaping emotional hole in her life. What bad messages or poor choices she’s made in the past that have kept her from achieving fulfillment. And lastly, the internal conflict can be a couple of things: It can be what is compelling her to hang on to those old messages/lessons that keep her from moving forward, or what event/catalyst has to occur in order to move her forward emotionally.

Make a grid on a piece of paper and see if you can fill in those elements for your character. Even if you think you know them, oftentimes they change or solidify or evolve over the course of the story.

The second tool I use to suss out my characters is a cheat sheet I made from Donald Maass’s book, WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL. He poses some great questions in that book, questions that really help me grow my plot from the seeds of my main character. One of the questions I work with in the beginning is: Define what truly matters to my character. Does she have a tortuous need, consuming fear, aching regret, passionate longing, burning desire, inner lack? (You can probably see that this ties directly into the INTERNAL goal from the above GMC.)

And next I begin character journaling. I begin writing about that character’s emotional scars and wounds. I poke around in her distant past to find out what might have caused them, how they developed, why they didn’t heal. The truth is, often two different people can experience a similar event--or the same event--and only one person is affected or traumatized by them. Because we all have different emotional baggage we're carrying around. I try to get at the heart of why THIS problem is so cataclysmic for THIS character that it tilts their world (either their inner world or their external world) on it's axis.

I try to become that character and see what my subconscious sends up in the way of character memories—often very surprising things bubble up—things that I did not consciously plan or think of, but are perfect nonetheless. Some questions I use to get started are:

When did things begin to go wrong for her? In what way? What were things like just before they went wrong? How did she try to fix things--if she tried at all?

Another big benefit to journaling is that it helps me get familiar with the character’s voice. It’s like warm up drills on the piano keys before busting out into Rachmaninoff.

But for the last few books, I’ve been using other resources besides writing and plotting tools; I’ve added psychology books into the process and boy, is this helpful when I’m flailing around, trying to define my characters and their problems and their ultimate arcs. As I mentioned a few months ago, THE HERO WITHIN was invaluable as I wrestled with Ismae’s story in medievalteenassassin#1. This time around, it is Clair Pinkola Estes WOMEN WHO RUN WITH WOLVES that is saving my bacon for this second assassin book. Having said that, I think WWRWW works especially well for me since I write fantasy. Not sure how much help it would be if I wrote contemporary, realistic fiction.

As I leafed through WWRWW, I found invaluable clues to my character and not only what is at the root of who she is and why she behaves how she does, but what she will need in order to heal and grow. One thing I stumbled on this time around that I don’t remember reading before was the author’s descansos exercise. The book—and the exercise—is intended for individuals but I’m going to do it for my character. And that is, to make a timeline of all the little deaths of spirit and psyche my character has suffered (and she’s had a LOT—her past is very, very dark). Note each huge heartbreak and betrayal—whether actual or emotional, pay attention to where she felt abandoned or ignored, where she was forced to do things that were totally against her nature. Because all of those things that happened in her past inform who she is in the NOW of the story. They will give me the knowledge I need in order to understand how she will behave and react during the events of the story.

So now I’ve got all the subconscious juices flowing—and in the direction I want them to be flowing—and words and pages are accumulating at a satisfying pace. However, lest I end up with too sprawling or shapeless first draft ( I need something to let them flow into. That’s where the SAVE THE CAT template that I talked about a couple of weeks ago comes in. And I’m going to talk about how I marry those two together next week. But while you’re waiting, go and try a couple of these exercises and see how they work for you. Especially if you’re stuck or having a hard time bringing a character to life. Or if any have a similar types of exercises you use to help bring your character to life, I’d love to hear about them! I am crazy for writing exercises and processes. ☺

Thinking, Stewing, Fermenting, and Percolating and the Joys Therein

2011-02-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

For the past week I’vebeen cogitating on what an active part thinking plays in the writing process—or at least MY writing process. And then a few days ago I came across a blog post where someone was talking about how what people NEEDED to do to be a productive/professional writer was to sit down and write one page in an hour. They had done the math, you see. They figured out how long it takes to write an email and computed that into how long it would take to write a page, and if you did that three times during the day, voila! You would have a book—or three—by the end of a year. Mind you, this was a professional writer who made his/her living at writing. They firmly believed that all this thinking and researching and note-taking were simply procrastination measures and by and large useless and not-necessary.

It was all I could do not to pull my hair out by the roots and scream at the computer screen.

It would be one thing if this person had made it clear that it was THEIR process—but to extrapolate it out to the writing public at large was, at best irresponsible, at worst egotistical.

I have written over twenty books, and published thirteen of those. The longer I am involved in this writing gig the more convinced I become that the actual writing—putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard—is sometimes only 20-30% of the writing process. Not because I’m avoiding anything or letting myself be sidetracked, but because good pages don’t just happen. They are thought about and pondered over. They stew and ferment and percolate. This is especially true as my books become longer and more complex. Depth and nuance doesn’t (usually!) just fall from the sky in a burst of inspiration while I happen to be pounding out my 250 words per hour. It can, but it doesn’t always. Most often, you have to go out and hunt depth and layers and subtext and club it over the head, drag it home, and then finesse it into your WIP.

Their point was that fast writers were much better and more likely to be true professionals that slow writers. Gah. Of course, that doesn’t even address the issue of those of us who write some books slowly and others quickly…

The funny thing is, I was wrestling with this very issue before I even stumbled upon this blog post. I had set my Start Date for the medievalteenassassin#2 as Feb. 1. As I said, I’d been gathering research materials and making notes and blocking out the big picture plot things. But try as hard as I might, the story egg was NOT ready to crack yet. Was. Not. Now sure, I wrote a couple of pages. And I could very easily have forced myself to stay there and write X number of pages until I have five pages each day. But what sort of pages would they be? The wrong ones, ones leading into a story I didn’t want to tell. Now sure, you can always fix a bad page—but sometimes committing too early to the wrong story is not helpful. Besides, I could have blindly put words on paper that had no depth, no nuance, no layered meaning, and no subtext, but whatever is the point?

So instead, I pulled out my bag of tricks that I fall back on time and time again to help dig around until I find my character and story. (My next post will detail those tricks—I pinkie swear!) Some, like the above referenced blog poster, would call that procrastination. I call it assembling the material from which I plan to craft my story. Sure, one can build something using any old materials one has on hand. Or. One can look long and carefully for the right materials, the ones that compliment and contrast, provide shadows as well as illumination, and are the best quality—the strongest and most aesthetically pleasing materials one can find.

All this ruminating and mulling bore rich fruit. I quickly realized I had started in the wrong place. Once I made the adjustment and backed up, the pages came much, much more easily. Where I had been eking out two painful pages a day, when I backed up and did the necessary story and character work, I was able to write 20 pages in three days. Not a record, by any means, but much more free flowing when they came from the right place. They are still first draft pages, but they have the bones and sinew of the story I am trying to tell, rather than no relation to anything I’m trying to convey.

So the point I am trying to make is that, no, there is no one formula or approach one has to take in order to be a professional working writer who can support themselves with their writing. Ignore anyone who tells you otherwise.

The Speech Heard Round The Kid Lit World

2011-02-05T10:11:00.000-08:00

Last week at SCBWI’s New York conference, Sara Zarr gave a speech that resounded powerfully with writers everywhere. The crux of the speech was about reclaiming our creative life from the demands of the market and the business side of publishing. There is a great recap of the speech here and here. It was a hugely important speech, and one that I think many, many writers needed—and wanted—to hear. To be given permission to put creativity front and center in their careers again.

I actually feel that I have done a fairly good job of arranging a creative life that sustains me. However, a couple things she said really resonated.

Most of us need to stop doing half of what we’re doing and start doing the other half well.

Yeah, I’m doing too much. I know it. I had hoped by giving myself a month off before starting a new book, I could get caught up and maybe even get ahead. And I did in a couple of areas, but not others. Some days, I am pulled in so many different directions, I hardly know where to start. I don’t think I can quite give up half of what I’m doing, but I can pare way down.

I’m going to cut way back on Twitter and, I think, give up Tweet Chats. Not that I’ve participated in all that many, but it is a bit of a mental pull, and that part I can eliminate. I’ll still pop on there occasionally, but I won’t try to catch up with everyone all the time.

I’m reducing my blog reading by 2/3. Out with all the industry and publishing news, the declarations of the death of the printed book, and the age of the E-Reader. I will keep up with one particular online series, because I think as an author I need to be informed, but not assaulted, which is how I feel sometimes with so much news. And is, now that I think about it, one of the downsides to Twitter—we are absolutely assaulted with news and links.

And yeah, thinking about doing a year long writing workshop here on the blog was a tad overambitious, especially with my Shrinking Violet and GeekMom commitments. Even more difficult though, was I can’t use samples from my work in progress, but the time required to figure out new examples was too much, and even worse, created a second story running through my head, crowding out the work. So I am going to give that up. I will still post craft stuff as I deal with it, but it won’t be quite as structured as I had hoped. Also? I will quit beating myself up when I don’t manage to get a new blog entry posted every week.

A creative life must be sustainable.

And frankly, as I get older my wrists and shoulders are barking at me to spend way less time on the computer. Not just on the computer, but writing in general. I get thumb sprain and index finger strain from writing so much with a pen. My wrists begin flirting with carpel tunnel when I spend too much time on the keyboard, and my shoulders are sick of mousing. So even though I don’t battle the M&M bowl, my current set up is not sustainable, at least not as far as my body is concerned.

It is hard, because I do so much research on the computer. Not just for the books, but for everything—colleges, health issues, politics, current events. Every little fact that crosses my path I usually feel compelled to research. Clearly I need to give some of that up and step away from the computer. So I’ll be doing a lot of that in the next few weeks as well as hiring an ergonomics person to come in and help me set up the most ideal environment for my aging joints.

A creative life should be engaging, expanding, not reduce you to word count and computer.

I have written three books a year for three years, and while I knew that was a sort of hyper-accelerated push, it is also important to realize it was not, nor was ever meant to be sustainable. I am feeling a huge need to step back into real life. It is so, so easy to default to the relationships I have online. I’m an introverted hermit, after all. But I want to do more walking and hiking and have weekly artists dates outside the house, spend more time with my parents and friends. Maybe do some volunteer work. Being so deeply in my writing cave for so long was exactly what I—and my career—needed. But now the need has passed and it’s time to expand my world once again.

So those are the thing that Sara Zarr’s speech gave me permission to do. What about you? Did her speech inspire you to shift things in any way for yourself?

Announcing the Nathaniel Fludd Website

2011-02-01T09:01:00.000-08:00

I'm so thrilled to finally be able to announce this news I've been sitting on for a couple of weeks. We have a brand, spanking new Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist website!

Thanks to the brilliance of illustrator Kelly Murphy and her equally brilliant and talented husband, Antoine Revoy, Nate now has a home on the web! Please check it out when you get a chance. There is a bunch of cool extra content such as Nate's 'sketchbook' and a copy of the actual Book of Beasts, as well as the Fludd Family Tree, which shares some of the unique Fludd history.

It is meant to be explored by kids, and we will be adding new content regularly for their reading pleasure. Plus! There is a gallery of kid's fan art, so if your child is an artist, we'd be happy to feature their art.

How Writing Careers Are Like Snowflakes

2011-01-31T13:11:00.000-08:00

I am feeling a big need to have one hub for all my online activity--probably because I am getting older and finding it harder to keep track of everything. With that in mind, I'm going to start cross-posting from my other blogs/websites here...

How Writing Careers Are Like Snowflakes

(cross-posted from Shrinking Violets)

And no, it’s not because they melt away into nothingness two seconds after hitting the ground. Don’t even let such a negative thought taint your mind!

It’s because no two are ever exactly alike. Pretty simple, huh? But one of the hardest concepts for us authors to grasp. Hell, even publishing professionals have a hard time accepting it, although they are aware of it more than the individual author since they have access to data for all their books.

Someone on Twitter last week (and I can’t for the life of me remember who it was—if it was you, let me know so I can properly credit you!) linked to this year old post by Christina Dodd. The whole post is definitely worth reading, a twenty year’s veteran’s look at the biz, but this nugget in particular really struck me:

9. From my vantage point, everyone in publishing is doing better than I am. From everyone else’s vantage point, I’m doing better than they are. The truth is somewhere in between — and an author who’s published is not going to get any sympathy at all from an unpublished author who’s written for ten years, finished three manuscripts and has twenty-five rejection letters. Believe me. I know. I was that author.

The fear of failure nips at our heels no matter what stage of our career we're in. It is so, so easy to sit from the outside looking in and be certain--absolutely certain--that Author A is a raging success and has it all and their books are selling like hotcakes. But the truth is rarely that simple. The really hilarious thing is I’ve had people say that of me, and I can never hold back a snort of wild disbelief. (See previous paragraph.)

A couple of weekends ago I attended ALA. While there I became convinced of two things.

1. Twitter does help buzz books. I can’t tell you how many times I heard people standing in lines for arcs saying, I heard about this book on Twitter. (Which will be the subject of a future post)

2. A big web presence or Twitter following does not guarantee actual book sales. Standing in line for free ARCs is a very different thing from plunking down cold hard cash for the book

I cannot tell you how many people I’ve talked to over the last month or heard talking on blogs, bemoaning their lack of sales, and yet these people DO have really big followings. These are people who are worried about earning out their advances, whose sales are far below expectations, or who are worried about their next contract. Every single one of them has what I consider to be a pretty healthy--if not downright BIG--web presence.

Which proves precisely what I’ve suspected all along: Big blog/Twitter followings propel a teensy percentage of people to publishing success, but no more and perhaps even less than a greatly written book, an award nomination, or the full force of the publisher’s marketing department behind the book.

It is ONE way in a myriad of ways to achieve success.

And the important thing to remember is that no one really, truly understands how one book becomes a success and the other one does not. Sure, there are certain things that must be in place: good storytelling (notice I did not say brilliant writing), publisher support, usually co-op of some kind, but not always. But any given publisher can have two books that should by all intents and purposes appeal to the same audience, and yet the marketing efforts that work so spectacularly on one, fail to have any effect on the other.

Even with Penguin’s big bestsellers, each book had slightly different ways it was marketed to its audience: NIGHTSHADE had an extensive and elaborate interactive Facebook presence and ACROSS THE UNIVERSE had a first chapter sent out through PW. Different approaches for different books.

This is especially important to keep in mind as you keep hearing that the midlist is dead. You’ll hear that on Twitter, in blog posts, at conferences. (Go here for a most excellent description of midlist. Actually take the time to read the whole series. It is the best, most comprehensive explanation I have ever read of the publishing business and the pressures it faces.)

The truth is, a majority of books that become successful do so in their own unique and individual way. This year’s Newberry Awards are a HUGE illustration of that. Most of those books were sleeper books that did not get a significant push from their publisher. Indeed, true midlist books, all.

Some get a surprising number of starred reviews, causing the publisher to take a second look at its vision of the book, some gather huge in-house support and enthusiasm as the book moves through editing and production, and that in-house enthusiasm helps propel the book. Others get state list nominations, or actual award recognition. Or the Junior Library Guild gets behind it. Others build more slowly over time with great word of mouth from teacher to teacher or kid to kid. Sometimes a big chain falls in love with a book and their enthusiasm helps propel the book. Or it gets picked up through the book clubs or book fairs. Or Target takes a buy in.

Or any combination therein.

And a lot of those things don’t even happen the first year out. In fact, looking at my own books, when any of those things have happened to one of them, it happened after it had been out for a year.

And absolutely NONE of them happened because of my online activity.

What has happened from my being online is that I’ve met a lot of great, like-minded people, connected with my readers (although 90% of this has been through the contact page at my author website or the Theodosia blog—not social media.) I have also been tapped for blog tours and guest blogs, book giveaways, and interviews. All of those have helped, but I’d be HUGELY surprised, I mean gobsmacked, if I sold more than 300 books through my online involvement. (Part of this might be because I write middle grade and my end reader is not actually online in a big way. I am going to be really curious to see how this differs—if at all—when my YA comes out.)

So as introverts, we need to really pay attention to the fact that there are SO MANY different paths to success. We need to question the pressure we’re feeling to be online and involved in social media and understand who is pressuring us and why. If it is just because other people are doing it and think you should do it, too, or it’s because Online Guru #43 says you should, then ppfffft. Ignore that. If it’s because your publisher is pressuring you, well that’s a little different. Perhaps a heart to heart conversation with your editor is in order so you can understand precisely what they are hoping your social media presence to achieve, then you can see if there is another way to achieve that.

If you look at the authors who seem to have hugely influenced their sales through their online presence (at least as best as we can tell, although some of them are very open about it) they are most often extraverts. If they ARE introverts, they are very enthusiastic, expressive, gregarious, and energetic introverts.

And maybe you’re not. And you know what? That’s okay because there are lots of different ways your book can find its way to success. Your career is like a snowflake. It will be uniquely yours and have its own sets of ups and downs, highs and lows, discouragement and reward. The best thing you can do for yourself personally, and your career, is find a way to not only accept that, but savor it.

[crossposted from Shrinking Violets}

Historical Accuracy

2011-01-26T04:36:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking a lot about historical accuracy as I work on these medieval French assassin books. Lucy had asked (quite a while ago—sorry Lucy!) if I would talk about historical accuracy on the blog, and since I was discussing historical research in general, I thought it would be a good time to address it.

But first, a warning: I am not a purist. If you are looking for someone who holds up pristine historical accuracy as the One True Shining Purpose, I am not your girl.

For one thing, I think historical accuracy is an elusive beast, especially the farther back in time you travel. But that very elusiveness is exactly why so many historians tackle time periods that have been written about before: because things change. Sometimes it is the actual information and facts that change—new discoveries are made, new methods of dating or interpreting old facts emerge. But other times it is merely US who have changed, our perspective on history. A great example of this was the influx of histories in the seventies that were told/viewed through the eyes of women or minorities who’d been involved in the historical events, but whose side hadn’t yet been told.

There is also great disagreement on a lot of historical concepts and facts. Just trying to define the middle ages or medieval time period for example, can lead you on a long and twisting goose chase. Some declare it ended in the middle of the 14th century, while others claim it ended in 1450, where still others claim it ended in 1492. You can find solid historical arguments for each of those dates. The truth is, you can often find a variety of sources that will support an even wider variety of interpretations.

So which does a writer choose?

The one that serves the story they are trying to tell.

Some writers are writing in order to convey absolute historical detail and accuracy and take great pride in that, as well they should because it is so tricky. But others (like me) are mostly interested in evoking the sensibilities and flavor of a time period. I don’t mean that we slap historical costumes on 21st century characters and calling it historical, but rather we try to explore the mindset and worldview of earlier times, but in a way that is accessible to readers.

This is especially true for me since I write historical fantasy. I am already drawn to the murky, under explored parts of historical periods—their folk beliefs, superstitions, relationship to Other, and their spiritual anomalies—things that most real historians have traditionally steered clear of.

Then there is the added layer of conveying the history in the story as the people of that time understood it, or so that it is accurate when viewed through our 21st century lens. A great example of this is that I’ve been dinged in a view Theodosia reviews for being inaccurate about mummies, and I so want to ask this person to please point me to their research. Not because I want to argue, but because the four sources I consulted all supported my dealing with mummies and the researcher in me would love to examine this source that disputes that. Or is her source a more 21st century source rather than the information Theodosia and other Egyptologists would have access to in 1907?

Another example is that even now, they is still disagreement and dispute as to who really reached mountain peaks first or who the first man to discover the north pole truly was.

You begin to see the complexity.

My medieval France book is proving the most difficult, not only because the time period was recorded in such a subjective manner, but because most of the earliest sources are in French! Middle French at that, and I simply am not dedicated enough or willing to wait long enough to learn that language before I write this story.

What I am doing for this book is dipping my hand in the cauldron of what we know of the events at that time and pulling out those that are most relevant to the story I want to tell. There are vast amounts of historical facts and details I am not even touching—to do so would turn an already huge book into an encyclopedia! But even more important, they aren’t relevant to the story itself.

My own guidepost, touchstone, call it what you will is that the history serves the story. (Again, I want to reiterate that this would never fly if I were writing historical fiction rather than historical fantasy!)

Pre-Writing: Research

2011-01-24T04:34:00.000-08:00

Ah, research. One of my own personal versions of crack. Whether writing historical, fantasy, or contemporary, solid, judicious research can make a book come alive.

It can also be one of the easiest areas in which to become bogged down due to 1) becoming overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of information and a desire to get everything perfect and 2) it’s a lovely way to procrastinate and avoid doing any actual writing.

The way I keep from getting overwhelmed or lost in a never ending maze of historical research is that I break it down into stages. In the prewriting stage, the point of my research is to get a broad overview of the major events, players, and temperament of the historical time period in question. If I’ll be using or referring to real people or events, I make sure I know enough about them so that I can adapt accordingly. In fact, early on, I will often make up a timeline incorporating those historical events that will be happening during the course of the story.

But perhaps more important than the major events and players, is the thing I called temperament. This incorporates not only the mood and tone of the historical period, but also the worldview of the people who lived in those times. I thinking trying to capture the worldview and convey it somewhat accurately is one of the keys to making historical fiction feel like more than a costume drama.

The mindset of those who lived in the Victorian Era was different from those who lived in the Edwardian Era. Medeival men and women had wildly different ways in which they viewed the world when compared to those that lived during the Renaissance. As writers, I think one of the most important research tasks we have is to be able to capture the essence of those views.

However, that worldview must be tweaked in such a way as to make sure the characters are relatable for today’s reader. I think the exception to this is if the main focus of the story is to capture a particular historical milieu and have it be the point of the story, but my own personal feeling is that character and story take precedence over historical accuracy. (Which I will talk about in my next post.)

Another really important point about historical fiction (including fantasy) is this: the story should be so integral to the events and constraints of the time period that it could not take place any other time. It could not be plunked down in another historical time period and work. So if you have a character and plot idea and you’re trying to choose between a Colornial, Renaissance, or Victorian setting, the chances are your plot and character are not fully grounded enough in their time or place. If you’re just at the idea stage and still fleshing out the plot and character, then that’s different.

For example, I get asked a lot about why I set Theodosa in Edwardian times, and the answer is, very simply, that particular story couldn’t have happened at any other time. A hundred years earlier and travel was much slower and women traveled to Egypt much less frequently and a woman archaeologist—while scandalous enough in 1907—would have been nigh impossible in 1807. Plus the Rosetta Stone hadn’t yet been cracked and no one knew how to properly read hieroglyphs, so Theo couldn’t have translated the various texts. Plus, the general view at the time was that it was perfectly fine to acquire artifacts from lands not one’s own and take them to a museum and archaelogical digs were minimally supervised.

If I were to have set it in modern times—well, the story couldn’t have happened in today’s world. Egypt is very much in control of its own excavations and discoveries, travel and access is now nearly instantaneous, and modern politics would have provided a huge barrier. Plus, we know so much more now that we did then and nearly all the really big archaelogical finds have been made.

Thus 1907.

So that’s what I look for in the first round of research, learning enough to anchor both the story and the character’s worldview in the time period. And then it’s a stop and go sort of thing. I’ll begin writing until I run into something I don’t know. If it totally stops the story from going forward, then I’ll stop and research it. If I can keep going without it, I put a note in brackets. [what were some games Edwardian kids played and what toys did they have?] and keep going. That way I avoid the procrastination game.

Oh, one other thing I do in these early, pre-writing stages is that I do the research necessary to assemble the setting of the book. Determine what cities or towns I’ll be using, or make some up based on real towns. I pour over old maps and photos of old towns and castles, trying to get a vivid picture of the setting in my mind and then create enough of a map or blueprint that I’m not constantly having to stop once the writing begins to figure out where in the heck I am.

(And the reason I’m talking about research now is because I do it before I create the template that I referred to in last week’s post. I’m pretty much doing these posts in the exact order that I do them for a book.)

On Writing A Novel

2011-01-19T23:50:00.000-08:00

Okay, that title should probably really be, On Writing THIS Novel, since each one of them ends up needing something a little different.

But basically, since it is the beginning of a new year and I am starting a new novel, I thought it might be fun/interesting/entertaining to kind of do a loosey-goosey year long workshop and show what tools I use when writing a novel and when I apply them and what I do when I get stuck. Some of this stuff is elsewhere on the blog, but this will present everything in (relative) chronological order.

Or is that too writerly oriented for the readers who stop by here? Maybe I’ll put up a poll to see…

Right now I’m kind of puttering in the pre-writing stage. I’m giving myself a couple of weeks off of the actual producing pages part, but I’m getting ready in other ways, mostly seeding the ground of my subconscious.

First, of course, is to clear the decks of all the detritus of the last book, file away all my loose papers and notebooks and mss printouts. Not only is this good feng shui and organizational practice, it’s like erasing the chalkboard in my writing brain.

Next, I gather all the research materials I know I’ll need. I will always need more, but I won’t know which ones until I get farther in. I begin reading the research books and taking notes. I also go around the house looking for and collecting any and all random notes I may have made about this particular book and read through them once.

I also usually have a vague kernel of a sense of my main characters which I will be able to dig around in and coax into some sort of personage. Although with this particular book, I do have a decent loose sense of who they are as people since they were secondary characters in the last book. This is also the stage wherein I pull out two fresh, shiny unused notebooks. Not sure why I always start with two; sometimes one is for my official ideas and the second one is for playing around with ideas, or sometimes one is for the stuff I know is absolute, not-changeable, and the other is more of an evolving canvas.

Even though I still consider myself to be in the pre-writing phase, the next thing I need to do is to get a sense of the shape and heft of the book. Some people determine that as they go along but I find it really helps to get it firm in my mind now. Part of this may be because I write books of such different lengths and complexities, from 20,000 words to 135,000 words, long, complex books with five acts and lots of twists versus short, early books with linear plots, only a few layers, and a handful of twists. It’s like knowing whether you’re going to make a single, layer 8” x 8” cake or a triple layer wedding cake. Knowing that up front helps my brain gather the materials it will need to create something of that magnitude, or conversely, ignore things that are less central to the smaller sized story.

The tool I use for this is a template I’ve adapted from Blake Snyder’s SAVE THE CAT book, which I highly, highly recommend. At this early stage of the process, this is the perfect template for me as it is vague enough that I don’t feel forced to ink in actual scenes and turning points yet, it mostly just reminds me what each section of the book should feel like and encompass. A brainstorming template, if you will. And while it might seem a bit left-brained to bring in at this stage, I have learned that by seeding some soft, left-brained stuff in early, it actually becomes incorporated by my right brain's more creative process.

The template looks something like this:

Setup 1-40

Catalyst 48

Debate 48-100

Break into Two 100

Fun and Games 100-200

Midpoint 200

BadGuys Closing In 200-300

All is Lost 300

Dark Night of Soul 300-340

Break into Three 340

Finale/Climax /Resolution 340-400

Those are the target page numbers I’m using for a 400 page mss, but if you were working on a 50,000 word novel, you’d just cut those numbers in half. Next time I’ll show you how I fill that in and begin massaging it into the material for the book.

And what about you guys? Do you have a pre-writing phase to your process or do you just jump in? If so, what does it include? Do you have a new book you’re starting this year? An old one you’ve vowed to tackle? Care to tell us about it…

New Beginnings...

2011-01-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

So in the next couple of weeks I’ll be starting a new book, pretty much from scratch. Even better, I have an entire year to write it.

One of the things that strikes me as I peer into the near future is the utter, nerve-jittering uncertainty of it all. I have started enough books by now that I know I can start—and finish—them, but I also know that no completed manuscript is ever quite as wonderful as the shiny new idea floating around in my head. Once you take a hold of that idea and begin stretching it and shaping it and contouring it into a story—it shifts. It is no longer an idea full of infinite possibilities but begins to become concrete, with finite edges and form. For every story action or character element we choose, we have to release a hundred other possibilities.

Story ideas sometimes remind me of butterfly’s wings in that once you touch them, some of the magic dust comes off and prevents them from flying quite as perfectly as before. That sounds sad, and I don’t mean it to be, but just as in fairy tales, there is a cost for becoming real, for stepping out of the ephemeral into the finite.

With new stories we stand at the edge of an abyss. If we’re lucky, we can look across the gaping chasm and actually see the other side. And we know we have to get to there somehow. Usually by leaping out into the abyss while trying to build the glider we need to make it to the other side while in mid air.

Exhausting. Exhilarating. And oh-so-exciting.

2011-01-10T09:33:00.000-08:00

It is quiet here today because I am posting elsewhere this morning. Over at GeekMoms, I'm talking about Disney's decision to stop producing princess movies and the implications of that decision, and over on Shrinking Violets we're talking about picking a guiding word for 2011. Hope to see some of you at one of those places or another!

New Research Books

2011-01-05T09:25:00.000-08:00

I am seriously, SERIOUSLY excited about all the research books I got today for #medievalfrenchteenassassin2 (otherwise known as DARK JUSTICE.)

Just sayin'...

NOW I'm Ready For The New Year

2011-01-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

I finally made my annual organizational trek to Staples and Office Max, so now I’m ready to start the New Year. Never underestimate the importance of the right organizational tools to make your life smoother and help you get a handle on all the paper and stuff one must keep track of.

I am now the proud owner of:

A pretty, brightly colored notebook with matching dividers in which to organize all my royalty statements since 2003. (And I will be doing a post on royalties here in a little bit, so stay tuned.)
Five (Yes! Five!) calendars. (I may have a bit of a calendar addiction, truth be told.) Two small size pocket monthly calendars, one wall type calendar, but without a hanger, and my indispensable, holds my life together, At A Glance Weekly Calendar (with Quick Notes!) which is my main, keep track of everything organizer. I use one of the pocket calendars to schedule and organize my posting schedule over on Shrinking Violets, and the second one to do the same for my posting schedule over on GeekMom now that I’m a core contributor. The third one is to track my personal health stuff—list what days I exercised, for how long, make a note of when I have a migraine or insomnia, try to track (and therefore give myself the illusion of control!) my physical life.
Three packages of colored post it notes.
Another three packages of the tiny post it note flags.
A totally old school type budget ledger that I use for household budgeting. (And no, I’m not a Luddite, but I like the act of laying it out each month by hand—it makes me feel very present and in control of my finances.)
A big, brightly colored envelope to hold all my business receipts.
Four ‘hard-backed’ spiralbound notebooks for journaling and drafting.

My next step is to organize my writing nest. I am trying to decide if I’m brave enough to take a picture of the massive notebook spread I’ve got going in my workspace. It is seriously scary, but I don’t have anywhere else to put it all. This year I want to buy a big credenza thing, one with at least three and possibly four doors, one for each series I’m working on. That way I can just stack up all my research books, series bibles, old journals and notebooks behind each door and voila! Everything I need at my fingertips.

I mean, if I’m juggling three different series, it seems as if one little ol’ credenza isn’t too much to ask...

What about you? What are your Must Have Organizational supplies?

Farewell 2010, You Awesome Year, You!

2010-12-30T04:02:00.000-08:00

This has been, for the most part, an all around awesome year. In 2010, I:

Wrote three books (220,000 finished words!)
Completed and sold my first YA
Had my first official book tour
Read 68 books
Wrote 152 blog entries (here, Shrinking Violets, Enchanted Inkpot, and GeekMom)
Got into the Twitter groove
Met some amazing people online (yes, that means YOU!)

I realized that, compared to some, I am a bit of a slacker. But I also realize that compared to others, I’m an overachiever. I can live with being somewhere in the middle. The truth is, someone will outperform you no matter the field and the sooner accepted, the sooner gotten over. Plus? This is not a competition. ::she reminds herself::

Also:

One son graduated from college and began building a life he loves
Another son found his passion—which is a huge step in one’s life

All in all, a very good year. Of course, there were several stresses, too. The family juggled a number of health issues early in the year. Honestly—it felt as if we were being hit with the ten plagues of Egypt, but modern style. That was a long few months, happily behind us, with no lingering or lasting effects.

It also makes the victories accomplished just that much sweeter.

As I review the year, I am also forcibly reminded of the old adage Everything in good time. I turned in my revision of DARK MERCY at 4 pm on Dec 23, then had exactly 24 hours to get ready for Christmas, including a Christmas Eve dinner at my house. I got about zero Christmas shopping done (more traumatic for me than anyone else) but it was a brilliant reminder that I could not easily have juggled my career and family much earlier in my life. The conflicting needs would have been too much for me to handle gracefully, or even sanely. So if any of you young’uns out there are feeling frustrated, you might consider that the timing might be working to your advantage in some way you can’t even begin to see yet.

I am giving myself the next week off, which is just as well as ever since I finished DARK MERCY my brain has been flat out empty. Just. Empty. It is eerily quiet in there; no random thoughts, no story snippets swirling around, or random chatter. It would be nice to think I’ve achieved a new level of personal Zen, but honesty compels me to admit it is pretty much just empty. Which is very restful, if a bit unnerving. I am worried that it will stay this way longer than I’d like, especially since I must start DARK JUSTICE soon. Even so, I must need the break so I will try to revel in the quiet of the now and not worry about next week.

Here's wishing you all a festive-but-quiet New Year!

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-23T05:08:00.000-08:00

Well, Eldest Son is home, safe and sound, so my Christmas is complete. :-)

When I was young, my very favorite Christmas carol was The Little Drummer Boy. In fact, I'm pretty sure I drove everyone around me crazy with my constant refrain of pa rum pum pum pum. One of the things I loved most about the song was the story it told, that a small, poor boy still had gifts he could give that had value. That no matter how poor or young or powerless, we still have something to contribute. Our gifts don't need to be shiny or expensive or perfect.

In celebration of the holidays, I want to share this video of The Little Drummer Boy. This version speaks to me especially because of the wonderful contrast between the innocence of the song and the rough, dissipated voice of Shane Macgowan...

Whichever holiday you celebrate, I'm wishing you much peace, light, and joy!

And Speaking Of Theodosia Four . . .

2010-12-21T10:05:00.000-08:00

I've got a sneak peek of the first chapter of THEODOSIA AND THE LAST PHARAOH up over on the Theodosia site, if anyone is pining for a Theodosia fix...

And The Winner Is . . .

2010-12-20T11:12:00.000-08:00

D. M. Cunningham (#4) and Liz from Goodreads (#23)!

Email me with your addresses and I will get those out to you in tomorrow's mail. If you need it by Christmas, let me know and I'll overnight it to you!

Thanks for playing! And check back in a couple of weeks because rumor has it I may have Theodosia Four ARCs then...

My methodology: I numbered all the blogger comments 1-22, then the four comments I received over on Goodreads 23-27, then hit the ol' Random Number Genetator. (And yes, I included those of you who skated in under the wire this morning and no one got entered twice.)

Tis the Season--For an ARC Giveaway!

2010-12-13T08:23:00.000-08:00

I am in possession of a couple of Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist: The Unicorn's Tale arcs and thought I'd have a drawing, just in time for the holidays!

Is there no rest for the travel worn and weary? Not if you’re Nathaniel Fludd, the world’s youngest beastologist-in-training! All Nate really wants is to track down his missing parents, but when a unicorn falls mysteriously ill, Nate’s Aunt Phil makes it clear where a beastologist’s duty lies: to the beasts.

And if taking care of the world’s beasts isn’t difficult enough, Nate and Aunt Phil must also keep them safe from the villainous Obediah Fludd, who intends to do them harm. With all this taking up every last bit of his energy and time, will Nate ever find the parents he is so absolutely convinced are alive?

For a chance to win, just leave a comment on this post. Next Monday morning (Dec. 20) at 9:00 a.m. PST I will draw two names from the comments for winners. I will even, if you need, get it shipped to you in time for Christmas in case you have any young readers pining for the next adventure.

Good luck!

Inspiration

2010-12-08T10:27:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to blog for ages but I am so consumed by my revisions it just ain't gonna happen til I'm done. Well, nothing substantial written by me, anyway.

However I saw this amazing YouTube via Brene Brown on Twitter today and HAD to share it. It speaks to me on so many levels, the parent level, the achieving our dreams no matter what level, the different paths heroes take. Such an amazing life lesson--for all of us. Have a Kleenex handy!

Wishing you all tons of inspiration and an awesome finish line in your future--however you cross it!

Pining For A Non-Gender Specific Pronoun

2010-11-18T05:17:00.000-08:00

I know that’s probably not on everyone’s wish list, but I sure find myself longing for one lately. I cannot believe the English langue doesn’t have one. Somebody was not thinking clearly when they sat down to make up that pronoun list.

In light of this, I think grammar puritans everywhere should just agree that we can use they as a non gender specific pronoun. It would make everything so much simpler! And it’s not the only instance of a word taking its actual meaning from the context it’s used in.

And yes, I also spend time fretting over the plight of the serial comma, the passing of the subjunctive were, and the extinction of bibliographies.

Tropes versus Resonance

2010-11-15T04:15:00.000-08:00

I hear a lot of talk about tropes, especially in fantasy, but also in the larger body of books in general. Tropes, for any who don’t know, are basically clichéd plot devices, or at least that’s how I interpret it. I think the actual definition is that they are conventions, which is pretty different than a cliché, but 90% of the time when the word is used it is meant negatively.

But here’s the thing. Me? As a reader? I LOVE tropes. Can’t get enough of them. Because many of the tropes that other writers sneer at provide my reading experience with mythic underpinnings.

I have read books that others consider fresh and trope-free, providing a refreshing breath of fresh air into the genre. But you know what? Even though I know intellectually that I should appreciate these books for their ground-breaking ways, I usually find that I don’t connect with them emotionally, nothing about them resonates with me and I end up putting them down.

Which goes to just how many different kinds of readers there are and how many different things we look for in books. Mitali Perkins had a fabulous discussion a while back theorizing that younger readers read to expand their world while YA readers read to reinforce their world. I think there are similar, if more complex, dynamics at work in what we as adults read.

I remember once reading a quote from Ursula La Guin that stated something to the effect that all those writers who set their books in any sort of medieval or Western European setting were just lazy fantasists. And I was hurt by that—not as a writer, but as a reader. Those stories call to me. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe because I was raised on fairy tales or because that’s where my ancestors came from or because one of my first great fantasy influences was Tolkien. I don’t know, but I also don’t think it’s something we can help, sort of like we can’t really control who we fall in love with. It strikes me as—yes, I’ll say it—elitist to claim that all these conventions are tropes. Maybe, but maybe they are conventions because they resonate with readers in some way they don’t resonate for whomever is doing the trope-calling?

The things some people call tropes, the MC being the chosen one for example, I see as being as much a part of story as the words once upon a time. They mirror important steps on every person’s journey to maturity and understanding. We all start off believing we are the chosen one, why else would our parents’ worlds revolve around us? It is a critical step in human development to recognize that either we are not “chosen” or, to come to terms with the massive amount of responsibility that comes with being chosen.

The old wise one as mentor is another trope that takes a beating but again, this totally works for me. Some of my closest, most treasured relationships when I was a kid were with my grandmothers. I loved them, and now, seeing that reflected in a book. I also think that fantasy is akin to fairy tales, which codify the behaviors we want to pass down to our young. Reinforcing for them that older people have something to offer too—wisdom—is not a bad thing.

Some people sneer at the HEA found in romance books, but there are certain dark places I simply will not go in fiction, not unless I know I’m in the hands of a writer who can bring me out again and help me land in an even better place than when I went in.

So how do we tell the difference between a tired convention (trope) or time-revered resonance? Is it a matter of execution? Does good writing elevate a trope to something resonant and mediocre writing condemn it to hackneyed cliché?

Adventures in Reflexology

2010-11-08T04:29:00.000-08:00

I was very excited when, a few months ago, a reflexology place decided to hang its shingle in our little town. It is a very hip, forward thinking type of establishment for us. It also has to have some of the best deals ever. Only $20 for a 30 min reflexology treatment. About a month ago, I decided to give it a try, and my feet were very, very happy with me.

I went back this Saturday, thinking my feet were due for another treat. It did not disappoint. In fact, it was so divine I decided I should splurge and go for the combo, which is 30 minutes on your feet, and 30 minute on your shoulders, neck, and upper back. For only $35! Such a deal! Plus, my upper back and shoulders are really tired of me mousing and using the keyboard all the time and needed a little work. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?

But as I sat there trying to decide, I was also aware of how sometimes, just taking one more step is taking things too far and upsetting a delicate balance. Then I decided I was just being Miss Panic Pants. What was the harm in a little more reflexology?

Oh dear reader, there was harm. Lesson number one, always listen to your gut.

Okay, maybe harm is too harsh a word. But there was pummeling. And pounding. And many, many tender spots I did not know I possessed. Pretty much it felt like he was beating me up. And smiling cheerfully the entire time. And charging me for it.

And I am so afraid of hurting someone’s feelings, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to work. I don’t know.

I have had deep tissue work done before, but it always was more of a slow, deep, hurts-so- good kind of thing. This was more like being put on a high spin cycle.

When we were done, I felt slightly panicky and dizzy and I’m still not sure if it was because reflexology is supposed to release some strange, emotional toxins from one's system or if it was because I just felt like I’d survived a beating. Or maybe it was the knowledge that if I had just listened to my little inner voice, I could have avoided the whole unpleasantness. ☺ Either way, it wasn’t an experience I am eager to repeat. I’m just hoping all that pain and pummeling will have made a difference somehow. I’m hoping for uber-flexible and relaxed shoulders and arms. Once I can move them again.

Too Smart

2010-11-04T05:46:00.000-07:00

I was reading an interview with one of my all time favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, and she said something that really made me sit up and think. In the interview, she said:

Jim [Baen] also once told me, when I was whinging about my books not selling as well as someone else's (a favorite pastime among writers, alas — we are a green-eyed bunch) that my books were "too smart" to be bestsellers. To this day, I don't know if he meant that sincerely, or if it was just a very sly way to get himself off the hook. Like I'm going to argue...?

Isn't that an interesting concept? That if books are too smart or too intellectual, they are simply destined to not be bestsellers.

In a sad way, it makes sense. But it is also somewhat freeing, I guess. If you write smart books and you're beating yourself up because you’re not hitting bestseller lists, perhaps it isn’t you, it’s them…

Here’s a link to the whole interview in case you’re a fellow fan.

I also found it very interesting that she found the promotional end of things to be such a chore and was looking forward to giving up some of that.

Revisions Ahoy!

2010-11-03T04:38:00.000-07:00

Psst! Psst! Hey you. Yeah, you. Have you got a pair of heavy duty shears I can borrow? Because I need to cut a whopping chunk of words out of this manuscript and my normal cuticle scissors just aren’t up to the task.

Remember how I said I knew my manuscript was too long? Well, I was right about that. Also, I am chagrinned to see that it has a couple of flat spots and bald patches. Nothing life threatening, but those parts definitely need some more grooming.

My biggest task is finding a way to simplify the politics. This, after I’ve already simplified and culled them down seventeen time already. But that wasn’t quite enough. They talked a little bit about this in MADE TO STICK, about how what you know gets in the way sometimes, and as a writer, I find that to be so true. Especially when juggling history and politics and what was real and what was cool and what was interesting. But all that history and politics and even the factual stuff have to serve the story. And by serving it, I don’t mean overwhelming it, which is what it teeters on now.

I’m reminding myself that all those things serve as the scaffolding for the story, the basic framework on which to hang the REAL parts of the story—the characters, their actions, and their feelings. It shouldn’t distract FROM the story by being too overwhelming or visible.

The thing is, the politics of this time were fascinating. Everyone was out to get their ducal neighbor and spies and assassins and treachery and treason and betrayal were the name of the game. Seriously, when you read the history of this time, you couldn’t make half this stuff up, it’s so devious and far-fetched.

But I also think, especially in a YA book, you shouldn’t need genealogy charts and personae dramatis lists to keep track of who’s zooming who.

My biggest chore is going to be unraveling a couple of entire threads and removing others altogether.

Then, I’m going to remove half the twists and turns, and spread the remaining ones out more evenly throughout the whole of the book. Even more importantly, I need to plan them for better dramatic effect. They need to provide plot twists and surprises.

I thought I had done that, but instead, with the politics so complicated, it feels more like I just kind of splatted them all out there in the hope of not confusing anybody, and thus not only included too much, but didn’t use them to their best dramatic advantage.

I also need to get the word count down. I would love to get it down to at least 120,000 words. 110,000 words would make me ecstatic, but I’m not sure that’s reasonable as it would be an 18% cut. However, if I cut 10% and make sure every word that remains carries its dramatic weight, I think it will be okay. We’ll see.

Where Was I?

2010-11-01T06:22:00.000-07:00

I’m sorry to drop my big news then disappear for a week. How dare Real Life intrude on my blogging time!

However most of the loose ends and odd details of my life have been beaten back into submission, and I am getting ready to enter the writing cave. Or more accurately, the revision cave. I should have lots of ~~whining~~ insight to share as I get the massive shears out and make ready to cut this puppy down to a more manageable size.

Even better, I face the joy of a clear, pristine, empty calendar—four whole weeks worth. The thrill of that can scare be described.

I plan to guard it with my life*

One of the absolute joys of this newest sale (and there are many) is that due to the Spring 2012 pub date, I have the luxury of time. Instead of putting my ideas, inspiration, and creative process on a forced march, I can allow them to meander--just a bit. And as we all know, meandering is great for the creative process.

When it is time to tackle books two and three, the schedule will pick up somewhat, because I do not have those books written yet. I do, however, have good solid knowledge of their basic plots and the main characters’ motivations, as well as the fact that I will have established many of the ground rules and political framework in the first book. Even so there will definitely be plenty of opportunity for forced marches later. ☺

Which is why I won’t be doing NaNo this year. I already know I can meet a deadline and have to often enough that I’m going to give myself the gift of this unrushed revision.

Also, I’ve learned that pounding out a fast, furious draft doesn’t work for me anymore. It did once upon a time, but no longer. The truth is, my process has shifted somewhat. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it just is. But it’s important for me that I accept it.

For all of you who are doing NaNo, I wish you great gobs of luck! However, if you find you hate it or your writing is dreck or it makes you hate writing or any hundred different negatives, then give yourself permission to back off and make the writing time your own.

(On a side note, blogging over at Shrinking Violets about building effective online persona's has made me very aware of my own blogging habits. I'm never sure if it's better to post a quick check in, or save up for a meatier, more dazzling blog entry. Clearly I settled on the quick check in. This time.)

*About five minutes after typing that I got an email requesting my presence at a local book fair. So other than that, I'm keeping my schedule clear.

Seven Different Intelligences

2010-10-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

I have an article up over on GeekMom today, discussing the Seven Different Intelligences; what they are and how to use them to help kids connect with areas they don't have strength in.

And It's Official!

2010-10-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

At long last I can share my good news. And just in time, too, because I'm pretty sure I was going to explode with glee!

As per Publisher's Lunch:

THEODOSIA and NATHANIEL FLUDD author R. L. LaFevers' trio of YA romantic historical fantasies focusing on teen girl assassins in 15th century France--starting with DARK MERCY in spring 2012 and followed by DARK JUSTICE and DARK HOPE in spring 2013 and spring 2014--each focusing on a different assassin trained at a convent serving the god of death himself, to Kate O'Sullivan at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in a preempt, in a good deal, by Erin Murphy of Erin Murphy Literary Agency (NA). Rights People represents foreign and translation.

A few more story details from the Publisher's Weekly Bookshelf:

In Dark Mercy, scheduled for spring 2012, Ismae learns she was sired by the god of death, is trained as an assassin, and is sent to court as a spy, where she must choose between serving her dark god and opening her heart to love. Companion novels Dark Justice and Dark Hope, each focusing on a different assassin from the convent, will publish in spring 2013 and spring 2014.

For those of you who stop by my blog regularly, THIS is the Secret Project I've been working on in between other books over the last couple of years. No, that's not true. I've been working on it off and on for over four years. It combines all of my favorite things; dark gods, dark choices, yearning, sneaking, epic romance. And how lucky am I to be working with The Best Editor EVER again. It's definitely one of those Pinch Me! moments in my life.

What Do A Book Launch and the Tooth Fairy Have In Common?

2010-10-20T05:16:00.000-07:00

Um, I suck at both?

Seriously. Bad case of custodian fail here.

The third Nathaniel Fludd Beastologist book, THE WYVERNS’ TREASURE, came out early this month and I was so sidetracked by Other Exciting Developents that I completely forgot to even mention the poor thing! Poor little neglected book.

It reminds me of when my kids were little and I’d forget to put the money from the tooth fairy under their pillow. This happened FAR more often to my youngest son that it should have and I am well and truly the worst tooth fairy ever. I would sneak in in the morning, palming a dollar bill, then slip it under his pillow and claim he had just missed it, or it had fallen down behind the bed. This worked twice, I think, before he caught on. It is probably no accident that he is a touch cynical as an adult.)

Anywho, I am feeling that way about poor WYVERN’S TREASURE. So for those of you who were eagerly awaiting Book Three of Nathaniel Fludd, it is out now!

It’s a good think I only had two kids. Who knows what other horrid failures would have happened with a third!

Of Lightning, Medieval Living, and the Zombie Apocolypse

2010-10-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

Boy, it's not every day you get to combine all those subjects in one tiny sentence.

Last night we had the Mother of all thunder and lightning storms. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say we sat and watched bolts of lightning from our front window. A couple of them were within a thousand feet. Intense! And the thunder? Rocked. The. House. Fourteen hours later, we’re still without power, but I learned a bunch of cool things in that time.

~ We will survive the zombie apocalypse, thanks to my awesome husband. He had a generator up and running, camping stoves going, and lots of candles and flashlights. I love a man who plans ahead.

~ Living by candlelight (we didn’t run the generator ALL night, just long enough to get dinner and find the candles and flash lights) is an entirely different experience. This was a great perspective check for me since I’m working on something that takes place in the 15th century. I hadn't realized how much darker candlelight is than electric light, or daylight. Or how strong the smell of that many candles burning (and these weren’t even the much more pungent tallow candles in broad use back then.) And mostly how there isn’t much to do once the sun goes down. Candlelight is really not sufficient for reading or any close work whatsoever.

Also, how hard is it to get up in the dark and not be able to turn on any lights?? To have to fumble and bumble to the flashlights and use those to light the candles and have to boil water on the camp stove. Oy. (Again, we didn’t want to run the generator too early and wake our neighbors up. Although, come to think of it, they might have wandered over and begged for coffee.)

Anyway, it was a very timely glimpse into the realities of living without electricity.

And an even better shakedown for the Zombie Apocalypse.

On Fizzing and Covers...

2010-10-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I am positively fizzing with good news, only I can't share it yet. It is a bit like sitting on a giant champagne cork, waiting for it explode.

However, I am now able to officially reveal the cover of Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh, which is almost as exciting!

This one ranks right up there as one of my favorites. I especially adore that rich, peacock blue. ::happy sigh::

Also this week I interviewed two terrific fantasy authors over on the Enchanted Inkpot. Jennifer Nielsen has written a terrific, humorous fantasy called Elliot and the Goblin War, and the second interview is with Elizabeth Bunce, author of A Curse as Dark as Gold, and in the interview we talk about her new book, STARCROSSED. (Which I have read and is awesome!)

Until next week...

Different Journeys: The Innocent

2010-10-04T04:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, it took me longer than I thought, but I’ve been stewing on it, plus the whole Junkyard Brain syndrome kind of interfered for a day or two.

The archetype of The Innocent strikes me as being particularly well suited to kids books, especially picture books, early chapter books, and middle grade stories. The innocent lives in a perfect world where all his needs are taken care of and no horrible things have happened to convince him that the world is other than that perfect place.

When a character is the Innocent, his developmental task is to step into a new awareness—to recognize that the world isn’t paradise and his needs will not always be met and, perhaps most difficult of all, that everyone in the world does not exist in order to please him or make his life easier.

It is a classic stage in emotional and psychological development, and it comes to all of us at different times and in different ways and we bump into it in all areas of our lives.

It seems to me it could involve:

That moment you realize your parents are not all-powerful or infallible
The realization that the sun and moon do not rise and set every day just for you
The first time a best friend lets you down or betrays you
A treasured, admired older sibling does something horribly wrong or flawed
That rude awakening when you realize other people are not there to simply make you happy.

In fact, one could make the argument that childhood is a series of falls from that state of innocence.

I am pretty far removed from picture books these days, but one example that springs to mind is Kitten’s First Full Moon, a classic example of this ‘fall’ from innocence. Kitten is certain that the full moon is a bowl of cream, meant just for her. The book is about how she learns that isn’t the case at all. Can any of you think of picture book examples?

In a YA or adult book, it seems as if this type of journey might work for someone who’d led a relatively perfect and charmed life and met their first hardship. Other than that, once Innocents get past about ten, we tend to think of them as narcissistic. ☺ Even so, that journey from self absorption to self awareness is a powerful one. As an adult, however, it also requires a high degree of willful denial and a determination to NOT see in order to maintain that pretense. But lord, we’ve all met adults who were stuck there. I think the big difference, though, in dealing with the Innocent in an older book is that you have to take them farther on the journey moving them into and through other stages (which I’ll talk about in the future.) They can’t end simply with the realization that they are not the center of the universe, whereas a kids’ book could conceivably.

So what then, would the steps be of an innocent’s journey look like?

Act One:
Ordinary World—show the protagonist either using people or being oblivious to their needs.
The Precipice—hint at fall or minor fall, the catalyst provides the initial crack before the entire façade begins to crumble.
The Fall—protagonists eyes are painfully opened to the realities of the world

Act Two:
Coping mechanisms- denial, band aid fixes, attempts and adjusting shallow surface behavior. To learn that we've been fundamentally wrong is painful so there is some denial, as well as guilt, fear, shame, all those horrible feelings.
Tip of the iceberg—the crack created by the initial fall spreads until the whole world/situation is different. Cannot go back to the way they were at the beginning of the story. (midpoint)
Regrouping—Now What? Moving through the full chaos of the real world with eyes open.

Act Three:
Evolve or Die (metaphorically, at least) Trying to re-understand the world with this new awareness; attempts to adjust, either through solving the problem or shifting behavior. First couple of attempts fail or, even better, make things worse.
True understanding and acceptance—either of the world the way it is or human frailties
Integration—something that shows he’s truly absorbed all this and moves through the world in a new way.

I think one of the things that makes accepting that fall so difficult is, to accept it, we have to realize our own culpability in what has transpired. Obviously to a much, much smaller degree in kids still developing normally through those stages, but even they have to accept that they were wrong. I think that’s why kids sometimes have such a well developed sense of ‘when I was little” even though the event they’re talking about might have only have happened six months ago. It’s a way to disassociate with the embarrassment one’s younger self brings them.

The kinds of things that motivate the innocent are fear and need. Probably pretty basic needs on Masler’s scale: need for safety, whether emotional or physical, the need for shelter and food and someone to care for them.

What do you guys think? Do you see other steps or ways to move through that journey?
Can you think of any good examples of books or movies in which the hero is an innocent?

The Junk Closet Inside my Brain

2010-10-01T07:58:00.001-07:00

You know how every kitchen has a junk drawer? And most houses have an entire junk closet? Well, my brain has one of those. I’d like to think it was small, like a drawer, but the truth is it is much more like one of those giant closets in cartoons. The ones where you open them and forty years worth of odds and ends and collectibles and, well, JUNK, threatens to tumble out.

The sad truth is, I am the mental equivalent of a pack rat.

The thing is, I have no idea why stuff gets stored in there. Stupid, unimportant stuff that should have been tossed out years ago. And I have no clue as to how it’s organized. I don’t understand why all the things I really want to remember, need to remember, aren’t stacked neatly inside that closet like they should be.

Even worse, sometimes that mental junk closet gets so stuffed with my mental detritus that it leeches out to take over my entire brain and I suddenly find I can make no mental headway on anything until I take some time and clean out that mental junk closet.

That’s what I’m going to do for the next three days. Sift through some of this stuff clogging up my gray cells.

Hm. I just realized that would make kind of on interesting characterization/world building exercise. What’s inside your protagonist’s junk drawer or closet? (Does the world they live in even have such a thing? What would their equivalent be?)

::peers cautiously into my own junk closet::

Mine has boxes of Christmas ornaments, old vinyl records we never use any more but can’t quite bring ourselves to throw away, slot cars from a racing set my husband had when he was a kid. Some blank, Styrofoam balls I got for a craft project we never did, vacuum cleaner bags for a vacuum we no longer own, six years worth of Easter baskets, a telescope we can’t quite figure out how to work, end rolls of old wrapping paper, a Brazilian luck/charm/wind chimey thing my mother brought back from her travels.

Junk closets might be a fabulous, concrete way to show a character’s good intentions, failed dreams, and stuff they can’t let go of…

Orange County Children's Book Festival

2010-09-29T22:20:00.000-07:00

I keep forgetting to mention that I will be at the Orange County Children's Book Festival this Sunday, October 3, at Orange Coast College. I'll be reading on the big stage (yikes!) at 1:30.

It would be awesome to meet any of you who are in the area!

Be It Ever So Humble…

2010-09-27T03:41:00.000-07:00

My son and I were talking today about humility. He’s gotten very involved in kickboxing, and he was talking about how important it was for participants to approach the sport and sparring with a humble attitude. When they do that, they learn faster and people respond to them better.

That has a surprising corollary with writing, oddly enough. A humble attitude and a willingness to admit to what you don't know will go a long way toward easing a writer's journey. Conversely, it can be annoying when new writers act as if they will do it differently than all those who came before them (as if all those who came before them did it that way simply because they didn't know any better or enjoyed being inefficient), that they won’t take ten years to get published, or that their manuscript won’t need round after round of revisions. Or whatever. It is highly, highly annoying.

But...

I don’t think you can teach someone else to be humble by telling them about it. They have to run smack into it themselves. We all have to crash headlong into our own humility, not be urged to it by well-meaning outsiders. It’s a lot like democracy; you can’t import it—it has to grow organically from the organism itself—not be transplanted. ☺

Humility is like that. In fact, most of Life’s—not to mention, writing’s—really important lessons are like that. You have to run into them full tilt so that they knock you on your @ss and WAKE YOU UP to the fact that something is not working.

Just like our characters don’t wake up one day and decide, Hey, I need to change who I am or turn my life around, most people don’t wake up one day and realize all our writing is dreck.

That’s where that long string of rejections comes into play. It weeds out those who aren’t willing to adapt and try new things. Because that is what failing repeatedly forces us to do—what all failure and rejection forces us to do—stretch and grow and learn to come at problems from an entirely new angle. Or learn a new skill so we can try again.

Different Journeys

2010-09-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between male and female journeys, most especially since it was one of the factors that surprised me with my most recent project—the end and resolution stage went on longer than I thought—and not because I couldn’t manage to wrap it up but because the heroine’s journey simply wasn’t finished yet.

It also occurs to me that labeling these different journeys by gender isn’t the most descriptive or accurate distinction, so maybe different labels are in order. Maybe, pulling from The Hero Within, the Warrior journey versus the Wanderer or Martyr’s journey is more apt. Except, of course, martyr is just so laden with negative imagery.

But here’s the big distinction. With the male or warrior journey, the arc ends once the protagonist has faced his internal or external demon and gained the prize, whether it be a hard earned nugget of wisdom or an actual physical thing. He then returns briefly to his ordinary world a changed person; either wiser, gentler, more understanding, whatever. His eyes have been open in some fundamental way and he has achieved a whole new self.

But the feminine journey doesn’t stop there. For women, learning how to wield that newfound wisdom or power once back in their ordinary world is a critical part of their journey. It’s not just about claiming power or wisdom, but facing down others to use it. Because it is hard for women to claim that power, hard for them to speak their truth, discovering those things is only one part of their transformation. Now they must use it and in the process, redefine the relationships in their lives.

The warrior archetype is lacking in wisdom and needs that to temper his warrior tendencies.

Women, on the other hand, need to learn to tap into their warrior tendencies.

I think that’s an interesting distinction. It can also be hugely helpful in trying to determine where the emotional juice of your story is.

I’m also trying to see how that fits in with the increasingly popular woman warrior archetype, such as the kick @ss heroine found so often in paranormal and urban fantasy books. Clearly those entire genres are a means of reclaiming the warrior archetype for women—a much needed balance. I’ll have to go pull some books off my shelf and see, but I’m wondering if part of that journey is forcing others in one’s life to get comfortable with that warrior woman archetype; to show the benefits of that archetype within communities and society since it is something society has not been comfortable with in the past.

I’m also pondering how it works when applied to middle grade fiction rather than YA or adult fiction. It seems to me, that up until middle grade books, the gender based distinctions are much less apparent, which isn’t surprising since adolescence is when those hormones really kick in.

Looking at Theodosia, it seems to me I’ve flipped the archetypes a bit; she is a bit of a warrior, albeit a sneaky, supernatural one. So her journeys tend to be about tempering those tendencies and gaining wisdom.

Nathaniel Fludd, on the other hand, is about as far away from a warrior as you can get. Each book is about him gaining one new step toward becoming a warrior, and then the final books will feature him moving through his world as his new warrior self.

Anyway, I just found it interesting to think about—specifically to be conscious of when plotting or writing the book because whether the wisdom is the end point or learning to use that wisdom is, will greatly alter the shape of the story.

And of course these are gross generalizations; there’s no way to avoid that when talking about archetypal journeys, but I think it’s something worth considering.

A Very Un Zen Confession

2010-09-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. I pretty much have a bi-publishing personality disorder. When I am actually doing the writing, I am very Zen and love the process to death and am fully immersed. Even when it is hard (and sometimes it is very, very hard) it is still what I would rather be doing than just about anything else. It is a very inward, creativity-centered, process-oriented, live in the now time.

And then I have to hand the manuscript off, whether to beta readers or agents or editors, and that whole centered Zen place just kind of disintegrates before my very eyes. It’s hard to stay Inward when everything else is happening OUT THERE. Suddenly everything that has only ever existed in my head on my computer or notebook, is now out in the world.

It is much like having a first child go off to kindergarten and I cannot help but worry over how he is doing. It is nearly impossible for me to stay inwardly focused when all the next steps in the process are A) happening outside of me and B) out of my control. The truth is, it’s a squirrely, antsy, fidgety mental place to be in.

Oh sure, I know the old adage, throw yourself into the next project, but sometimes that’s not feasible. Sometimes I’m still immersed in the old project, already jotting down ideas for strengthening it, tightening it, revising it, making it better. But even as I do all that, I can only kid myself so much; I keep one eyeball on my inbox, waiting, worrying, wondering, wishing.

And I guess I felt that, as much as I trumpet a Zen and process-focused approach, I also needed to come clean about how I can’t always get there myself. And it’s not so much a do as I say, not as I do kind of thing, but rather while the Zen is what we should aspire to, we can’t always get there, in spite of our best efforts.

Hope you all had a less antsy weekend than I did!

Where Stories Come From Part Deux

2010-09-15T05:04:00.000-07:00

I was thinking some more about stories and where they come from, and was struck by all the different reasons writers write; some to tell stories, some to communicate, some to wallow in words, some to explore human nature, others to explore intriguing ideas and what ifs. I found myself wondering just how much the WHY we write influences the FORM of what we write. I mean, I already talked about where the emotional juice for our writing comes from, but in addition to that, does the reason we write determine what we write?

For example, are wordsmiths drawn more to poetry and literary vehicles? Do communicators gravitate more to non fiction? Murder mysteries, political thrillers, and police procedurals seem a natural vehicle for exploring human nature. As do romances, albeit a different aspect of human nature. Well, probably all writing explores human nature to some degree, but for some books it is more front and center than others.

Anyway, it just occurred to me that part of the long apprenticeship of writing involves experimenting with a wide variety of forms and seeing which one best fits. Writing in one's strongest voice probably includes the right synthesis of subject matter, purpose, and form.

Where Stories Come From

2010-09-13T07:54:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago on another blog someone wanted to know why people who weren’t young adults would be interested in writing YA. It struck me as a bit of an odd question, because I’ve never had the sense that writers were only propelled by their own demographic for their stories. But it is also a legitimate question in a broader sense, and it got me to thinking about why we write and where our stories come from.

My own theory is that our richest, most authentic stories come out of our own traumas and heartbreaks. Not necessarily in a direct correlation—I was beaten as a child therefore I will write about child abuse. But rather the core emotional issues, the wounds and scars that have shaped us, will also shape our stories. And the nature of those will in turn help determine what age group we write for.

Stories are the psychological equivalent of pearls, if you think about it. At some point in our lives, we receive this grain of sand—some horror or trauma or huge obstacle that becomes a permanent part of who we are. And then the magic begins to happen. Time passes, we move on, we begin to heal, scar tissue forms, we begin to grow again, only this time our growth encompasses those painful experiences. And if you are lucky enough to have a creative outlet, those painful experiences cannot help but shape what you create, much in the same way the shape of your hand determines the way you play the piano or the choice of medium affects what your artwork looks like.

My childhood and teen years were my most emotionally tumultuous, one great big stewing pot of dysfunctionality. It tapered off toward the ends of high school, but it was too late. The scars and wounds I’d received in childhood were so much a part of me that they radically affected every aspect of how I viewed the world and how I interacted with people, thus ensuring high school was hard and not the glowing ‘best time of your life’ that so many adults think of it.

So it is no surprise that when I write, that is where my stories come from. That place. And yes, even though I am well, (WELL!) past being a young adult, Not only was that the most fertile for me story-wise, but the thematic issues I am drawn to explore lend themselves best to that age.

Once I hit adulthood, I got lucky, found unconditional love, got married, and had kids. My life has been pretty great so far. Not exactly smooth sailing, raising kids is never smooth sailing, but there have been far fewer traumas and upheavals, and very little scar tissue and lots of lessons learned.

Which is why I write for kids and young adults.

I'm a Geek!

2010-09-10T04:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, that's probably not news to any of you who read my blog, but the fact that I'm a GeekMom is new. I am very excited to be a contributor to this online community because I love the idea of all these moms who have such interesting passions and interests. Such geekiness, if you will. So if you are interested in parenting issues or in getting in touch with your inner geek, check it out. I will mostly be writing about my own personal geekiness, which centers around writing, research, history, and fantasy.

The Juggling Act

2010-09-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

A week or two ago, back in the throes of finishing up the current WIP and juggling the newly arrived copy edits for Theo Four, Mel asked for details on how I juggled these tasks, so I thought I’d talk about that a little bit.

There really isn’t a secret to it, and I suspect I used to be better at it when I was younger, but it’s pretty much just a matter of compartmentalizing your day and your brain. Luckily, both the left side and the right side of my brain are pretty active. (Random Fact Alert: I was tested on that once for a job. The guy thought I had cheated because I was split so evenly down the middle in terms of brain usage.)

Since early morning when I just get up is my prime writing time, that’s when I do any actual page producing type of writing. So working on the WIP was my priority then, I would sit down and write anywhere from six to ten pages or do a major revision of a scene or two, depending on how much revising they required.

After that, I take my morning walk, have breakfast (obviously a late breakfast!), take a shower, then work on business type things—email, blogs, website stuff—or research for the current project. However, if I have something I absolutely need to work on, like copy edits for a completely different book (and world) that requires I access a completely different mental landscape (and voice) what I do is take a nap.

I know that sounds a bit indulgent, and I guess it is, but it also resets my mental clock, like a brain’s version of the reset button, so that when I get up, I don’t have all the darky moody flotsam and jetsam of medieval France still filling up my brain while I try to work on a funny, Edwardian era caper. However, the key thing here—and the most difficult—is to not let the flotsam and jetsam of the morning’s project get buried too deep or shunted too far off to the side so that you lose that close connection with the work. To help with that, I also try to get my subconscious a story bone to chew on for the afternoon.

I am very lucky in that I rarely have to turn copy edits around in two days like I hear so much about. That would seriously suck for me, because I can only focus on a smallish chunk of copy edits at a time without wanting to pull my hair out.

My usual process is when I first get the package is to glance through them and see just how severe a copy edit it is. (And to my immense pride and satisfaction, they are getting less and less severe. Clearly I am learning to produce cleaner final drafts. Hooray!) Then I set my timeline, trying to give myself enough time at the end that I can send them back UPS 3rd day air and not spend a fortune on shipping. (Paper is heavy!) Then once I know I have five days to work on them, I divvy them up into five chunks and work on one chunk a day. For the Theo books, those chunks are 50 to 60 pages at a time. The Fludd books are much smaller, and I usually do them in only three days or so.

Now here’s the thing about copy edits: I am eternally and hugely grateful for every copy editor that has gone over my work with a finely sharpened colored pencil. BUT, they are not fun because someone is basically catching all your mistakes. I get pissed off when I make mistakes. Obviously I get pissed off at myself, but it is easier to grumble at the poor copy editor because she is not there and I am. Please note: This is a personal failing on my part and is by no means a reflection of how I actually feel about copy editors. I love them!

So I go through and accept or stet all the corrections. However, anything that I am not sure of or any places where I find myself reacting defensively, I simply flag to go back and look at again. That way I am able to move ahead at a good pace and don’t get bogged down. The cool thing about that is that usually when I go back to the flagged places, my defensiveness has cooled off, or I spend a few minutes consulting with grammar guides or reviewing my research materials before making/accepting the change.

Then, feeling virtuous, I put that day’s chunk aside and go do a bit of research or planning for the next morning’s draft pages. I will often try to do some light research reading just before I go to bed, again, trying to fill up my subconscious with raw material it might need for the next day’s work.

And that is probably more than you ever wanted to know about juggling projects, but there you go.

Finished!

2010-09-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

Well. I’m back. And what a ride that was! I can hardly describe the sense of elation I feel at having finished this manuscript. It has been four years in the making. I worked on the story for a year, getting my arms around all the elements and sifting through them to see which story path I wanted to take; then it took a year for my editor and agent to convince me this was really a YA at heart, not an adult book, which necessitated looking at the story through an entirely different lens. Then it took another two years to write it as I fit it in between other, contracted projects. And now it is done.

It is 135,000 words, 453 pages. A monster of a masterpiece. And I use that term masterpiece in the old guildish sense--a project that takes your work to a new place. It’s not a statement of objective quality so much as a statement of what I attempted, the way I stretched and challenged myself as a writer. I went places I have never gone before. Whether it works or not is anybody’s guess, but it absolutely worked for me in terms of creative growth. (And I promise, just as soon as my agent gives me the okay, I will blab all about the details here. I really do feel like I’ve been the biggest tease EVER!)

As I said on Facebook, I finished it while surfing on an adrenaline high and humming the theme song to ROCKY. I mean, I was flying high. By the time I went to bed that night, I told my husband that gee, maybe this time I wasn’t going to have my post deadline crash.

Ha.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a migraine and spent the entire next day as a limp noodle. Ah, the writing life.

And now I get to pick up the pieces of my life, yet again. I guess I just have to accept that this isn’t a one time or even first few times phenomenon but actually a part of my natural cycle. I don't know how to actually finish a manuscript without that obsessive scramble to the finish line that pretty much precludes all of Real Life.

Another annoying thing is that all the great ideas I had for blog entries are nowhere to be found. I should have jotted them down, but they all seemed so self evident that I was positive I wouldn’t forget them. I’m really crossing my fingers that I haven’t truly forgotten them as much as mentally misplaced them. ☺ We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we!

BlogFail

2010-08-30T05:15:00.000-07:00

I know, I know! My fifth straight week of blog fail. BUT--the end is in sight. I turn this sucker in on Friday, ready or not. No, no. It will be ready. Promise.

I also have about a zillion things I want to blog about, but I just can't get to them. After this week, though, I will be able to get back to blogging MUCH more regularly. Pinkie swear.

I was asked to write a Letter To My Younger Self over on Anna Staniszewski's blog. It's advice I would like to have given myself when I was just starting out on my writer's journey. She has a great series of these letters she's running, so be sure and check them all out.

I also have a couple of news tidbits that I don't think I've shared here yet. (And if I have, forgive me. Deadline Brain!) The third Nathaniel Fludd book, The Wyvern's Treasure, was selected as a Junior Library Guild selection, which thrills me no end! That's three for three with this series so far. ::squee::

Also, the first Nathaniel Fludd book, The Flight of the Phoenix, is going to be in Scholastic Book Fairs! I'm am so excited about this because those book fairs and order forms were some of my kids favorite ways to acquire new books. I love the idea that my books will be part of such a time-honored book buying tradition.

Aaaand, that's all I got! Until next week!

Checking In Again

2010-08-23T04:27:00.000-07:00

Aaaaand yes! My copy edits for Theo Four arrive just as I'm nearing the finish line of the current manuscript. Ergh. It should be an entertaining week as I split my brain in half and try to accomplish two very separate tasks (writing and copy editing) in two even more different worlds (1900 Egypt and 15th century France).

Which is probably as good a segue as any into this article I found online. I had read something similar about fifteen years ago and have not been able to find the reference again. Then somebody tweeted a link and there it was: Creative Minds Mimic Schizophrenia. The article talks about how creative minds are only a few genetic markers off from schizophrenics.

And I think I'm guest blogging over at the Moody Muses today. I'll post a link as soon as I confirm that!

Quick Check In

2010-08-16T05:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am still completely consumed, possessed by, and obsessed with The Manuscript That Will Not End. Actually, that's almost a lie. I did limp and stutter my way across the finish line, but there were huge bald patches so it didn't really feel like The End. And before I could write the REAL ending, I had to go back and do a sweeping polish/revision to get everything lined up right and give my subconscious time to figure things out. Two steps forward, one step back.

But dear God, this is one LONG manuscript. I would despair--did despair--but my agent talked me down from the ledge. I fear it will clock in at around 140M words, which is way, way too long.

Usually.

I am hoping I will be able to pare it down to 120M words, which is still too long, but I can live with that. Hey, it's an epic. They're supposed to be long.

In other news, if you are a teacher or librarian and you haven't checked out Kay Cassidy's Great Scavenger Hunt Contest for libraries and their kid readers, hie thee over to this website and check it out. It is an aMaZinG resource for librarians. She just sent me an email reminding me that the scavenger hunt for Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus was now available and I realized I hadn't mentioned it here on my blog. It is a really, really great service she is providing.

And that's about it for now! I'll be back once Finish The Book Fever has relaxed it death hold on me!

2010-08-05T06:06:00.000-07:00

I might go silent for the next week. I am in the throes of Finish the First Draft Fever here and am obsessed and consumed by finishing the damn book. I will report back when I emerge victorious!

Transformative Change (Briefly!) Revisited

2010-08-04T06:04:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me to explain the difference between change and transformative. The thing is, we change every day—in surface ways. We move from happy to sad or annoyed to bitter, patient to suffering. Those movements don’t fundamentally change us; rather they are part of our human spectrum of emotions.

The transformative part comes in when we take that grief or bitterness or suffering and let it be the catalyst that impels us to a new state of being; that instead of experiencing our emotions as random stepping stones, we allow ourselves to see the path that is forming at our feet and take it, follow it to a new awareness.

The transformative part means we change who we are, instead of merely how we feel.

And while this might seem a teensy bit philosophical for a blog mostly about writing, it does relate in a big way to our writing.

Stewing Time

2010-08-02T06:03:00.000-07:00

I got an email the other day from someone who had taken one of the workshops I gave at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference a couple of years ago. He had a great question that I thought I’d talk about here.

In the workshop, and repeatedly on this blog, I talk about the importance of setting your manuscript down for a couple of months to get the distance needed to be able to see its flaws. His question was, when do you take this break? Especially if, as you’re finishing up your first draft, you are already forming a long list of what you need to do in the revision.

My answer was that if you have a list of things you know would make the manuscript better, go ahead and make those changes before setting it aside. Essentially, you want to make the manuscript as good as you know how to make it before putting it in that drawer.

I think ideas improve from some of that fermenting/rising time, too. In fact, now that I think about it, my last three story ideas (Theodosia, Nathaniel Fludd, and the YA I’m working on right now) have all benefited from some seriously long fermentation time. I think that long slow formation of a story idea can really add to its depth and layers.

I first thought of the Beastologist idea about five or six years ago. The see came to me in a flash; a story about a boy who discovers he is supposed to take care of the world’s mythical creatures. I loved the idea, but it was a pretty small seed of an idea to be sure. And for me, half the fun of writing stories is playing with and examining all the different directions they can take. So I thought about it for a few weeks, jotting a handful of ideas and possibilities down in a notebook, then ignored it for months while I worked on other projects. Every few months I’d pick that notebook up and add a few more ideas or layers. He would come from a long line of explorers and cartographers. Hm, he’d be sent to live with an obscure relative. What nature of mythical creatures existed in that world? What would the setting be? The time the story takes place? All those things were slowly layered in over months and months and years of playing with the idea.

Theodosia was the same way. I worked on that first book and building her world over a two to three year period. This current YA I’ve worked on sporadically for the last four (God, has it really been FOUR?) years.

Which is just a long way of saying that there are many junctures of a story’s life where it will benefit from some stewing time. In fact, that is why I like to have three or four story irons in the fire, so I can move from one to the other, layering a little in at a time, yet always making progress toward completion at some future date.

So if an idea feels green to you, consider allowing yourself to put it away for a few months and see how you hidden mind plays with it. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Transformative Change

2010-07-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

I love it when a number of things swirling about in different areas of my life all converge and make me sit up and pay attention.

And as I mentioned last week, I've been reading The Hero Within and in it the author talks about transformative change as we move through the different stages of our journey.

Transformative change. For some reason that phrase has really stuck with me, always in the back of my mind this week. Probably in no small part because I've reached the point in the manuscript when everything is building to that big moment when my character sheds her old skin and steps into her new self. When she is truly and completely transformed by the events of the novel.

Then a couple of days ago on twitter, @Quotebelly posted this quote:

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails." - William Arthur Ward

And it hit me; the act of adjusting the sails is not just about being realistic; it is also about being open to transformative change. A mere realist would batten down the hatches and hold on. But the act of adjusting the sails, of preparing yourself to accommodate what life is about to send your way, is a much more profound act of acceptance.

For some people, those bumps on life's road completely derail them or make them bitter or cause them to feel victimized. And while I hate tragedy and mishap as much as the next person, one of the only ways I can put my head down and get through it, is to try and see the situation as an opportunity for that sort of deep rooted change. To extract the life lesson that the universe is sending me. In doing that, in finding some nugget of wisdom to take from the incident, I feel that no matter what I have lost, I have also won.

The thing is, no one taught me that; not my parents or a church or a therapist. I'm pretty sure I have managed to learn that concept though stories.

Which is why in fiction, as writers, it is so vital that things in our story make sense, that the events in our stories are pushing our characters toward this transformative change. That is one of Story's most important roles in our lives, showing us what that sort of deep change looks like, feels like, how to recognize and respond to the opportunities when they arise.

Vulture Pigeons

2010-07-26T04:38:00.000-07:00

No, they are not a new creature in one of my books, unfortunately.

My husband’s ornithological activities have come home to roost in a decidedly creepy way. As I have mentioned before, we have quite a collection of birds who consider us the local dinery; lots of cute little brown birds and black birds whose names I don’t know; mockingbirds (who always make me think of the Hunger Games now) quail (with button size babies!) and charming ring necked doves, even a woodpecker or two. But the last couple of weeks we’ve been having these new birds—Vulture Pigeons we call them, and they are decidedly creepy. They look like they sound, hulking vulture-like pigeons with evil little yellow eyes and very curved, sharp little beaks.

And they are big.

And they move around in packs.

So every morning when I open the front door I hear this huge flapping of a bunch of giant wings as they startle and I cannot help but think of Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS. If I ever stop posting here altogether, you’ll know what happened to me…

Edited to add a picture, per Vonna's request.

They look scarier in real life. Trust me.

Boredom Buster Award

2010-07-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

Yowza! I was thrilled to learn from my editor that the Theodosia books have won the Family Fun Magazine Boredom Buster award for August! Family Fun is published by Disney, and the books appear in their August issue. Color me thrilled!

Here's a link to the online version: Family Fun Boredom Buster Awards

Thank you muchly, Family Fun!

Character Growth and Personal Journeys

2010-07-19T04:43:00.000-07:00

For me, one of the most satisfying parts of a book is often the character’s transformative growth. All of my favorite writers strike me as exceptional students of the human condition, and it shows in their writing. However, sometimes stuff that we know intuitively, escapes us when it comes to wrestling with the nitty gritty logistics of arcing out a character’s internal journey. We know a character must change or grow, attain some new level of awareness. But unless we have a child development or psychology degree, the nuts and bolts of that process might be unfamiliar to us or cloaked in mystery. It is probably not surprising then, that half my favorite internal growth references for characterization are actually psychology books.

I am very fond of The Hero’s Journey and think it is particularly well suited to middle grade and YA stories because it so mirrors the coming of age process. Many of you have probably read The Writer’s Journey by Chris Vogler, but if it’s been a while, take the book off your shelf and look at it again. If you have a firm grip on the basics of the journey, try re-reading his section on archetypes and how they can serve as different facets of the hero.

Another book I enjoy browsing through but don’t seem to have used yet is 45 MASTER CHARACTERS. What I like about this book is that it breaks down personality characteristics into mythical archetypes, which can be helpful when you’re trying to navigate your protagonist’s internal landscape. For example, there is Artemis (The Amazon) and Athena (The Father’s Daughter) and Isis (Female Messiah), as well as the Dionysus, the Lady’s Man and the Ares The Protector and Apollo the Businessman. (Okay, now I see why I haven’t used this part yet—a lot of those archetypes only minimally apply to kid protagonists!)

She also discusses the difference between a masculine and feminine archetypal journey. I tend to think of them as either character-centric stories or more externally driven stories, and both work for either male or female characters. The main difference is the focus of the journeys.

The masculine is the one we are familiar with:
Challenge (Ordinary World, Call to Adventure, Mentor)
Obstacles (Tests, Allies, Enemies, Ordeal, Reward)
Transformation (Resurrection, Return with the Elixir.)

The Feminine Journey is:
Containment (Illusion of a Perfect World, Betrayal of Realization, The Awakening) Transformation (The Descent, Eye of the Storm, Death—all is lost)
Emergence (Support, Rebirth/Moment of Truth, Full Circle)

Interesting that the transformation in one comes in the middle and the act of true victory is maintaining that transformation when one returns, rather than having the transformation be the end of the story.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s WOMEN WHO RUN WITH WOLVES provides an absolute wealth of internal journey scenarios. Most of her chapters, in fact, are the equivalent of an internal growth arc. For example, the one I’ve been using as I shape the Theodosia series is The Retrieval of Intuition. I think it works really well for character’s who are discovering their inner powers. It breaks down something like this:

Allowing the Too Good Mother to Die
Exposing the Crude Shadow
Navigating in the Dark
Facing the Wild Hag
Serving the Non Rational
Separating This From That
Asking the Mysteries
Standing on all Fours
Recasting the Shadow

She also has a great arc for love relationships (Facing the Life/Death/Life Nature of Love) and Finding One’s Pack, which works really well for stories where someone is trying to find their tribe.

My newest discovery isn’t new at all, but an old classic, it’s only new to me. The Hero Within is being very insightful in helping me see nuance in how different characters need to grow. She has six major archetypes she discusses, Innocent, Orphan, Martyr, Wanderer, Warrior, and Magician. But of course, they’re really stages we all go through on our life’s journeys. What’s particularly helpful with this book is that she breaks down different tasks and points of views that accompany each archetype. For example, what each archetypes greatest fear is, or what they are looking for in relationships, or how they move through the material world. There’s tons of rich material in there for character development.

Do any of you have any books you’ve used for character development? I know some people use the Meyers Briggs typing and other swear by the Enneagram. I’ve never used either of those for characters, although I have had fun taking the tests myself. ☺

World Premier--Nathaniel Fludd Four Cover! (Unicorns!)

2010-07-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

My editor sent me this yesterday afternoon and it promptly chased all other thoughts from my mind and I just had to share. Isn't it beautimous?? ::very happy sigh::

I truly am the luckiest of authors...Once again, Kelly Murphy is a GeNiUs!

Plus I figured all of those suffering from way too much heat would enjoy looking at all that cool green forest...

Can We Pretend It's Still Monday?

2010-07-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last three days laid low by an absolutely vicious stomach flu, then a migraine because I couldn’t eat for two whole days. It wasn’t a pleasantly indulgent kind of sick either—it was the kind where you lay there, staring at the back of your eyeballs, praying for deliverance.

But it is gone today—hurray!—and all the world is made fresh and new and hopeful again. That is the one lovely thing about suffering through illness—when it lifts, it really is like being born again. Plus? I am having my first cup of coffee in what seems like forever. I am sure that doesn’t hurt my perspective one little bit.

Being ill has put a serious dent in my writing progress, not to mention my ability to write pithy, brilliant blog posts, but I did want to share a couple of fun (if not downright silly) things.

First, a very fun little tool Deva Fagan posted about on Facebook that allows you to plug in a chunk of your text and see what famous writer your writing is similar too. I got three different answers, depending upon which book I used. Theodosia was H. P. Lovecraft (which was perfect!) Nathaniel Fludd was Nabakov (whom I have never read and so don’t quite get the comparison) and my YA was the author Chuck Palahniuk. Yeah, I had to look that up, too. He’s the author of Fight Club, which actually worked perfectly. I was actually pretty thrilled that all three had such distinctly different answers as they are three distinctly different voices. I accomplished that much, at least! Never mind. This is a scam. Sorry to have steered you in that direction!

The second thing is a clip of a hilarious owl that Casey Girard posted a link to over on Twitter. It is no secret that I am endlessly fascinated by animals and their odd behaviors, which are second only to humans and their odd behaviors. It was so bizarre that at first I suspected it was photoshopped (or the video equivalent of that). But the more I watched I decided it wasn’t then the behavior seems to be confirmed by a wikipedia entry (yes, I know it’s wikipedia, but still. It was good enough for me in this instance.)

A good writer mindful of structure would have a third thing to share with you, but I am going to let go of that pressure and just share these two for now. Enjoy!

Full Steam Ahead

2010-07-09T04:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, so on Wednesday I got totally wadded up, slogging through far too many words and scenes that were clearly such vestigial tails of earlier drafts that I had to stop and do some serious trimming.

Over the last two days I've cut away pages and pages of deadwood. I had 340 pages and I cut away about 60 of those and another 60 will have to be rewritten from scratch, but I can use the existing scenes as an outline.

I've finally, finally, FINALLY figures out how the romance turns and more importantly, how the jigsaw pieces of my protagonists tattered souls fit together.

I've hammered out a working outline for the third act, where I was just stumbling blindly in the dark.

I've also started a project thesaurus. I do this sometimes when I find myself using the same words over and over again, especially when the book deals with something in particular that I need to describe a number of times, like curses or shadows or something sinister. So to keep myself from flailing around more than absolutely necessary (because I do concede that some flailing is right and necessary) I've begun doing these thesauri. When I was working on Theo Four, for example, I put together a list of words to describe curses, and also evil. Or words for describing a desert. Or ancient ruins. Or I jot down bits and pieces of descriptions for the streets of Cairo. I fill a whole page so I have a huge variety of words to choose from. Plus, being the total word geek that I am, I love pouring through my thesaurus and creating these lists; it reminds me of words I've forgotten about or aren't used enough. I don't know if it's a function of getting older or from having written a fair number of books in a short amount of time, but I am definitely feeling the need to fill my word well.

Anyway, now I have my writing house in order and can dive back into the story and make some serious progress.

Or here hoping, anyway...

Coming to Terms With Fear

2010-07-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

I am not generally one to experience fear when I write. Normally, I am too immersed in the story to hear the Internal Perfectionist or Cranky Editor when they hurl insults or doubts my way. The fact that am working on series probably also helps with that, as the concepts and generalities of what I am writing have some proven acceptance.

But I do find myself struggling with Fear as I write this story, and it is not a comfortable feeling. It does probably mean I’m writing the story I need to be writing right now, but it also means I have to learn to come to terms with Fear, either by ignoring it, succumbing to it, or staring it down.

I am afraid I am writing a fish with feathers (to appropriate a phrase Blythe used over on Shrinking Violets) and it will end up being neither fish nor fowl, a spectacular failure. I am afraid it has too much history for a YA, and focuses too much on the romance relationship. But now that I am writing it in first person, present tense, I also know that if it fails as YA, it will have no home in the historical romance market either, so I have pretty much built myself out over a precipice.

And yes, I know that I just have to write the book, but as a working writer, it is extremely hard to devote so very much time to what I fear may be unsellable.

It is also absolutely necessary so that I can grow creatively.

But it is not a comfortable place to be and as I said, I am having many negotiating sessions with Fear.

Now for a complete segue which, I promise, will come full circle in a minute.

I subscribe to the DailyOm and those puppies come in faster than I can contemplate them. I now have about 247 DailyOms sitting patiently in an email folder waiting for me to read them. (Yes, I am well aware of the irony of that, thankyouverymuch.) But every once in awhile, one of the titles catches my eye as being something extremely pertinent to what I am dealing with in life, and yesterday was one of those. The title of the DailyOm was, Underneath the Noise.

We all know that saying, if you want someone’s attention, just whisper. This DailyOm expounded on that somewhat but the sentence that really zapped me between the eyes was this one:

“It is generally true that the more insistent voices in our heads delivering messages that make us feel panicky or afraid are of questionable authority…Their urgency stems from their disconnectedness from the center of our being, and their urgency is what catches our attention.”

How many different ways do I love that? But of course. Bullies always shout the loudest. And they always shout because they are insecure or full of bluster. They are of questionable authority.

Boys and girls, our Internal Editors and Cranky Perfectionists are so damn loud because they know they’re wrong! That is why they are shouting at us; to make up for in volume what they lack in truth.

As I read that last night, those voices yelling at me to be afraid went silent; they shrugged sheepishly and slunk away.

At least for now. I am sure they will be back, but now that I have their secret, it will be even easier to stare them down the next time...

Spackle

2010-07-05T16:06:00.000-07:00

I am moving right along on this major rewrite/revision thing that I’m doing right now and one of the things I find I am using a LOT is the literary equivalent of spackle.

Spackle when writing is just what it sounds like: a flimsy lick and a promise to get back to a spot and create something better. Stronger. Heftier. When I am in the zone and the story is unfolding before me, if I take too long in trying to capture the words, they’ll disappear before I can get them down. For me, always, the race is to get the story down while I’m in the heated flush of that writing zone. I can linger and dally over language all I want later, once the bones of the story are firmly in place.

Spackle often shows up as a set of brackets [like this] when I know I need a better word or simile but I don’t want to stop the writerly flow and search right then.

Something in his face made me [uneasy].
His eyes hardened like [sharp flat stones].

Sometimes though, spackle can be an entire action.

[Nate and Greasle find out figure out a way to catch the basilisk and not get poisoned in the process.]

As you can see, that’s no mere phrase or word choice, but an entire plot point that needs to be worked out. But again, if the big pieces of the story are flowing or the voice is really working or I've got a firm grip on the ending, I don’t let myself grope and flail when there are perfectly good words trying to bubble out.

This weekend, entire scenes and chunks of acts are falling away as I trim and shape this manuscript. I know I will need new scenes in there. Some of them are showing up, right on cue, and others aren’t. But I still need a placeholder in this new draft I’m building, something to help me capture the pacing and the rhythm of the scenes. In that case, I spackle entire scenes, which go something like this:

[They arrive at court. Hero leaves her to talk politics with duchess’s advisors. She pretends she’s bored and wanders away. Uses this as excuse to eavesdrop on other’s conversations. Learns Count Z has returned, sees Lord X and Lady Y in tete a tete, wonders what they’re up to. Protects one of the serving maids against an overbearing baron, accidentally runs into the French ambassador, then Francois finds her and invites her to dance.]

In that bit I list all the things from the various plot threads I’m juggling that I know have to happen then, in that scene. It also helps me capture in really broad strokes what the scene will encompass, while also giving my subconscious time to figure out more of the details and the nuance and even what the scene will actually be about. (Because clearly, from looking at that list, I do not have a clue. Yet.)

Oftentimes, I’ll figure out major epiphanies for that scene in subsequent scenes—scenes I never would have written if I’d let myself get totally stuck and stymied in one spot and not allowed myself to use spackle.

So if you aren’t currently using spackle, you might see if there’s a place for it in your writer’s toolbox.

Some Recent Movies

2010-07-02T04:05:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed The Young Victoria much more than I thought I would. I had no idea that the young Victoria had had such a restricted, suffocating childhood, nor been so browbeaten by her mother. That she broke out from under that so young shows a sturdy character.

I also hadn’t realized Prince Albert had died so young. I had known that they had nine children and populated most of the royal houses of Europe. It fascinates me that that was a method for spreading influence, consolidating power, and assuring allies. It didn’t work out so well between Germany and England, with Victoria’s grandson becoming fierce rivals with his own uncle. Which just shows how complex families are and how likely it is that your most bitter antagonist will likely end up being a family member.

I also watched The Duchess, which was a visual feast and Keira Knightly was wonderful, but the whole thing just broke my heart. The poor duchess was hemmed in at every turn by that horrid duke. (And honestly, has Ralph Fiennes ever not played a jerk? Between this and The English Patient, I am NOT impressed. Which I suppose, conversely, makes him quite a good actor.)

I tried to watch The Book of Eli. Dystopic adventure starring Denzel Washington? I’m there. Except, there wasn’t any there there. I actually had a number of problems with the movie, but the one that finally had me turning it off midway was when the mysterious book everyone was after turned out to be the bible. Even though I knew it would be biblical in nature, having it be the actual bible was just too on-the-nose for me. It made it feel like there wasn’t any story involved. Also, the visual aesthetic was so harsh in contrast that it made it hard to watch. That and they were so busy framing the shots they forgot about story. And character. And all the bad guys felt really one-note. I have since heard there was a really intriguing twist at the end that made it all worth while, but that was too late for me. Which translates into a really good lesson: don’t save all the good stuff ‘til the end because people won’t wait that long…

Re-Decorating

2010-07-01T04:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, I've been doing a bit of re-decorating around here. I was tired of all that yellow. And it was way too hot for the summer.

I like the clean, cool look of this current design but it is giving me fits because, on my computer at least, it scrolls in a very laggy way. Being the thorough person that I am, I exported everything to a test blog to see if it was the sheer number of posts or images or something like that, but the test blog that is set up EXACTLY like this one doesn't lag at all. ::le sigh::

I guess it's possible it could just be me. (Yeah, that was optimistic.) I'll keep working on it. If you return in a day or two and it's an entirely new design, it means I couldn't work out the bugs on this one.

Revising

2010-06-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

In his book, THE FIRE IN FICTION*, Donald Maass has this to say:

"Scenes that are written in the normal flow of accumulating pages may be fine but often will lack focus."

Truer words have never been spoken. Which is just one of the reasons I love revision. I think of the discovery draft as not only discovering what my story is about, but also about CREATING the material I will use in building the actual story. So the first/discovery draft is never (for me) the story; just the raw ingredients for a story.

The second draft is always about structure, about hammering out the best, most compelling structure of the book and deciding what should happen when for the biggest impact.

And then I look at scenes to be certain they are all doing what they are supposed to do: moving the story forward.

I have recently created a scene revision template which I am finding immensely helpful in this process, so I thought I would share it here. (It's compiled from stuff I've read in Maass's book, which I can't recommend highly enough**)

One of the things I've always stumbled over with scene revision is the question you are always told to ask: What is the goal of this scene. That always seems far too direct to me, too spot on, and, for me, risks pulling all the nuance and obliquity from a scene.

Instead, I ask what is the point of the scene. Why is it there? That way I can determine if it is earning it's place in the book, but not approach the problem too head on. Then the following template helps me shape it so that the point of the scene doesn't get lost. So my template looks like this:

What is the point of the scene?

What changes?

When does it change?

How does it change the POV character? (This is a biggy--the axis of the scene. Because pretty much everything should either contribute to or lead away from that.)

What are three visible or audible details of that moment of change?

Create hints that the protagonist will get what they want. Also build reasons to believe they won't. (This is a great reminder to me to keep supplying the reader with dramatic questions, even at the scene level.)

What are some sensory details of this scene? What are details that only my protagonist would observe or notice? (I am particularly fond of this question because it forces me to go deep inside my character's worldview.)

And that's it. Once I've answered those questions, I have a very distinct shape and structure to the scene and can go in and revise with abandon. Okay, maybe not with abandon, but at least with a much clearer vision of what the scene should be doing...

*I originally mistyped that as THE IRE IN FICTION and it cracked me up so much I was half tempted to leave it.

**I adore his WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL for the initial brainstorming of a book and TFIF for shaping it.

Where To Find Me Today

2010-06-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

I am blogging over at The Enchanted Inkpot today on mythical beasts AND over at Shrinking Violets about branding, so I think two (lengthy!) posts for one day is about all I can manage.

See you over there!

Meet Me At Chaucer's

2010-06-24T05:11:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot to mention that I'll be signing my newest books* at Chaucers Books in Santa Barbara this Sunday at 3:00 with my dear friend and fellow Violet, Mary Hershey. If you are in the area stop on by and say hello!

*Actually, I will be signing my older books, too. Hell, I'll sign your t-shirt if you want. I'm easy that way.

Drilling Down

2010-06-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe not the best title choice considering the current, ongoing BP fiasco...

I've been working on the manuscript and one of the things I'm trying to get a grip around is the all different levels this story is taking place on. The layers of the story, if you will. I know instinctively that they're there, but until I can clearly identify them in my mind, I can't be absolutely certain that I'm building those layers and getting them on the page.

After doing some noodling this morning, this is what I came up with, and it struck me as a good solid template for looking at your characters and their level of motivation.

The inciting incident for the story is that my heroine agrees to pose as someone else.* At first glance, my this premise could seem glib or shallow or facile. Or even a bit tacky. But it's what's underneath that intial action that gives it the necessary juice: my heroine agrees because of her perception of what she owes someone.

Underlying that is her need to prove herself to these people, the very ones that raised her up from the ashes of her former life. She wants to earn their respect. Actually, she wants to earn their love, but she isn't able to admit that, so she calls it respect. She is sure that by doing this thing for them, and doing it beyond reproach, she will earn their respect and they know they did the right thing by giving her this chance.

And underlying that is her scar tissue--her absolute starvation for love or affection of any kind and her very human need for those things.

And lastly, under all of those things is her gaping wound--her belief that she is every bit as flawed and worthless as she has been told since birth. Not worthy of love, in any of its forms.

So that's about four layers going on, which feels about right. Any more and I risk losing my mind...

*I apologize for the coy verbiage, but I am trying to avoid any spoilers.

Victory!

2010-06-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

(Or should I say, Victoire!)

I have done it. I have wrestled a series of events during the winter of 1489 in France down to a series of specific actions taken by characters in my novel. W00t!

It is broken down by act, and thank God they make eight different colors of ink or I would never have gotten it all in there. The green and purple ink are two characters I totally made up for this story, while the rest represent actual historical people who were alive and involved in these events. I can't really explain why this makes it all feel more manageable to me, but it does. It reduces big sweeps of history down to an action I could watch a person perform. And by doing that, by making history actions people take, I can weave it into the story so that it doesn't feel like it overshadows the characters.

However, now I have a headache and must go lie down...

Oh Me Aching Head!

2010-06-18T05:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I know I have to prevent historical events and personages from swamping my main characters, but the knowing is the easy part. It’s the HOW that gets tricky.

Once again, I find I am cutting characters right and left and combining them wherever possible. (Keep in mind I’ve done this twice already.) I’ve eliminated two major secondary characters and about eight extras with speaking parts. And combined two antagonists into one, and taken a role filled by a secondary character and given it to my hero. My new goal is to have all the actions that were being done by those extras performed by existing, more important characters. For the first time in the four years (off and on) that I’ve been working on this book, I finally feel like I have a manageable cast that won’t woefully confuse the reader. Phew.

But now the harder part: the historical events themselves. How to weave them in without letting them take over the story and make it feel as if the characters are being bowled over by history, or worse, leave my characters feeling like human flotsam carried along by history.

One of the first things we learn as writers starting out is that *it really happened* is absolutely meaningless. You have to let go of what really happened and create a cohesive story out of the useable parts of history (or reality, for that matter.) The truth is, history ISN'T satisfying in terms of climax and resolution and catharsis, all the things we look for in a story. History isn’t coherent and doesn’t make sense, or provide closure or any of the things we expect a STORY to do. However, historical events DO rule our lives (just ask anyone who lost their jobs in the last recession!) So the challenge is to pick a portion or thread of history that has the potential to be presented in a way that satisfies the needs of the story, or be willing to alter it a bit.

So what I'm going to do is block out the major historical events in the story, then use them mostly as a backdrop. This will allow me to zero in more closely on how my main characters are reacting to those events and, more importantly, what actions those events cause them to take. Because character is action.

And really, that’s the story. Not the historical events themselves, but how ordinary people react under those extraordinary circumstances. How the crucible that is history, molds them into new, stronger versions of themselves.

But even knowing that, it can still risk feeling like a string of pearls or episodic. How to make it hang together?

And with a resounding duh, I remember, It’s the character, stupid.

It’s the characters goals or motivations that will provide the dramatic throughline for the story, tying the events of history together so that, for this one person whose story it is, they create a cohesive, integral story. They do that through the choices they make, the actions they take, and the way they come to terms with the historical events, either emotionally or intellectually.

So maybe it’s a story about a romance in a war torn country and the historical events are pretty much just one hit after another, the chaos of war, not just the attacks launched by enemy, but the random cruelty that causes among people on the same side trying to survive.

In order to keep it from feeling episodic or string-of-pearls-ish, the character has to provide that cohesion and use the chronology of unfolding events to feed her own motivation, goals, and growth. Each of those unfolding events has to increase the stakes for her in some way, or cause her to try to find a new way to reach her goal, which is the one thing that *does* stay constant throughout the plot. Maybe in each of the disasters that befall her she is able to find some small reason to believe in love rather than give in to despair, or each historical event carries her farther from her love interest, but regardless, she gets up and tries to make her way to him again. Or the unfolding events strip one loved one after another away from her, making the reader all that more invested in seeing the lovers united in the end.

It’s about how those historical events shape their emotional growth.

That's the story. Duh.

This is the painful part about picking up an old project, trying to recollect all the good stuff you need to know, but not carry forward any of the unnecessary clutter that was mucking up the story.

Picking Up The Pieces

2010-06-17T04:59:00.000-07:00

One of the problems I’ve consistently had with this historical YA fantasy is whittling down momentous, national and political events to the personal, then including enough to give the story the needed weight and heft, but not so much that it swamps the characters.

So as I picked up the project again, I thought I’d try a few techniques, and I’m going to talk about them here because I think they apply to most big revisions.

The problems I’ve had with the story are:
A cast of thousands
Historical and political events risk swamping the story and confusing the reader
Working out the logistics of what historical events/characters to include and what to make up (in other words, how fast and loose can I play with history. Quite a lot, I’m thinking, since it takes place in the fifteenth century and there are not a whole lot of records about these people.)
Nailing down geographical places

So I gathered all my materials together but decided not to look at any of them yet. I decided to sort of approach the story without all those details and subplots and backstories in my head, thinking that if I approached it with fresh eyes unencumbered by all that I knew, it would make it easer to clearly see what the story was about and who was absolutely essential to the telling of it.

This sprang in part from what they talked about in the book MADE TO STICK, about how people are encumbered by what they know, so they lose sight of what people who aren’t so immersed in the same subject actually need to know without being overwhelmed.

My initial tasks:

Printed out the last draft of the mss in a new color. (Pink, in case anyone is interested.)
Re-read two of the research books to get fresh in my mind what was actually historical and to see which of those historical details/personages/events leaped out at me as being integral to the story.
Took the time to nail down a couple of research bits I’d been stumbling over—the name of the heroine’s village, for example, and whether or not the hero was a first or second son, (which made a huge difference back in the fifteenth century, let me tell you!)

Next, I typed up a brief, three page synopsis of the major story events from the heroine’s standpoint, then again from the hero’s standpoint. That way I can see their motivation for all the acts, and see where and how it interacts.

Now I really need to decide who the true antagonist is. The thing is, there are so darn many to choose from, so many of the nobles of this time and in this court were horribly duplicitous and taking bribes from other kings. But I really need to decide who my heroine’s antagonist is, which I suspect will be different from the story event/historical antagonist.

In fact, that is what I plan on working on today. Perhaps I will officially declare this “Discover One’s True Antagonist Day.”

What A Week!

2010-06-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

Goodness, it’s been a full week! There was completion and closure and celebration and all sorts of rich-yet-exhausting things going on.

I made my revision deadline for Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh, a three week turnaround of which I am very proud, then hot off the tail of that, our entire extended family (including all sets of grandparents!) went north for my eldest son’s graduation from UC Santa Cruz. All of the grandparents have been amazingly generous and supportive in getting the boys through school, so it was truly splendid having them all there to witness this big moment.

Or would have been if it hadn’t been ninety-frickin’-five degrees out. Oy! And the entire ceremony was set out in the sun. We were broiling like shrimp on the barbie, let me tell you. Which was helpful in one regard—any tears I shed evaporated on contact, so no one need ever know what a sop I was. Am. Whatever.

It’s funny because college graduation is such a momentous thing—a huge rite of passage into true, independent adulthood, more or less. Oddly though, it wasn’t the graduation that drove home for me what an adult my son had become. It was watching him with his grandparents, seeing how attentively he saw to their needs, helped them across the field, or assisted them onto the shuttle bus. He was there for them in a way that nearly made my heart explode with pride.

Aaaaand that ties into writing because…because it struck me as such a clear turning point, a subtle but powerful one, the sort of quiet moments that show true character growth and development. It reminded me that turning points can be about a new level of being, rather than a big external event.

I also spent a couple of days clearing all the Nate and Theo notebooks and research materials off my desk and whisking them back into the cupboard where they live until their next adventure. Then, with great trepidation, I pulled out all the dark YA fantasy materials and notebooks (of which there are half a dozen—I kid you not) and began trying to work my way back into that story world.

The cool thing was, as I was reading the first scene for the first time in over nine months, (interesting timing—no?) I fell in love with the story and the world and the characters all over again, so I am itching to get started on it.

However, re-entering the story world and reconnecting with all the various threads will not be easy, so I will likely be blogging about that for the next few weeks. Consider yourself warned! ☺

An Interview With Moi

2010-06-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

I am being interviewed over at the Enchanted Inkpot today. Take a gander over there if you are interested. Also, we are having a drawing for a copy of THE BASILISK'S LAIR and an ARC of THE WYVERN'S TREASURE...in case you needed coaxing. :-)

And . . . I Lied

2010-06-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I did want to share one other thing I read in MADE TO STICK. It touches on something I talk about a lot—concrete details.

The authors explain that for an idea to stick, it has to be credible. There are all sorts of ways to gain credibility, through bona fides, experts, celebrity endorsements, and true stories. However the one avenue to credibility that he talks about that has the most relevance to writers is concrete details. It turns out putting in solid, specific details in our writing isn’t just good craft, it’s smart psychology.

He talks about a study done where arguments made using concrete examples are more effective in swaying an audience as to a person’s guilt or innocence. People—readers—respond in a dramatic way to vivid details.

In addition to the obvious way in which this applies to writing—suspending disbelief and making our stories credible—it strikes me that we can also use this in other ways.

In characterization—giving characters, especially secondary characters, some specific, concrete detail that will anchor them in the reader’s mind. Not just a pair of glasses that keep sliding down his nose or a braying laugh, but something much more unique and specific to that individual. Something sticky. ☺

In planting clues and foreshadowing—it strikes me that knowing how people respond to concrete details, we can use that to direct our readers’ attention to the subtle things we want them to notice, but not realize they’re noticing.

How about you? Can you think of a way to use this newfound bit of information in your writing? If so, do feel free to share it in the comments. Hmm. Perhaps I feel a contest coming on...

Miscellany

2010-06-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

Okay so maybe I won't be reporting on MADE TO STICK. No sooner did I announce that than I stopped reading the book. Felt too much like a book report. :-) Suffice it to say, it has a lot of good stuff in it. Stuff like: We can't demand attention, we have to attract it, which pretty much sums up how I feel about first scenes.

Last night I was browsing at my local indie and came upon this most excellent book that I simply had to have. Renaissance Secrets: Recipes and Formulas. Just looking at it made my little heart go pitter patter, so now I own it. V&A really puts out some amazing books. I could happily own every one in their collection.

I also spent the morning cleaning up and putting away all the research materials and writing notebooks and general project clutter for the Theo and Nate books I've just finished up. This is such a treasured part of my process, putting away old projects then feeling the amazing whoosh as new ideas come zooming into all that freed up space!

Between my new book and all that free desk space, my muse is very excited.

Writing Sticky Fiction

2010-06-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading a fascinating book called MADE TO STICK by Dan Heath and Chip Heath, and it talks about what makes some ideas stay with us while others barely make a dent in our consciousness. I originally picked it up because I thought some of what it said might pertain to writing, and it does, but it also deals a lot with how our brains process and retain information, but not in a highly technical or scientific way, rather in a practical way. Which actually, come to think of it, also pertains to writing.

So one of the things that fascinated the authors was how vitally important information that had great impact on our lives could be so easily forgotten or ignored, while at the same time demonstrably false stories and urban legends lingered for decades. What made some ideas so darn . . . sticky?

It seems as if some of the six components they talk about apply more to writing than others, and yet I am finding a lot of useful information in all of them. This week as I read the book, I thought I’d talk about these components and how they might apply to writing fiction.

Take the first concept: Simple. Sticky ideas must be simple. So, okay, that doesn’t really work for a one hundred page story, let alone a four hundred page story. However, some of the principles of simplicity do offer some insight into writing fiction.

One of the things the authors talk about regarding simple is that the simple must reflect our core message. They also talk about feature creep—the phenomenon of adding more and more useless features to a device until it becomes so complex it is unusable. As I was reading this chapter, it struck me that this felt like a good description of the downside to overwriting. ☺

When we are close to a project and mired in our own story world and characters—as we must be when we are creating them!—it is easy to lose sight of what is truly relevant to the story we are trying to tell. The instinct is to put it all in, in the hopes that it will make the story feel richly detailed and complex, is nearly overwhelming.

The problem is, though, that the overload of information actually ends up obscuring our core story and we—as well as the reader—lose sight of what the story is supposed to be about. That is why the selective detail is so important, each detail should be chosen to reinforce our core, our theme, and to help reveal the story we’re tying to tell.

The authors also talk about proverbs as being the quintessential sticky ideas—short, pithy, and memorable. Often for centuries. The reason is because in addition to being short, pithy, and memorable, proverbs pack a big wallop in terms of insight or wisdom. And as I read that, I was struck by how much that DID pertain to writing. From the books we remember vs. the ones we quickly forget, to the difference between stereotypes and archetypes, clichés and resonance.

In order to be memorable, a story, character, or theme must contain an essential wallop of human insight or knowledge. But not just any insight, it needs to be an insight unique to the particular author and their worldview. That is what infuses what would otherwise simply be a cliché or stereotype into something memorable.

And lastly, the book holds the best explanation of high concept ideas I’ve ever heard: high concept simply means extracting complexity from a seemingly simple message.

Doing this relies on something called schema, which is basically a word for all of the associations and definitions we assign to a given thing or concept. So instead of listing all the associations and connotations for a new thing or concept, we liken it to something we’re sure everyone knows, and create a short cut to their existing knowledge/schema.

So basically high concept is simply an effective analogy. That’s it. It is simply a complex message that can be conveyed in simple, universal terms. Usually using schema. The trick is to have those simple terms be evocative and able to elicit an emotional response/reaction in nearly everyone who hears it.

Okay, so maybe I was the only one who didn't get that last part about high concept pitches. But now that I know what they are supposed to do, what mechanism they are relying on, I have a much better idea how to put one together.

Life Really Is Full of Little Miracles

2010-05-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

And sometimes some not so little ones...

Lisa Yee posted this link on FB and I fell so head over heels in love with it that I had to share it here. It's a you tube video of a baby who has just recieved a cochlear implant and can, for the first time, hear his mother's voice. The look on his face as he discovers this new sense, this entire new realm of sound, is beyond beautiful.

My Quantum Life or In Which I Confess How Crazy I Truly Am

2010-05-28T05:32:00.000-07:00

So here’s one of the reasons I adore traveling, even though I pretty much am not a traveler: It makes it easier for me to imagine my quantum lives.

I have had this belief, this theory, if you will, since I was young enough to remember—long before I’d ever heard of quantum physics or string theory or alternate universes—and it goes something like this: Every time I make a decision, one of the things that comforts me is I have this sense of Other Robins living out a multitude of lives and taking the paths that I did not. So if I ended up marrying the boy next door and staying in my hometown to start my family, that’s okay because there are hundreds of Other Robins out there, living the lives I had considered. One is in Washington DC, as a practicing lawyer, another is an intrepid traveler who has circled the globe numerous times, living elegantly and sparingly out of a single suitcase for months on end, another lives as a partial recluse near Hollywood and designs movie sets, and another . . . well, you get the idea.

So I always have this sense that when I make a decision and choose a path, there are other me’s living the paths I considered, so I haven't really lost anything. I'm not as present in those lives, but they are happening out there somewhere on some level. (Okay, I DID warn you it was crazy.)

But I also thinks this spark of belief helps me be a better writer because reality feels fluid to me; I don’t feel as if I’m making things up so much as recording a piece of alternate history that nobody has discovered yet.

And when I travel, I get to SEE these places, these neighborhoods and cities and different swarms of people and those parallel lives I’ve always sort of believed in seem much more tangible and real.

Bordering on insanity or a quantum thinker since the cradle? You decide. Just don’t tell me which one you pick. ☺

Attempting Re-entry

2010-05-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

Upon my return from my trip, the revision letter for Theo Four was waiting for me. And due to a number of circumstances, it is due back to my editor SOON. Which gives me approximately seventeen days for the revision.

One of the things I struggle with every. single. time. is how much information to backfill in for readers regarding The Adventure So Far. I definitely tend to err on the side of not enough information, which isn’t good, but I also loathe a great big recap of previous events in order to bring readers up to speed. It’s also deuced difficult to know how much to recap each person in the story and what their role is. It can also be exceptionally clunky.

It’s a little bit easier if each adventure stands on its own, which the Theodosia books almost do, but characters and plot threads do move from one book into the next, and those need some explaining. So this evening I will be combing my shelves, looking for examples of how other writers have done it skillfully and gracefully. If any of you have any suggestions of books that have done this particularly well, please do feel free to pass those titles along!

Wrapping Up

2010-05-24T08:02:00.001-07:00

Okay, I’ve been home two days and I should probably have posted this last entry on Saturday, at the latest, but I was exhausted. As I told the kids at all the events, my characters share some traits with me, not the least of which being—like Nathaniel Fludd—I am not an intrepid traveler. It totally wears me out. Add that to being an introvert, and I am pretty much a wet soggy dishrag by the end of the adventure.

That doesn’t mean that I want to stay home all the time. I actually always get a LOT out of my travel experiences and am always grateful for the opportunity. It just means I have to pace myself.

The last leg of the trip was a quiet one, the only moment fraught with peril was me trying to get out of the city of Boston in an unfamiliar rental car, on unfamiliar roads and with very little idea of where I was going. Thank gawd for GPS, is all I can say. That and Google Maps steered me in the right direction. Oh, and there was a slight moment of panic when I thought I was going to have to give the cabbie a $25 tip because he had NO CHANGE on him, PLUS he refused to take a credit card! What is up with that?? Luckily, if rather embarrassingly, he approached every single person at the car rental until he found someone with change for a $50 bill while I stood blushing furiously in the corner.

One of the absolute highlights of the day was Vermont itself. As I’ve mentioned (probably ad nauseum) I’ve never been to New England, and the drive from Boston to Vermont was one continual enchantment of trees and forests and more greenness than I have ever laid eyes on. It was stunning and I longed to turn off the highway and explore one or two of the quaint little towns along the way, but I just didn’t have that much wiggle room in my timing. (They also had the cleanest, prettiest rest stops along the highway that I’ve ever seen.)

The true highlight, however, was finally getting to see possibly the cutest bookstore in America, The Flying Pig. It is in a gorgeous, old building with high stairs and wooden floors and a veritable feast of books. I also got to meet the wonderful Elizabeth Bluemle, and we had an amazing visit. She is warm and charming and effusive and a wonder-hostess. The turnout was a bit on the thin side, but we still had a terrific time.

Then I went back to my hotel and collected myself for the final schlepp home the next day.

I cannot even begin to describe what an amazing experience this has been, to meet so many new readers and talk to so many booksellers and librarians and parents. Truly an abundance of riches! A whopping big thank you to Houghton Mifflin (and Jenn in particular!) for organizing this trip! Honestly? In spite of being a less-than-intrepid traveler, I would have been traveled to the ends of the earth for an experience this rich. Luckily, I didn’t have to. ☺

Wellesley Booksmith!

2010-05-22T06:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have just enough time for one more update before I have to head to the airport and begin my trek home.

Houghton Mifflin was kind enough to NOT schedule me to within an inch of my life, so I had some time free on Thursday, which was lovely. I got to explore Boston with one of my favorite people in the entire world, Miss Katy Cooper. We started talking the minute we laid eyes on each other and didn't stop until she had to leave so I could get ready for the signing. We even talked while she gave me a tour of the Boston Public Library, which is actually part library, part museum. (And no librarians shushed us!) I also got to explore the Boston Commons (a teeny bit) and the Boston Public Gardens. And there were baby ducklings! Although, we did not have to make way for them.

Again, an absolutely lovely city. A city I could actually live in, I think. I am an absolute sucker for the oldness of the buildings and the elaborate, detailed architectural details And due to the gardens and the commons, there was a lot of green, for a city.

Then that afternoon a wonderful media escort picked me up to take me to Wellesley Booksmith. She was so thorough and competent that she even managed to color coordinate her outfit to mine. And Wellesley itself was a DARLING town (it's only drawback being you simply cannot find anything to eat after 7:30 in the evening.) I am really beginning to suspect I must have been a New Englander in a former life, because boy, these adorable little towns sure feed some part of me.

The bookstore was wonderful and I got to meet Alison and Kim (who was originally from Santa Barbara!) and see Margaret again, whom I'd had lunch with on Wednesday. We had a lovely turnout, including some of my favorite online people (Hi Vivian! Hi Anna! Hi Liz!) a Theo blog reader (Hi Debby!) and a video trailer designer extrordinaire (Hi Marianne!) and another one of my Super Agent's Super Clients (Hi Susan!) [Anyone else feel like they're in an episode of Romper Room? No? I'm dating myself, aren't I?]

The talk went really well and I got to sign lots and lots of lovely books and meet all sorts of new readers. Pretty much book signing heaven, if you ask me, so THANK YOU Wellesley Booksmith!

Curious George!

2010-05-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was an awesome day! My publicist Jenn arranged a wonderful lunch with a bunch of great people, but I can't download the pictures from my camera, so I'm going to save that post for a later time.

I will talk about the very fun signing we did at Curious George Books in Cambridge, though. First of all, it was right across the street from Harvard, which felt very momentous. It was a charming bookstore and I am only glad it isn't located anywhere near where I was raising my kids or I would have spent all of their college education funds in there.

It was a cold misty drizzly day and that did not do wonders for the turnout, but it was a cozy, intimate crowd and we had a great time. Plus, what we lacked in numbers we made up for in quality: mega rock star, Newberry Honor Winner Grace Lin popped by to say hi, which was awesome of her. She had to leave before we had a chance to chat, but it was SO wonderful to see her, however briefly. Also Super Agent Ammi Joan Paquette stopped by with her charming daughter. And of course, Illustrator Extrodinaire Kelly Murphy. (But I pretty much already gushed all about that, so I'll stop now before I become tiresome.) Much fun was had by all!

Meeting! Kelly! Murphy!

2010-05-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

Meeting the amazing and talented illustrator, Kelly Murphy has GOT to be one of the absolute highlights of an already incredible trip. In a nutshell? I adore her.

She has amazing energy and is sweet and funny and I seriously want to do an entire book tour with her. (So everyone go out and buy tons of Beastologist books so we can have a Kelly and Robin Beastolgist Book Tour. We promise to come to a city near YOU!)

One of the things that was so fascinating was how very many thing we had in common. Weird things. Almost eerie things.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here before, but when they were talking about illustrators for the books, my editor directed me to Kelly’s (old) website. Her home page was a map. With a compass. And under Favorite Books, she’d listed ATLASES!! How perfect a fit was that?

But the amazing coincidental similarities don’t end there. At one point in time I had seven brothers, Kelly has five! And one sister! I also have one sister.

I get goosebumps whenever I go into a museum or library, and Kelly gets goosebumps whenever she looks at a statue.

We both do very similar type collages when we’re brainstorming our projects.

We both ADORE the research stage.

The list goes on and on. Pretty astounding, really.

It was so fascinating to see Kelly’s presentation and hear how she approached illustrating the books and the decisions and choices she made in order to evoke certain things about Nathaniel in very spare, clean lines.

She was also incredibly generous and showed kids lots of her rough sketches so they could see just how raw early work was, even with a professional illustrator. The kids especially loved watching her draw “on the spot” and seeing Nate come to life before her eyes.

Really, I am the luckiest of authors to be partnering with her on these books. Thank you, Kelly!

Boston!

2010-05-20T04:47:00.000-07:00

When the kids were little (I mean really little)* whenever they liked something a huge heaping lot, they would say they liked it so much they wanted to marry it.

Well, I like the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston so much, I want to marry it. Seriously. L’Occitane toiletries? A nail kit AND a sewing kit? Padded hangers with little knobby things on the shoulders so spaghetti straps don’t slip off the hanger? And two minutes ago, as I sat here checking my email, the maid knocked and brought me bottled water and ice, just because. And the people are so genuinely friendly that it is easy to imagine that you are staying with your favorite aunt and cousins who haven’t seen you in years.

Yeah. Color me hooked.

Seriously, if one has to be away from home, this is the place to be.

And it is no accident. I was talking with the sommelier who wandered over to chat while I was having dinner and he told an interesting story. When he was interviewing for his current job, he’d had three interviews before the subject of wine even came up! They were looking for a very specific personality fit and genuine desire to be friendly with people. I thought that was awesome, not the least because it plays into my personal theory that we all have talents and gifts that will shine under certain circumstances. Nice to know that the hotel has that same philosophy.

Boston itself is a very cool city, LOTS of old buildings and about as much history as any place in the United States. It's almost as good as being in a museum--I can sense the oldness of some of these buildings around me and I love it.

I'm running a teensy bit behind on blogging about my trip, but the entries will be trickling in, probably a couple a day until I catch up.

*Okay, now I can't remember if it was MY kids or when my brothers and I were kids. But we're not going to call this a memory haze, rather a travel-induced memory haze. I've spent the last three days talking about my childhood in my presentation so it is much fresher in my mind than normal and I am absolutely sure that is what is creating this momentary futz.

D.C.

2010-05-19T02:56:00.000-07:00

Honest-to-god, my entire home town would fit inside Union Station in Washington D.C. The six enormous statues towering over everything give it the feel of an old renaissance cathedral. Very awe inspiring. Until I got to the taxi line, which was seventy-five people long. The inspiration quickly evaporated. They should plan it so the taxi line weaves back inside so we could study the statuary while we waited. THAT would be truly cool.

The hotel I stayed in was so enormous that it had a very evolved, tri-fold map for guests to use in navigating. It wasn’t much help. I almost had to call a taxi to get from the hotel lobby to my room, but I think the check-in attendant recognized that I was a wee bit travel worn and took pity on me and placed me in a room just off the elevators. Thank god, or I would STILL be wandering the halls of the Marriott, wondering how on earth to find my way back to civilization.

You all are going to get sick of me saying this, but D.C. was also a MUCH prettier city than I had imagined. Lots of elegant old buildings and brownstones, lovely architectural details, tree lined streets, etc. Very, very nice.

POLITICS and PROSE was an aMaZinG bookstore! Oh Em Gee!! It’s the kind of place you kind of wish you’d get locked up in overnight, kinda/sorta by accident, just so you could have your way with all those lovely, tantalizing books. The school kids who came to hear me talk were sharp and savvy and had all sorts of terrific questions. They kept me on my toes, they did, and were hugely fun to get to know.

And the wonderful Dee and her equally wonderful daughter Miss Maggie drove all the way from Virginia, just so we could meet! I was THRILLED to look up into the audience and see their smiling, familiar faces. (I've only actually ever met Dee, but Maggie was the spitting image, so she felt familiar, too.) Thank you, thank you for making the trek! It was LOVELY to see you again!

My travel observation of the day: I had to go through one of those dreaded x-ray machines at Reagan National Airport. Oy. I thought they were supposed to give us more assurance that people weren’t carrying anything, but both the woman in front of me and myself ended up having to be patted down. The examination was more thorough than my last annual physical.

Baltimore! And Washington, D.C.!

2010-05-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

Dear ~~Diary~~ Blog,

Baltimore was a much lovelier city than I had anticipated from watching all those episodes of THE WIRE. (And don't you just bet Baltimorians hate that? That 90% of the country's views of them were formed from watching a police TV drama?)

There were charming brick buildings and lovely brownstones with marble steps. And everything was much greener than I had imagined, with gorgeous dark pink rhododendron bushes. I also saw my first peony in the wild, on an actual bush instead of in a vase or bouquet. I adore those feathery, pale pink petals.

Ellen the Librarian was an incredible hostess and both schools were full of amazing students and dedicated teachers. It was aWeSoMe to get to connect with all those new readers!

Also? Ellen has the most adorable six year old daughter. If I were given to snatching children (which I am not) I would be sorely tempted to snatch up Miss Lilly and keep her for my own. She was a charmer. Six going on thirty two and with a knock-dead fashion sense. Loved her a lot. Her older brother, Dan, was an avid Theo fan and it was great fun to talk about the books with him. (He even hand sold a couple at the book signing!)

Then I got on the train for D.C.

So introverts, there is good news: The Acela from Baltimore to DC has a QUIET car. Awesome. It is as quiet as a library. There is even a sign that declares it the Quiet Care and forbids any but the most hushed voices and absolutely NO cell phones.

The bad news? I stumbled into it by accident, bumping into seats, juggling too much luggage, saying "excuse me" and accidentally dropping my jacket and causing one poor man to trip (thus necessitating a fervent apology) and generally being a Boarding The Quiet Car DON'T. In my defense, I've only ridden on a train twice, and the ones in California don't have quiet cars.

The ride from Baltimore to DC was lovely (and quiet!) and the whole time I kept remembering some books of my mother's childhood (Hi Dixie!) called The Little Maid books. I think there was a little maid of Vermont, and basically all of the thirteen colonies, and I was just so aware that I was riding through the exact same countryside that the Little Maid had inhabited.

Seriously, there are few things that influence us as much as our childhood reading material.

Dashing Madly Out The Door!

2010-05-16T02:57:00.000-07:00

Wow, I had SO hoped to get back in here this week to blog, but the week exploded on me frankly. And now I'm out the door to the East Coast for school visit and book signing FUN!

I am taking my camera and hoping to get some pictures to post here. And I SHOULD be able to write a blog entry on the flippin' plane, at least.

I will leave you with the news that NATHANIEL FLUDD, BEASTOLOGIST, The Basilisk's Lair has shipped early and is in stores now. And the reviews have begun to come in!

THE BASILISK’S LAIR / HOUGHTON
Jun 2010. 160 p. hardcover, $15.00. (9780547238678).

Picking up immediately where Flight of the Phoenix (2009) finished, Nathaniel Fludd, Aunt Phil, and the gremlin Greasel pursue an escaped Basilisk, the highly dangerous king of the Serpents. Despite his previous success in the field, Nathaniel is an uncertain beastologist, although wise Aunt Phil finds ways to incorporate Nathaniel’s preexisting skills, such as his artistic abilities, as he hones his new ones. Familiarity with Nathaniel’s previous adventure is helpful though not necessary, and fans can look forward to a return to Batting-at-the-Flies as the trio investigates the disappearance of Nathaniel’s parents in theforthcoming volume.
— Kara Dean

Kirkus review: THE BASILISK’S LAIR: Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist, Book 2 / HOUGHTON

When his Aunt Phil flies to the western Sudan to recapture an escaped basilisk, she takes Nathaniel Fludd along, reassuring him that he is only to “watch and learn.” Instead, he and his gremlin friend, Greasle, play important roles. This satisfying middle-grade adventure features a hesitant, unskilled hero, a miniature sidekick straight from Where the Wild Things Are and an exotic setting in colonial British West Africa in 1928. The basilisk is appropriately scary, and straightforward storytelling leads to an exciting climax. Readers won’t get and don’t need the entire back story from Flight of the Phoenix (2009), the first in the Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist series, but those who have read it will surely enjoy the return of the supposed orphan and his formidable aunt. Murphy has provided a full-page pen-and-ink illustration as well as several smaller sketches for almost every chapter, and Nathaniel contributes drawings, too. Sharp-eyed readers will realize that the chapter numbers are counted in animal bones. This story is complete in itself, but the ending promises more adventure to come. (Guide to People, Places, and Things) (Adventure. 7-10)

Phew!

The Unexpected Challenges--and Rewards--of Being a Parent

2010-05-10T04:09:00.000-07:00

I know it's the day after Mother's Day, but I adore this video by Sarah Darer Littman and her son Joshua and I want everyone to see it.

What she says is so true; sometimes our kids come into this world and end up teaching us so very much about ourselves...

The Perils of Omniscient

2010-05-07T04:44:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been wallowing in a reading-fest of late and having a grand old time of it. However, I have discovered, or perhaps re-discovered, something as I read, and that is: Omniscient is harder than hell to pull off, unless you’re British or Australian.

The thing is, I do like the omniscient POV, it hearkens back to the Once Upon a Time voice of childhood fairy tales, and I’m just enough of a writing/reading nerd that I don’t mind the author inserting themselves into the reading process. And yet…

And yet so often stories written in omniscient lose something in the process—some spark of life or suspension of disbelief. I can’t quite put my finger on it, which is why I’m blogging about it—trying to figure it out. The last three books with an omniscient voice that I’ve tried to read, I’ve ended up not finishing. There is just too much voice and not enough story or character.

I think what it boils down to is, while I like the chatty, observational tone of omniscient, it begins to wear on me when used for an entire book. Which is odd, I realized, because I do love those exact same elements in a first person voice. In fact, I think a first person voice can feel very flat without at least some of that.

But what omniscient does is remove the reader from the story, it separates me from the emotions, feelings, and experiences of the character by one degree, and that one degree can be crucial to the bonding and empathizing necessary for me to become absorbed by a story.

Omniscient, by its very nature—a present or invisible narrator telling us the story—is telling rather than showing. I don’t ever get to lose myself in that character because the narrator is keeping me at arm’s length.

Also, omniscient lends itself to overwriting.

Omniscient is also what a lot of beginning writers default to when they first start out because they don’t understand point of view, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

I think one of the techniques to getting around that distance problem is to telescope with omniscient—to not insert the narrator all the time, but only in judicious doses. Other times, let it feel more like third person.

Another technique is to just have a fabulous, fabulous omniscient voice that really ADDS to the story, that gives the reader something but not at the cost of some other vital element of story, such as creating an emotional connection.

Also, a dry wit never hurts. Or an archness of tone.

Some omniscient books that I think worked:

Soulless by Gail Carriger
Sabriel by Garth Nix
Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
Code Orange by Caroline Cooney
Sherry Thomas--she opens with about two pages of omniscient, then moves into third person for the rest of the book.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Lemony Snicket books (although I could only read those in small doses due to the very elaborate voice.)

I'll add more as I think of them. What about you? Do you have any examples you can think of?

INCARCERON: The Silver Lining In My Little Cloud of (semi) Misery

2010-05-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

I am sick. Bleargh. I haven't had a cold in nearly three years and I have forgotten how bloody miserable they are. One of the worst things about being sick? It gives one the tendency to whine. Pathetically. So I will make this post brief lest I be overtaken by the urge to indulge in whining.

One of the silver linings to being sick is that you can justify curling up in bed with a good book. I was lucky enough to find an amazing book and I'd like to share that with you guys.

I’ve talked here before about how much I adore books that crack wide open my ideas of what can be done in fiction, books that defy all the physics of conventional wisdom and craft rules, and do it spectacularly. My most recent find in this category was INCARCERON, by Catherine Fisher.

It took huge risks. Synthesizing a 17th century milieu with highly complex technology could have belly flopped big time, most likely would have in lesser hands. But in this case, it all worked. And as a writer, that spoke to me—of taking great risks, of how my first rule of writing—If it works, it works—is spot on.

The author’s timing was exquisite, her point of view shifts masterful. POV shifts are a huge vulnerability for me as a reader—it is very easy for me to feel jerked around and become easily annoyed when jumping back and switching between two protagonists like that, or become frustrated or to feel distanced or manipulated when there are too many POV shifts. But I felt none of that with this book. The pacing and the rhythm of it worked. I love how her characters were so multilayered and complex. You could never be certain if the bad guys were truly bad or simply had their own agendas we didn’t quite understand yet.

Do yourself a favor and read this book.

Other books that have rocked my writerly world with their risk taking were:

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon—when it first came out years and years ago, I was so astonished by the combination of time travel with SUCH historical accuracy and a big more literary feel.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman– I’m sorry, but opening a middle grade novel with a serial killer—and making it work so well that it went on to win the Newberry—was a huge accomplishment, and an important reminder to writers to dare.

Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling – reminded me that just because a subject has been tackled many times by other writers doesn’t mean someone can’t bring something new and fresh and wholly compelling to the same subject matter.

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey (SO not a kid’s book—be warned!) I loved the synthesis of the sacred and the profane, another book that spoke to all my loves as a reader and reminded the writer in me to take risks.

The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge– Such a bravely different yet wholly satisfying fantasy world, with such complex themes and elaborate world building for a middle grade book.

What books rocked your world as a writer? Made you see new possibilities, cracked your horizons wide open?

If for some reason you are interested in hearing me blather on even more today, I am being interviewed today by a very accomplished eleven year old over at Ellen Oh's blog. She was quite charming and I adored her questions.

Anne Lamott on Creativity

2010-05-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

I don't usually post on the weekends but I came across this link on Twitter yesterday (via Jules Dominguez) and wanted to be sure everyone I knew saw it.

http://www.sunset.com/travel/anne-lamott-how-to-find-time-00418000067331/

It's an interview with Anne Lamott where she talks about making room in our lives for creativity. Pretty much a must read.

Some Random Thoughts on Craft and Writing

2010-04-30T04:39:00.000-07:00

When one of my kids was in kindergarten, the school’s director explained to me that in order for a kid to learn new task, they had to repeat it about a thousand times to fully internalize it. She also said there were two kinds of learners; external and internal learners. The external learners were perfectly happy to practice their task a thousand times with other people watching on, while the internal learners preferred to practice their task a thousand times in private before attempting it in public. I think there is a correlation to writing in there. A couple of them, in fact.

One of the reasons it helps to break craft down and study it is that it allows us to begin to internalize the process or skill we are studying. We practice those concepts with our conscious mind until they become second nature and become a part of our subconscious process and in fact become an organic part of our process. I can totally see where this has happened to me with some things. I simply don’t have to consciously think about them anymore.

I also think some writers get published in a greener state than other writers, and their learning process and growth progression is apparent in their published works. Others, practice in private until they produce a stunning manuscript, then they share it with the world. A truly rare breed pops out with a spectacular manuscript the first time (and we work really hard not to loathe them with every ounce of our being).

I know a lot of writers are intuitive; they don’t like to look under the hood or dissect the process for letting all the magic out. However, I think only a very few writers have such a natural level of excellence that they can truly afford to do this. It can be especially hard if you have a lot of natural talent. Your natural talent can take you far, but in order to break through that last bit of distance to Really Good, you need to understand what you’re doing craft-wise. Sometimes, that means going backwards as you dissect your process and relearn things.

East Coast Book Tour!

2010-04-29T04:42:00.000-07:00

Okay peoples. The details of my upcoming book tour are finally in place.

Monday, May 17 3:30 - 5:00 at The Children's Book Store in Baltimore, MD
Tuesday, May 18, 10:30 a.m. Politics and Prose, Washington DC
Wednesday, May 19, 4:00 p.m. Curious George Bookstore, Boston, Massechussetts

Thursday, May 20, 4:00 p.m. Wellesley Booksmith, Wellesley, Massachusetts
Friday, May 21, 4:00 p.m. The Flying Pig Bookstore, Shelburne, Vermont

Remember, I will be far, far from home and would LOVE to see any familiar faces so if you are in the area and get the chance, please do stop by and say hello!