PARADOXY

"Deliberate Practice" is More Than Just Practice

2012-02-05T08:30:00.004-05:00

The idea of "deliberate practice" has been around for years, but it's become something of a buzzword lately. You've heard the drill: you need to put in 10,000 hours of work, or about 10 years of focussed practice, to achieve expertise in anything -- from writing poetry to throwing darts. Which is why your writing mentors are forever telling you to write, write, write. Because the more you write, the sooner you'll become a master of your craft, write? I mean, right?

Well, not exactly.
I've just finished an astonishing, hopeful book called The Genius in All of Us, by David Shenk. Shenk argues that we all have far more capacity than we give ourselves credit for; that through focussed application we can all become very, very good at what we dream of doing -- not only that, but we can, like the London cabbies he writes about -- actually grow our brains. The whole idea of "talent" is a red herring. People are not born with talent -- not Mozart and not Ted Williams. They became legends because they practiced really, really, really hard. But here's the real kicker:

Shenk says these arrows should actually
be pointing in the same direction

It's not enough to play a lot of soccer or chess (it's not enough to write for three hours every day including Sunday). It's not enough to go to a good critique group and attend tons of conferences. It's not enough to simply want it very badly.

"Deliberate practice requires a mindset of never, ever being satisfied with your current ability. It requires constant self-critique, a pathological restlessness, a passion to aim consistently just beyond one's capability so that daily disappointment and failure is actually desired, and a never-ending resolve to dust oneself off and try again and again and again."

In other words, Shenk says that to attain expertise, you have to push yourself to failure, deliberately. Just like weight-lifters do in the gym. That's how you grow your writing muscles.

How many of us really do this, I wonder? I'm thinking about a series of exercises we might do as writers that would aim us toward small daily failures in a deliberate way. Do you all have any tricks you use to push yourselves beyond your comfort zone? And how does that work out for you? I'd love to hear about it.

Turning Up the Tension

2012-01-21T13:19:00.000-05:00

Last person to identify
this movie still is a rotten egg.

The annual Florida SCBWI conference in Miami has to be one of the best kid lit conferences in the country: witness the many writers who whizzed down last weekend from Canada and New York to attend. I spent an intense day Friday in a novel workshop with agent Marietta Zacker and Y/A author Dorian Cirrone; we covered a lot of ground -- from writing tag lines to penning the novel's climactic scene, so I'll share just a piece of what we talked about when it comes to ratcheting up tension in your novel and keeping it high.

This is one of Dorian Cirrone's tips; she had ten in all. Keep an eye out for Dorian as she makes the round of national conferences. She's a pleasure to spend a day with. Her book Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You is available from Harper Teen.

1. Ramp up your dialogue.

There are lots of ways to infuse dialogue scenes with tension to get hearts pounding. But there are softer kinds of tension, too -- your reader might feel, well, uneasy. Or uncomfortable. Dorian suggests confrontation, evasion, repetition, interruption, changing direction, indirect answers, answering a question with a question, and exchange of power. This last is a really cool device. It happens when Speaker A starts on top in a dialogue exchange, and ends on the bottom, with Speaker B's heel firmly on throat. Here's an example Lori Devoti uses in her ebook, Dialogue: More Than Just Talk

“James, can you tell me theeight stages of the moon and which one we will see tonight?"
James leaned back in hischair and tapped his pencil against his desktop.
“James? The stages?”
The teen’s pencil stilled.His gaze caught the teacher’s.“Will you be out tonight, Mr. Wilson?”

I don't know about you, but I really want to know what Mr. Wilson is doing catting around in the middle of the night. I hope he's moonlighting as a cross-dressing hooker. Or robbing graves. Or extracting souls from the mouths of sleeping children. Or hunting leprechauns. I for sure would keep reading.

Do you have tips of your own for building tension? Please share, if so. I'll add one or two more of Dorian's, and a few of my own, in future posts.

Working to Write

2011-12-28T11:04:00.001-05:00

Paradoxy has been dark for many weeks over the holidays -- but not necessarily because of the holidays. My news is: I've accepted a full-time editorial job in the education industry. And what does this mean for my fiction-writing schedule -- or my blogging schedule -- you might ask?

Got to get up early in the mornin'

It's an interesting conundrum: how to make a living while investing in your fiction writing career. I personally know one young adult author who, after signing a three-book contract with an excellent Y/A publisher, is back to looking for full-time work. The common advice: Don't quit your day job...just yet applies even to writers with a signed contract in hand. According to lit agent Jessica Faust, fewer than ten percent of fiction writers make a living solely by writing books.

I was lucky: After I left my job in journalism, I had enough contract and teaching piecework to get by while I wrote one novel and drafted the second (which took roughly just a bit over a year). That open year feels like the running start you take before making a huge leap. I've got traction. I fully intend to keep writing fiction even while I'm working full time -- but I also accept that the pages may come a lot slower.

Here's the good news:
*Holding a day job might give you cool ideas to use in your fiction. Interpersonal relations, real world conflict, the kinds of issues that might not cross your solitary writing desk otherwise.
*Holding a day job takes the pressure off. You might not feel quite so desperate, or send out that query before your novel is ready.
*Money. It doesn't buy happiness. But it can sure purchase a piece of it.

How do you do it?

So how, my bloggy buddies, do you deal with bringing home the bacon while you're penning your Great American Novel? Are you starving in a garret, or getting up at 4:30 to toss off a few pages before you hit the commute? Or, like Wallace Stevens or William Carlos Williams, do you just compose poems in your head on the train home in the evening? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

PS: Henceforth, I'll be back to blogging here twice a week.

5 Reasons to Drop In on the Agent Auction

2011-12-07T08:02:00.001-05:00

One of the most exciting writing events of the year took place yesterday, but that doesn't mean it's over for you.

Miss Snark's First Victim blog runs a yearly Bakers' Dozen Agent Auction, and it's one of the best ways I know to get a read on publishing industry trends, particularly in Young Adult fiction.

60 aspiring authors
(middle grade, young adult, and adult) submit log lines and their novels' first 250 words. Sixteen well known literary agents bid on the submissions, offering to read 5, 25, 50, 100, 150 pages, or the full manuscript. The agent who bids highest "wins" a first look at the ms. And the author, of course, "wins" a read by an agent.

This year's auction was fascinating, on a lot of levels. You need to hike over there and have a look at the comments on submissions, written by both readers and agents, and in some cases by editors. Here are some global judgements, based on this small sample:

1. Young Adult Fantasy, Dystopian, and Paranormal is saturated.
You have to be really, really smoking in these genres to break out of the pack. Trolls, plagues, wizards, succubae, witches, dragons, the Grim Reaper, priestesses, kelpies, flesh-traders --you think you've got a great idea? Trust me, somebody else has had it. And their manuscript is complete.

2. Young Adult Steampunk/Sci-Fi is trending
There were a lot of interesting submissions in these genres (maybe it's me: I like). But if you're planning time travel, or even further, a time-traveling telepath, be careful. These ideas are hot right now, and you could get burned.

3. Agents tend to agree on what they like.
As much as we hear the old saw about how you have to find just the "right" agent who will "fall in love" with your manuscript: Well here's the sad news. If you're querying and not getting requests, there's a reason. The glamorous submissions in this batch (#59, #56, #45, #38, #2 among others) attracted active (vicious, hysterical, energetic) bidding: It was like trying to get a date at a party once Angelina Jolie and Kate Winslett show up. Quieter but very well written submissions got less attention (my favorite of these dark horses, #22, got just one bid, from agent Sarah LaPolla).

(The exception to this "agents agree" rule is the bookalicious Sarah Davies of Greenhouse. This lady really charts her own course. As far as I could tell, she only placed one bid, on #38.)

4. You can pick em too.
Read all 60 entries without looking at the comments. Rate your favorites on a scale of 1-10. My bet is you'll find you're as good at picking winners as these famous New York agents. The cream sits right on top, so the cats can dip their whiskers in. Concepts stand out because they're unique. The hook is something you've never read before. The prose is sharp: apt word choices, characters that grab you by the wrist and shout, "Come on!"

5. A caveat:
Sometimes, the problem is genre. Adult genres in general didn't do so well. Not because they didn't have interesting concepts or tight writing (all entries had been pre-screened, so these were already polished submissions). Agents did go crazy for literary and/or quirky middle grade. But at least for this auction, Y/A still rules.

NaNoWriMo: Post-partum thoughts

2011-12-01T11:21:00.001-05:00

That's me in the red hat.

I fell 1800 words short of my 50,000-word goal for my first ever NaNoWriMo. Which is totally okay--no, really! I got so much out of doing this I don't know how to express my gratitude to the organizers. Here are four things I loved about my foray into this terrific exercise. And then three things I didn't.

Loved:

1. I realized I really can write 2,000 (good) words per day. Before NaNo, I considered a 1200-word day really spectacular. And I didn't do it that often. Certainly not every freaking day. This month I learned that I can whip out 2,000 at a sitting, feel good about what I've written, and still want to go for a jog afterwards. I plan to keep doing it.

Hello there, little
newborn novel.

2. NaNo allowed me to push everything but writing firmly out of my life. I cancelled doctor's appointments. I all but stopped blogging. I spent minimal time on Facebook. It returned me to what's important: the work-in-progress. Hard to say enough good about that.

3. There's an end point, and a goal. It's only thirty days. I can do anything for thirty days. And the discipline inspired discipline in other areas. When I went running, I broke my run into "500 word" increments. And kept going until I hit 2,000.

4. It forced me to plan. There was no way I was going to try to write a novel-in-a-month by Seat-Of-Pants. The prospect of NaNo pushed me to put together a really good outline and synopsis before I started. I will never again not plan fully before starting a novel.

Didn't Love, so much

1. I missed being able to muse. To dream. To research. There just wasn't time for it.

2. I missed being able to tinker with the nuts and bolts. I missed the fun of the craft. To perfect a sentence. To convey an emotion in just the right words. To ace the arc of a scene.

3. I worried about dead ends. As in life, the course you take will determine the outcome. I felt choices closing off before I'd had a chance to fully evaluate them. Yeah, you can always go back and revise (and I certainly will). But I do feel like certain choices you make in fiction have a tendency to set themselves, like concrete. And digging out that concrete isn't always so easy. One bad choice can lead to others, and so on, until you're so mired you can't back out. That was a worry. It didn't happen, I think, but it did create some anxiety.

So, NaNoers, how are you feeling? What were your triumphs and your tribulations? I'd love to hear all about how you did. Congrats to everybody, even to us who didn't (quite) win.

And: I'm glad to be back. It goes without saying, I hope, that I really missed my bloggy buddies.

Great Reads to Unwind, post NaNo

2011-11-22T16:48:00.001-05:00

I'm already compiling a great reading list to chill out and refresh the soul after NaNoWriMo is over. Here's what I have planned for the month of December. Anybody read these?

Came in the mail today:

1) Salvage the Bones, National Book Award Winner for fiction, 2011. A 14-year-old narrator during Hurricane Katrina.
2) Chime: Y/A, also a NBA nominee. Mystery, fantasy, and witchcraft.

On my Kindle, waiting:

3) The Tiger's Wife. Another NBA nominee. Adult (?) fiction by a twentysomething Yugoslavian prodigy.

4) Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I admit to having already started this one, and I'm dying laughing. Queer teens, depression, and how not to get your heart broken.

On my bedside table, waiting:

5) Wildwood. By Decembrists singer-songwriter Colin Meloy. I've read the first few pages of this already. Narrator's baby brother is abducted by "a murder of crows" on the first page. Did you know a flock of crows is called a "murder?" Seriously. This is just my cup of tea.

Also on my bedside table, waiting:
6) A pile of New Yorkers a mile high.

Recommendations, friends? What are you planning to read, come December, 2011, to round off your year?
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And, for added inspiration, Decembrists' follies:

Plotting the Second Half, Pt. 3

2011-11-16T13:34:00.001-05:00

If you've been following this blog you've probably realized that I have slowed waaaay down on my posts, and I have NaNoWriMo to blame for it. I whizzed along for the first ten days thinking I could toss off this little 50,000-word exercise without breaking a sweat. When I hit mid-point in the novel those 1667 words per day began to come a lot harder.

Third Act Doldrums
So I called up a lady who knows a thing or two about plotting. Jamie Morris runs the Woodstream Writers Group in north Florida. I put the question to her: In a four-act structure, what the hell is supposed to happen in Act 3? Your character has bottomed out. She has to make it from that deep hole to the climax. Additionally, we're supposed to be right in the middle of "fun and games" as Blake Snyder puts it in his excellent book on plotting screenplays, Save the Cat. Where's my fun? Where's my games?

Here's what Jamie had to say:

Morris: Plotting with a
magnifying glass.

"In the four-act structure you get to hold up a magnifying glass to Act 3 and really see what's going on. In a way, it's like you're dividing the traditional Act 3 in half, so you can really examine it. But essentially with four-act or three-act we're talking about the same thing. So I am holding up my magnifying glass, and I'm seeing that there's a place where the character has struggled to use their skills to resolve their problem, and that's not working for them.

"The character has a choice here. She can either change for the better, find a way to work in this new world, or she can continue to resist change. But the point is, there are still struggles, there is still learning in Act 3. So to answer your question about maintaining tension, one answer is: I get to see the character engaged in that struggle with change. Just because she has a clue doesn't mean she knows how to use that clue, right? Even as she's struggling, she's getting traction, she's gaining on her problem.

"And then at the end of Act 3, your character reaches a turning point. It might be something exterior in the action of the plot that forces a reversal (*Gail's note: this is what Joyce has called the "curve ball"). What might differentiate the "low point" at the end of Act 2 is that the change there is internal--some people call this the "All is Lost" moment. And perhaps the change at the end of Act 3 is external ('The Dark Night of the Soul').

"The important thing is that this turning point at the end of Act 3 sends the character rushing toward the great climax of the book. Which happens somewhere in Act 4. Capiche?"

Um, yes. Of course, all these structures are models to play with, to make your own. The idea of struggle within competency is a good way to manage it: Think Rocky running up those steps at the Philadelphia museum. Not so easy, right? So many steps! Are your characters struggling, NaNo-ers? And Non-NaNo-ers? How do you sock it to them?

And here's a little something to inspire you for the second half of your writing November:

Plotting the Second Half, Pt 2: The Mavens Weigh In

2011-11-10T15:11:00.002-05:00

Yup, bad sh*t happens in Act 3

Yesterday we talked a little about issues with plotting your novel's second half. I'm using a four-act structure rather than a three-act, and I'm a little concerned with how I'm going to keep the tension in my WIP from flat-lining after the midway point. So I got in touch with two of my fiction mentors, Jamie Morris and Joyce Sweeney, who invented the Plot Clock I'm using. Today I'll give you Joyce's take on this brain-teaser (look for Jamie's words of wisdom tomorrow).

Sweeney, being all
smart and stuff

Joyce says that the low point in the story comes at the end of Act 2 in both the four- and three-act models. After your character hits that low point, "it doesn't mean all the tension is over, you keep raising the stakes all the time," she says.
"What happens is, the hero is pretty lame in Acts 1 and 2, but after that low point pushes all their buttons, they start trying harder. The reader wants to see some chance they can succeed. They want to see the growth in Act 3, but you also are raising the stakes, escalating the dangers and making the antagonist much more powerful than we guessed. At end of Act 3, you throw a curve that changes and raises the stakes tremendously, heading into the climax."

And then she offered this (hypothetical!) example:

"I can't pay my mortgage, and I spend Acts 1 and 2 trying to dogdge the mortgage company. Low point is notice of foreclosure...looks like I'm going to lose the house, right? But I refuse to give up and spend act three finding a new way to raise money for mortgage payments. End of Act 3 I find out someone in city hall is out to get me and they tore up all the checks I sent. Climax...I fight city hall. That make it clearer? It keeps you from being linear to twist and turn the reader's hopes."

I don't know about you, but that clarified things quite a bit for me. So, fellow bloggees, have you figured out your curve ball for the end of Act 3? That ought to be coming up in...let's see...about 10 days if you're doing NaNo.

Plotting the Second Half

2011-11-08T12:47:00.000-05:00

Halfway through:
But what's on the dark side?

I've burnt up the first half of my WIP at a rate I'd never imagined possible during NaNoWriMo. But just as I'm about to reach what I've plotted as the low point (the worst that could happen) I feel myself getting nervous about what's to come.

In the plotting workshop I took in September, we talked about how the halfway point of a novel can be the place where your main character hits bottom. Hits it so hard you can hear the thud a hundred miles. Just after that point, your MC realizes she has to change. Something she's doing isn't working. She figures that out. Once she does, she's on an upswing, piling up small victories and realizing new strengths, until the novel's climax (the battle of the book.)

Fine so far, but how do you keep tension in your novel when your character is racking up the smaller victories, and those leading to larger ones, and it looks like all is well?

It's easy to tighten the screws and keep a reader on seat's edge while you're plummeting toward the abyss. I'm not sure it's so simple when the sky is clearing. I'm afraid to be boring in my second half. Like my MC, I'm going to have to change up what I'm doing, and I'm not sure how that's going to work.

In Dan Harmon's plot embryo model, your MC gets what she wants and pays a heavy price for it in the story's second half. What strategies do you have for keeping tension high after you pass your story's midpoint? Do you find you have to juggle the way you think about plot? I have a hunch the answer to this question, at least for me, might lie in the subplot. Tell me your thoughts.

Speaking of Word Count: A Query Conundrum

2011-11-03T12:01:00.000-04:00

Using method pictured above, my novel's
word count is 7,986,000. Is that too long?

Naturally since I'm doing NaNoWriMo, word counts are on my mind. I'm using my Scrivener program, which has a nifty little feature: At the bottom of the screem there's a scrolling word count, so I can watch it tick along while I'm typing. I can sort of experience my word count in real time. It's just so Meta-NaNo.

Here we are at Day Three, and I've managed to write 1672, 1791, and 1831 words per day, all by 10 a.m. I'm praying I won't jinx my mad productivity, but if I manage to pound out 50,000 words this month, I'm going to owe a few people. Like one of my teachers, Joyce Sweeney, who ran a plotting workshop in September, in time to ensure I had a solid outline and synopsis come November 1. Whoo, what a difference a plan makes! With synopsis in hand, I feel like I could whip out a 976-page masterpiece. Let me pull out my battered copy of Anna Karenina and swear on it: I shall never pants again, so help me Gaddis.

(And spending 30 minutes in the afternoon making notes toward tomorrow's writing hasn't hurt so far, either).

But I had another pressing question about word-counts, re: Querying.
I just read an old post by Jessica Alvarez over at the Bookends blog; she says to estimate your word count based on 250 words per page (multiplied by) number of pages; not on your Microsoft word count.

Here's what she says:

And by the way, when I think word count I think 250 words per double-spaced page with one-inch margins. That’s the way most publishers look at word count. Using Microsoft Word’s count could mess you up since three words of dialogue technically takes up a full line, and word count is about production costs.

Anybody heard this before? Does she mean, multiply your number of pages by 250 to get the word count you put in a query letter? Because if I change my font to Courier New and do this, it makes my word count a full 20,000 higher! Waaaaay toooooo loooooong! Arghhhh. Stumped. Please let me know how you calculate your own word counts. Alvarez's post was from 2007, so I'm not sure if it's still relevant.

Girls Holding Hands

2011-11-02T13:51:00.000-04:00

Miss Joanna Marple, whose blog I've become addicted to, has memed me, because blogger Sher Hart memed her, and before that Liz memed Sher, and, well you get the picture. When tagged, the recipient freezes and ponders the questions below, which sent me, at least, bouncing around in space-time like a ping-pong ball in an anti-gravity chute.

I told Joanna I'd been thinking about question #2 anyway. A middle-grade fairy tale by Anne Ursu, Breadcrumbs, spurred my reflections, because in it, a little girl has lost her best friend. Or, fairer to say, he has drifted away. As we do, from each other, eventually and inevitably. But learning that lesson for the first time can be particularly painful.

Breadcrumbs is a breathtaking book about how heartbreaking it can be to grow up, among other things, and I'll be reviewing it soon. Anyway, here are the memes Joanna passed on to me:

If you could go back in time and relive one moment, what would it be?
My godmother owned a 44-acre island in the Bahamas. Dozens of kids came and played there the summer I turned 13. We slept in cots lined up on an outdoor porch overlooking the ocean. There were a gazillion stars. Sweet breezes that smelled of salt and flowers. And the promise of turtle curry and Bahama bread for breakfast in the morning. Pick any moment from any night from that summer.

If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?
The fall I went into sixth grade, my best friend got sick with mono. She was out of school for a long time -- it seemed like two or three months. And because she had mono I couldn't visit her much, at least that's how I remember it. But while she was out of school...I sloughed off my childhood. I became a teenager. I made friends with the girls who were rolling up their skirts and smoking cigarettes and going steady with boys they didn't much like. And when my friend came back to school, well, everything was different. She was white and soft and insubstantial. My new friends were loud, vivid, real. I remember walking down the hall with her shortly after her first day back, holding hands, and knowing that I'd never hold hands with her again (the girls in my new group emphatically did NOT hold hands.) It was the end of our friendship. If I could change one thing: I would hold on to that precious friendship, that pale, rather damp hand, a little bit longer. And not be in such a hurry to let go.

What movie/TV character do you most resemble in personality?
The Dude.

If you could push one person off a cliff and get away with it, who would you choose?
Kim Jong Il.

Name one habit you want to change in yourself.
Failing to return phone calls.

Why do you blog?
The World-Wide-Mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Name at least three bloggers to send this to:
Oh, this is really hard because there are so many I appreciate, but:

*L.G. Smith at Bards and Prophets for her wicked humor and great photos
*Tricia Clausen at Vociferous, because among other reasons, she's agreed to take me on as a crit partner for my very rough novel in progress.
*And Sarah Pearson at Empty White Pages, because she'll be racing me to the Nano finish line, and she has inspired me to fill up my own empties.

Guest Post: How to Know When to Query

2011-11-01T07:54:00.000-04:00

Quinn: Things that make
you go 'Wow'

Today's Guest Post by Susan Kaye Quinn
Launches her new novel, Open Minds.

How do you know when your story is ready to query (assuming you’re going to make a pass at the get-an-agent-traditional-publishing gauntlet)?

This was always my question, when I first started writing. In my previous life as an engineer and scientist, there were measureable goals, actionable items. Projects came with deadlines, tests, and presentations. You knew what you were supposed to do (for the most part), how to do it (sometimes), and when you were expected to have something to show for your efforts (always).

This is how it works in the normal muggle world. But in the world of fiction…not so much.

In creative works, you are in charge of deciding what to write, and how many times, and what revisions must be made. And when to stop. That last one was the most difficult of all for me, because how was I to know I had reached THE END of the endless revisions?

My new paranormal/SF novel Open Minds was not the first novel that I queried. And neither was Life, Liberty, and Pursuit (my first published novel), because that book had a quirky path to publication, going past GO and collecting $200 right away. My first queried novel was Clone Runners (middle grade science fiction), which I decided was ready to query because I couldn’t figure out what else to do with it.

This is actually not a bad criteria to use for querying readiness.

The Wow Factor

I believe that every novel is a learning experience, and if you aren’t learning anything new in working on it, it probably is time to move on. In fact, taking the next step of querying is a learning experience in itself, and I learned a LOT from querying Clone Runners. I learned that I could write a query that would get a lot of requests; I also learned that there were some peculiar biases against middle grade science fiction in the publishing world; and I learned that Clone Runners wasn’t really ready for publication yet. Close, but not quite.

As I worked revision after revision of Open Minds, it became clear to me that it was ready for querying. Not only had I learned all I could from the story. This time, the signal came from the reaction I received from the people who read it.

When you read your opening chapter to your crit group for the first time and the response is shocked silence, followed by Wow: it’s time to query.

When the critiquers who read your MS two revisions ago keep asking when you’re going to query because they want to see your story published: it’s time to query.

When you’ve put every last bit of your storytelling and craft skills into the story: it’s time to query.

Because keeping that MS in your drawer isn’t doing anyone any good.

p.s. I did query Open Minds and received lots of requests. But I ended up cutting the query process short in order to self-publish. The story of that adventure in publishing is in the next two posts (see the full story below).

*********************

Buy the Book

Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy) by Susan Kaye Quinn is available for $2.99 in e-book (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords) and $9.99 in print (Amazon, Createspace).

The Story of Open Minds (linked posts)

Ch 1: Where Ideas Come From: A Mind Reading World

Ch 2: A Study in Voice, or Silencing Your Inner Critic

Ch 3: I'm finished! Oh wait. Maybe not.

Ch 4: Write First, Then Outline - Wait, That's Backwards?

Ch 5: Why My Critique Partners Are Smarter Than Me

Ch 6: Facing Revisions When It Feels Like Being on the Rack

Ch 7: How to Know When to Query

Ch 8: A Writer’s Journey - Deciding to Self-Publish Open Minds (Part One)

Ch 9: Owning the Writerly Path - Deciding to Self-Publish Open Minds (Part Two)

Epilogue: Finding Time to Write the Sequel

*********************

PRIZES!

Susan Kaye Quinn is giving away an Open Books/Open Minds t-shirt, mug, and some fun wristbands to celebrate the Virtual Launch Party of Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy)! (Check out the prizes here.)

Three ways to enter (you can have multiple entries):

1) Leave a comment here or at the Virtual Launch Party post

2) Tweet (with tag #keepingOPENMINDS)

Example: When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep. #keepingOPENMINDS @susankayequinn #SF #YA avail NOW http://bit.ly/SKQOpenMinds

Example: Celebrate the launch of OPEN MINDS by @susankayequinn #keepingOPENMINDS #SciFi #paranormal #YA avail NOW http://bit.ly/SKQOpenMinds

3) Facebook (tag @AuthorSusanKayeQuinn)

Example: Celebrate the launch of paranormal/SF novel OPEN MINDS by @AuthorSusanKayeQuinn for a chance to win Open Books/Open Minds prizes! http://bit.ly/SKQOpenMinds

When Everyone Reads Minds, a Secret is a Dangerous Thing to Keep:

Sixteen-year-old Kira Moore is a zero, someone who can’t read thoughts or be read by others. Zeros are outcasts who can’t be trusted, leaving her no chance with Raf, a regular mindreader and the best friend she secretly loves. When she accidentally controls Raf’s mind and nearly kills him, Kira tries to hide her frightening new ability from her family and an increasingly suspicious Raf. But lies tangle around her, and she’s dragged deep into a hidden world of mindjackers, where having to mind control everyone she loves is just the beginning of the deadly choices before her.

Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy) by Susan Kaye Quinn is available in e-book (Amazon US (also UK, France and Germany), Barnes & Noble, Smashwords) and print (Amazon, Createspace, also autographed copies available from the author).

Picture Book Idea Month Starts Tomorrow!

2011-10-31T10:40:00.000-04:00

Good news for picture book writers! As we all know, NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. But Tara Lazar also launches a sister project for picture book authors: PiBoIdMo. The challenge? Come up with 30 picture book ideas in 30 days throughout the month of November, beginning tomorrow.

Tara Lazar:
Writing PB's just got funner

Spiffy prizes
You have until November 3rd to go the website and sign up to vie for fabulous schwag: "Signed books, picture book critiques, art by pb illustrators, book jewelry, hand-made journals, vintage children's books, and feedback from one of three literary agents."

Our own Florida kidlit SCBWI maven Mindy Alyse Weiss is kicking off the challenge with a guest post detailing why she loves PiBoIdMo, including links to 400+ things kids like (which might be a handy source for middle-grade writers too).

Struggling? Help from PB author Rob Sanders
Coincidentally, Florida picture book author Rob Sanders has a whole week of inspiration planned to help you soar over any road- or writers-blocks; check out his blog this week for some serious and humorous advice on how to keep going when the going gets tough.

Anybody planning to take the plunge? Run across any unusual ideas for picture books lately? One of my favorites this year was The Boss Baby. I guess I'm sort of partial to the dark side of toddler lit. Like That's Not Your Mommy Anymore: A Zombie Tale. And then, of course, there's always the soon-to-be classic: Go the F** to Sleep.

Book Review: Tankborn

2011-10-27T12:45:00.000-04:00

The girl in the bubble.

I admired Karen Sandler's sci-fi novel Tankborn more than loved it. Tankborn is one of a debut line of novels published by Tu Books, a new publisher specializing in fantasy, sci-fi, and mystery books for kids, devoted to showcasing characters and authors of color. (I'll also be reviewing Tu's Galaxy Games in coming weeks).

And Tankborn foregrounds race matters: The futuristic society on the Earth colony planet Loka is as rigidly stratified as colonial India. The heroine, Kayla, and her best friend Mishalla, come from a lower caste called GENs, genetically engineered, literally untouchable slaves. The upper classes puppeteer the GENs as they please, assigning them to jobs, uploading and downloading data into their annexed brains. Upper class Highborns have light brown skin and black hair; the Lowborns and GENs are a rainbow ranging from very dark to red-haired and green eyed, or, in Kayla's case, piebald.

Sandler: dipping her hoof
into Y/A

High Moral Stakes
Both heroines get their class-consciousness raised, of course, and so does Kayla's Highborn boyfriend.
The book is a well plotted page-turner, and Sandler builds an alienating, dystopian world (an ex-software engineer, Sandler is a prolific adult author; this is her first Y/A). Tankborn deals with vital societal issues: our definition of "human;" the treatment of non-humans; how status symbols and physiology influence our perceptions of others. It points to the potential pitfalls of technology and genetic engineering. And it asks us to consider, by extension, how socially mobile we Americans and Europeans truly are.

A Language Barrier
All excellent questions for young adults to be pondering. Hence, my admiration. Sadly, though, the heroines left me unmoved. I run across this issue fairly often in sci-fi: characters who don't seem real enough to identify with. In Tankborn the problem stems at least partly from language -- the formal (and foreign) diction and vocabulary of this futuristic world has a distancing effect, and in the end, it created an emotional chasm I couldn't cross. Tankborn has been compared to M.T. Anderson's brilliant Y/A novel Feed,; it addresses similar moral questions. The difference, at least for me? Feed's unforgettable characters and their terrible choices seemed utterly, terrifyingly real.

The Novel In Verse: Would You?

2011-10-26T14:26:00.000-04:00

Until today, I'd never read a novel in verse -- at least not a kid's novel in verse. Yeah, I read Paradise Lost in college, and The Odyssey in high school. That counts, right? And even though I earned my M.A. in poetry writing, it never occurred to me to try to write fiction in verse.

But I started reading Inside Out and Back Again this morning, a middle grade verse novel by Thanhha Lai that's a finalist for this year's National Book Award. And as my blogging buddies know, Lai's subject fits perfectly into my research for novel number two (draft tbc during November Nano). Because Inside Out and Back Again is the story of a Vietnamese girl who immigrates to Alabama after the war.

So, the first question we might ask is, why write any novel in verse? A reviewer for School Library Journal rightly points out that a novel dealing with the immigrant experience might be uniquely suited for verse--because the narrator is somewhat estranged from both her native language and the new one she's supposed to be learning. The effect is "simultaneously intimate and isolating." I like that idea.

But I'm a snob.

I suppose my hesitation about novels in verse is because, well, I'm kind of a snob? I don't believe "verse" is just lines of narrative broken up into short lengths, like you might crack spaghetti to fit it into a smaller pot.
Any line of "verse" should have what my old poetry teacher, the late Donald Justice, called a "minute torsion," a turn or a twist or a flutter--of something ineffable, surprising, magical. A tension. A line of poetry should never fall flat. Anybody who thinks writing a verse novel is easier, because there are so many fewer words, has never struggled for weeks or months over a three-stanza poem. I have. It's been a long time, but I sure do remember how painful that can be.

Anyway, I'm down with Inside Out and Back Again. Lai's stanzas are economical; they read like haiku:

I vow
to rise first every morning
to stare at the dew
on the green fruit
shaped like a lightbulb.

I will be the first
to witness its ripening.

Look how spare, how pared down Lai's language is. As with all good poetry -- it's as if there's a spirit of something larger, richer, more meaningful, floating over each of these simple lines.

Have you ever thought about writing fiction in verse? Why or why not? Do you read verse novels? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Name Your Research

2011-10-24T12:36:00.001-04:00

Broadcasting "Number 10" in the field.

How much research are you doing for your current WIP? What form does it take? A quick Wikipedia search, or are you painstakingly requesting books through inter-library loan? What's the relationship between research and inspiration? Or does your "research" mostly come from your own brain?

I love internet research because it gets so random. I'll Google "Vietnamese folk tales" and end up on a site where a vet is talking about how he saw his Marine commander get jumped and mauled by a tiger (true story!). Or I'll stumble across something really haunting, like this video describing the "Wandering Soul" psychological warfare Americans used in Vietnam (also called "Number 10) -- ghostly howls and dialogue from beyond the grave
broadcast at top volume over North Vietnamese territory. (I read elsewhere that Wandering Soul inevitably drew gunfire.) This is so spooky I've probably guaranteed myself nightmares.

And yeah, I'll probably use it in the novel, or at least the heart-in-throat fear these sounds (and the whole idea of psychological warfare) call up. I wouldn't call it "inspiration" exactly. But when it gets to be too much, I'll probably bury myself in some heartwarming Vietnamese fairy tale I've checked out of the library.

Evil Woman! The B-Ladies of Kid-Lit

2011-10-20T08:49:00.000-04:00

Kidman as cold, cold Mrs. Coulter

I've been thinking about hideous lady villains in kid-lit lately--maybe because I haven't seen a whole lot of them in recent fiction. So I've been compiling a list of dastardly dames. And wondering if what makes female villains tick is categorically different from their male counterparts. Yeah, there's the usual greed, snobbishness, gratuitous cruelty, and button eyes. But there're also a lot of really cool outfits. My short list is below. Got any additions? Any thoughts about why a fair antagonist makes a particularly deadly foe?

1. Mrs. Coulter: His Dark Materials

Philip Pullman did an awfully good job with the gorgeous ice queen whose mission is to separate helpless children from their beloved daemons, at great physical suffering. All for their own good, of course.

2. Letitia Slighcarp: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
I'm pretty sure that the ghastly governess Slighcarp became a model for my dreaded imaginings whenever my parents left us to go on vacation. I was convinced any babysitter planned to sell all my cool toys and pack me off to an orphanage. (Miss Minchin, bane of the boarding school in The Little Princess, is a sister under the skin.)

3. The Wicked Witch of the West
The North Witch's evil sister is nothing Dorothy can't handle, it turns out (in, oh, about hour three), but any woman made entirely of green slime deserves a shout out.

4. Aunts Sponge and Spiker, James and the Giant Peach
Why can't these ladies leave poor James be? Don't they know a boy can't survive on fish heads alone?
James: I finished all the chores.
Sponge: What a coincidence! We finished all the dinner!

5. Mrs. Tifton in The Penderwicks
Snobby society mavens who pack their offspring off to horrible boarding schools never lose their literary appeal.

6. The Other Mother, in Coraline.
With her creepy Suzy Homemaker schtick and her button eyes, Gaiman's Other Mother taps into every child's deepest, unvoiced fear: that Mommy is really a gigantic, demented arachnid.

Feel free to chime in with your own faves! Here's a wonderful video about how MGM chose Margaret Hamilton to play the Wicked Witch of the West.

Miss Snark's Victim, and other Matters

2011-10-18T15:30:00.000-04:00

Got shredded by Miss
Snark, once

I'm the lucky recipient of a very nice Liebster blog award courtesy of the redoubtable Elizabeth Varden, and I thank the lady very kindly. My mission is to pass this award on to five more blogs, and two of the passes are going to bloggers who are hosting aspects of Miss Snark's First Victim Baker's Dozen Auction.

So I want to say a word about this exciting annual event, running currently (if you've missed it, MSFV also runs multiple "secret agent" contests during the year, so don't despair). I'm not entering myself, because I already have my ms. queried out to my favorite agents. But I did go through a round of logline critiques during the process to sharpen my logline writing skills.

So what is MSFV's Baker's Dozen?

In a nutshell, a crazyfest of logline critiques leading up to a logline + 250 word submission to be judged and bid on by a dozen of the most illustrious literary agents in the business. Even if you don't submit an entry, it's a crash course in writing a zingy concept sentence. Reading other people's loglines is just as illuminating. You see what people are working on, and judge for yourself which entries rise to the top of the scrum.

Later on, you find out if your assessments are shared by agents. You get a good look at your competition (if you're an unpublished writer) and what genres are hot (or maybe a trifle crowded). If there's a better worm's-eye view of the industry, I don't know where to find it, except maybe at a packed pitch session at some national conference.

Is it a good idea to enter?
A well-respected literary mentor I know says, "no." Her opinion is that agents get to know writers cycling through these contests, and that the entries start to look stale. In her words, "You should guard your ms. like your virginity. Don't put it out in the blogosphere for people to paw over."

I don't have an opinion, but I wonder, dear readers, do you? Online agented contests, and forums for critiquing pages and queries, yay or nay? Have you entered any? What did you think?

And now, I hereby pass the Liebster blog award to:

K.T. Crowley, smart critic and hostess of MSFV loglines.
Escape Artist Linda McLaren, just as smart and another gracious hostess.
A certain Wanton Redhead that I'm rooting for, on her way to Big Sur.
The vociferous Tricia Clasen, doing so much to help insecure writers.
And Bluestocking, for being unfailingly interesting and mysterious.

Here are your rules, peeps. Go forth and multiply.

The Rules: You must mention and link to the person who awarded you the Liebster, and mention 5 other blogs with fewer than 200 followers you think worthy of the Liebster.

"Everyone's Afraid of Amazon"

2011-10-17T09:10:00.001-04:00

Hey authors:
Jeff Bezos has a fistful of book-dollars.

If you missed this morning's New York Times article, click here to read about how Amazon is set to shake up the publishing industry. Remember, oh, a decade or so ago, how music execs were throwing hissyfits over downloadable songs? Predicting the end of the world as we knew it? Something similar is happening in publishing: Amazon is now signing fiction and nonfiction authors directly -- bypassing agents and publishing houses. And thereby putting itself in direct competition with the the same booksellers it's promoting. Authors who've been dissed by New York publishing houses are now invited to show the established industry their hiney.

The Times article left some unanswered questions.

How much editorial love are authors getting from Amazon? The "editorial once over" one author mentions doesn't sound like more than a copyedit. It'll be interesting to see what the quality of these unagented, minimally edited (?), books turns out to be. And secondly, if authors are signing with Amazon directly, sans agent, who's watching their backs? Amazon's policies appear both more transparent (authors get access to stats about how and where their books are selling) and more secretive (authors may be cut out of the loop with publicity and marketing planning). One presumes authors will have to negotiate the legal and financial thickets of their careers on their own.

At any rate, it looks like a stranger has just ridden into town. Sheriff better get his posse organized. Thoughts?

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo?

2011-10-14T08:36:00.000-04:00

Lit agent Janet Reid, pictured above, circa Dec. 2

National Novel Writing Month is seventeen days away. As I'm sure you know, the project aims to get tens of thousands of people around the world writing 1,666 words a day (every day, which means laptops perched on Thanksgiving tables) to complete a 50,000-word manuscript inside a single month. I've never tried it, but I'm planning to this time--in fact I'm cheating a little: I've already got 20,000 words written, and a solid outline, so I'm not starting from scratch.

I've heard tell that literary agents dread December because they're deluged with queries
for crappy, unrevised novels hot off of NaNo. So here's a tip: get your queries (for your painstakingly revised, brilliantly plotted, achingly beautiful manuscripts) out before the holidays.

And let's all keep in mind Hemingway's famous quote: "The first draft of anything is shit."

Have you done NaNo? Planning to this year? What's your take on the project? Useful? Or misguided? How do you get ready? Any blog-buddies care to join me to share the arc of triumph or the agony of defeat?

Poignancy, Pathos, Triumph: How Beauty Feels

2011-10-13T08:17:00.000-04:00

It's so important for writers to seek out and learn from other art forms: architecture, painting, music. In a recent TED talk, designer Richard Seymour explores the feeling of aesthetic beauty; he begins with a story about a watchmaker. A customer has brought in a watch to be cleaned, and when the watchmaker opens it, he discovers words etched into one of the watch's interior wheels. "Why on earth would the designer have bothered to put these words in a place nobody would ever see?" the customer asks.

"God sees it," replies the watchmaker.

Whatever your definition of God, this is a charged understanding. Do you struggle with your own responsibility to the notion of beauty? Or is the idea of "making beauty" a burden? How does it feel to compromise on your standards? Are there aspects of your work that nobody but God will ever see? The idea reminds me quite a bit of Markus Zusak saying he would have written The Book Thief even if he knew in advance it would never be published.

Seymour identifies three aspects of aesthetic beauty that humans inevitably respond to: Poignancy, Pathos, and Triumph. Clearly these aspects should be kept in balance--too much pathos results in sentimentality; too much triumph is simply unbelievable; and any reader will eventually tire of wall-to-wall poignancy (exactly where humor can cut through the fluff, like adding acid and salt to an over-sweetened dish.)

If you haven't, check out Google's ArtProject here for further inspiration (James Elkins argues that too much reading stunts our visual sense, which we badly need as writers). Below is Seymour's 20-minute talk. He loses me when he waxes poetic on the motorcycle design (clearly not my thing), but the first half of the talk is riveting.

FREE Copy of Just-Released Y/A Novel!

2011-10-12T07:58:00.000-04:00

While you're at it, guess this film, too.

I have a free copy to give away of a gorgeous, just released, hardback Young Adult fantasy novel, one that's getting high-octane reviews. The jacket copy was some of the most compelling I've ever read, and the jacket art is beautiful. Listed below, I've picked out phrases from the book blurb. First person to name the novel, plus the title of the movie still above (can't make it too easy, right?) shall receive the book via Priority Mail! Hint: The film, like the novel, features winged strangers. Ready? Go:

blood and starlight

handprints

human teeth

Prague

art student

blue hair

winged strangers

Doesn't that line-up just make you hunger to read it? Somebody evidently knows how to market precisely to....me. Good luck!

UPDATE: Laura Barnes aces test!

If a Book Falls in the Forest...Lessons from The Book Thief.

2011-10-04T11:57:00.000-04:00

I'm reading an astonishing YA novel, The Book Thief. Heard of it, by chance? I'm probably the last aspiring kid writer on the planet to read it, but I am flabbergasted by Zusak's use of language, his wit, his inventiveness, and his take-no-prisoners approach to historical fiction. Zusak must break every rule, contort every piece of advice, I've ever read or heard about writing for children, and it's brilliant. Just as inspiring is Zusak's contention in the video below that even if he knew, in advance, that not a single person would ever read his book, that it would never be published, that it would sink into obscurity, he still would have written it. In exactly that way.

With all the hugger-muggering about perfecting queries, and writing synopses (which I'm in the process of doing today), and following agents on Twitter, and stalking editors on Facebook, I have to say I find listening to Zusak talk about his passion for writing "somebody's favorite book" incredibly satisfying. I don't think I could get more spiritual uplift from meeting the Dalai Lama himself.

New friends and readers and fellow bloggers, Paradoxy is going dark until next Monday; I'm off to New York (without my computer) to see some art and eat my way across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Thanks for all the lurve, and I'll be visiting your sites when I get home next week. In the meantime, may Zusak's "ray of light" shine down upon you all.

Horton Hears a Hook Hop!

2011-10-01T18:02:00.000-04:00

That's not a hook, Horton!

Kimberly Zook over at Book Nook is doing a Hook Hop. Say that ten times fast and you've got yourself a Dr. Seuss sequel. It's a great idea, and here's how it works if you'd like to join in. Post a hook from any one of your works-in-progress on your blog (all genres accepted).

But what's a hook?
Your hook, dear Horton, is your opening lines, between one and five sentences.

Then what do I do?
Fill in your name and blog address in the linky below.
Then what do I do?
Hop over to at least three other hook hoppers and comment on their hooks. (you can find many hook hoppers at Zook's Book Nook, too.)
And then?
Sit back and wait for the hoots and hollers on your hook to come showering down--much in the same way you once waited for the bazillions of dollars you expected to earn off a chain letter. Only this really works! It does! Really!

Here is my hook, from a middle-grade novel:

My Daddy named me Lyndon Baines Hawkins on account of howboth me and the president messed up his life. That old cowboy president sentDaddy away across the ocean to a country he never wanted any part of, and whenhe got back here to Tennessee it turned out he was dragging me along too, likea sackfull of scrip, that’s how Daddy puts it when he’s feeling dark—though forreal I wasn’t even as big as a two-pound crookneck squash inside Mama’s bellyin those days.

Writing is Hard. Isn't it??

2011-09-30T12:04:00.000-04:00

Dave Smith: Don't say
I didn't warn you.

I'm going to piggyback off of L.G. Smith's post over at Bards and Prophets today--in brief, because Friday is a sunup to sundown WIP-day for me. Smith sums up the difficulty question with a quote from Ellen Gilchrist, who points out, more eloquently than I can here, that we writers had better not give up our day jobs. And further, prepare to be disappointed.

My old teacher, poet Dave Smith, (no relation to L.G.) sat me down and gave me similar advice many, many years ago, when I was planning to study for an MA in poetry writing (can you imagine any graduate degree less practical?) He said that even if I did eventually land a university job (after publishing two or three books, minimum), it was a long way off, and a crap shoot. And did I really want to do this?

And this? Easy peasy.

Smith wasn't trying to let me down gently. I was his pet, and I knew it. He was being realistic. I didn't heed his warnings then and I'm not heeding Gilchrist now, either. I mean, I hear what they're saying. But honestly? I don't think writing is that hard.

Writing is fun.
Being a writer makes me zip around some days with a feeling in the pit of my stomach that very much resembles falling madly in love. Writing never bores me. It expands me. It helps me understand people. And nature. And the universe. It makes me fear death a little bit less.

Somehow, I don't think writing is nearly as much of a bummer as, say, being a checker at Walmart. Or spending all day typing other people's letters or doing their laundry. I bet it's a lot less numbing than being a court reporter, and a lot less backbreaking than a career in farming. It's not as debilitating as running a small business or clawing your way up some soul-destroying corporate ladder.

Maybe it's just me? I like being a writer. If we're warning people off careers, let's start with this one: "You sure you want to do this? Because being a call-center operator is really hard."

Three More Reasons Not To Ban Books

2011-09-29T14:38:00.000-04:00

Leigh: Telling it like it is.

I'm breathless with awe over my fellow blogger Sommer Leigh's stunning series of personal essays on why we shouldn't be banning books. Please go read them now.
http://sommerleigh.com/archives/4357

Why Are Writers So Scary?: Elizabeth Gilbert and Creativity

2011-09-28T16:39:00.000-04:00

I watched this video quite a while ago, but it stuck with me. Gilbert's opening raises an interesting question: Why does writing seem, to so many, like such a scary profession? What makes people so uncomfortable with what we do? Whatever your opinion of Eat, Pray, Love (me? I liked it), listening to Gilbert tease out her creative passions during this 20-minute TED talk is inspirational.

Book Review: Julie of the Wolves, Reissued

2011-09-28T09:43:00.000-04:00

One of "Most Frequently Challenged"
Kid's Classics, Now an eBook

Open Road Integrated Media has reissued Julie of the Wolves as an eBook. Were books just better in the olden days? Nah, probably not. But rereading Julie after all these years (it was first published in 1972, by Harper and Row, and was championed by one of my heroes in the book biz, editor Ursula Nordstrom), it might seem that way. In fact, Nordstrom commissioned Julie after a single brief meeting with author Jean Craighead George. In George's memory:

[Nordstrom] was bent over her desk in concentration, her gray hair grooved where her fingers had pressed. Hearing us, she turned around and her penetrating eyes met mine head on. She nodded to say she knew who I was and why I was there.
"I want to write a book," I said, "about an Eskimo girl who is lost on the Arctic tundra. She survives by communicating with a pack of wolves in their own language."
"Will it be accurate?"
"Yes."
"I'll write you up your contract and advance now."

George says she'd never been offered a contract before a word was written, but she went home and began Julie of the Wolves.

Scrappy Heroine Meets Arctic Wolf

The idea for the book came to George during a brief visit to Alaska, where she spotted a young girl alone on the Tundra. George also hooked up with some researchers studying wolf communication. George fairly dumps her readers into Julie's strange world (her Eskimo name is Miyax): Here's a heroine we can really get behind. Julie is just unbelievably resilient, inventive; she perseveres through scrapes that would leave most of us jibbering (or frozen to death). And she's bonded with the natural world around her in a way that ensures her survival: She can plot a course by bird-flight; make a meal of lemmings; cut up a caribou to fashion a quick sled; sew her own sleep sack; and, of course, figure out how to talk to a wolf.

Attempted Rape Knots Banners' Knickers

George: Just nip his nose

This is one of my favorite reads this year, and I hope twelve-year-old girls everywhere will download Julie onto their Kindles and Nooks (or even buy the book, which is still in print.), perhaps to mark Banned Books Week. Julie was number 32 on the ALA's most challenged book list from 1990-1999, due to a scene where Julie's mentally impaired boy-husband tries to rape her (he doesn't succeed, and from our 2011 vantage point, this scene looks pretty tame). I guess some old folks might object to this view of a wildly independent 13-year-old girl, who refuses to be paired off in an arranged marriage, and who develops a healthy dose of skepticism toward the civilized, white man's ways that are swallowing her native culture. George suggests, at book's end, that the Eskimo's way of life will be lost. Which makes this book--part anthropological study, part adventure narrative, part love story--all the more precious.

The new eBook additionally features an illustrated biography of George, and a collection of her personal photographs. Click here or here to purchase.

Think Your Critique Partners Are Bad?

2011-09-27T09:36:00.000-04:00

I'm stealing this from Giles Hash over at High Aspirations. It's too good not to share.

Celebrating Banned Books Week

2011-09-27T08:32:00.000-04:00

Banned! The Higher Power of Lucky

It might just be the one book that made me want to write children's literature (Okay, maybe the exact equation is more like: HP of Lucky + The Kneebone Boy + Freak the Mighty + Holes = Gail Shepherd chained to a desk trying to channel the 12-year-old mind). By the time I even got to the offending word on page one, I was totally hooked. In Susan Patron's Newbery-winning piece of genius, The Higher Power of Lucky, we come upon 10-year-old Lucky Trimble, "crouched in a wedge of shade behind the dumpster" eavesdropping on a 12-Step meeting. Short Sammy is explaining how he hit rock bottom.

Sammy told of the day when he had drank half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all day in his parked '62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake biting his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

Scrotum! Scrotum, scrotum, scrotum, scrotum, scrotum! The word launched a raging debate among librarians in 2007, and school libraries all over the country declined to put the book on their shelves. Some compared Patron--a librarian herself--to shock-jock Howard Stern, saying she and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, were just pushing to see how far they could go for the fun of it. Never mind that The Higher Power of Lucky is one of the smartest, most joyful, most brilliant children's books ever -- destined to become a classic. Never mind that the word is a perfectly respectable term for a body part -- and that we're talking about a dog. And never mind that Lucky, probably like most kids, doesn't know what the word means. But she thinks it sounds like something you might cough up when you're sick, "something medical and secret, but also important."

In an interview that year, Patron called the flapdoodle "a form of arrogance" on the part of librarians, who ought to be curators, not decidinators: "Our job as librarians is to connect kids with books and information," she said. It's for parents to decide what their own children should be reading from the larger pool.

It's Banned Books Week, folks. Go buy yourself one and read it to any kids you have handy. UPDATE: And please read Sommer Leigh's incredible, eloquent essay on why even the grittiest books for teenagers are so vitally important.

Dan Harmon's Plot Embryo

2011-09-26T08:56:00.000-04:00

I've been obsessing about story structure lately. So I was glad to find, in this month's Wired magazine, a piece about Dan Harmon, the 38-year-old creator of the cult-sitcom Community. Harmon has invented plot circles, which he calls "embryos;" they share some similarities to the plot clocks Joyce Sweeney and Jamie Morris have come up with. I actually prefer the Sweeney/Morris version, but I think Harmon's vision is a useful one too. Harmon says this story structure is so "tattooed on his brain" that he can't not see it when he watches a movie, hears a song, or reads a book. Here's the breakdown on how it works:

1. The character is in her comfort zone when the story opens.
2. We learn she wants something.
3.She lands in an unfamiliar situation.
4. She adapts to the unfamiliar situation.
5. She gets what she wants (more or less)
6. But pays a heavy price for it.
7. She returns to the familiar situation.
8. Having changed.

Harmon: Plotting
a better pie chart

It should be noted that these pie wedges conform to percentages of your story, whether you're counting in words, pages, or minutes. So in this model, we ought to learn what your MC wants by the end of the first quarter.

Let's say you have a 250 page novel. Each pie wedge, then, represents about 31 pages. Halfway through, on page 125, your character ought to have adapted to her unfamiliar situation. She's going to be paying a heavy price somewhere around page 187.

Obviously, nobody is holding you to these exact page counts. You can play with it. But I think Harmon would argue that if you play too far, you've destroyed his "embryo." Harmon himself would, at this point, throw it out and start over.

See yet another four-part story structure by clicking here. And here's today's blog hop:

A Writing Joke from Hell

2011-09-23T11:20:00.000-04:00

I'm not doing a real post today, because I'm planning to spend a full day on my new ms. Anyway, this joke seemed appropriate:

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell.
She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.
"Oh my," said the writer. "Let me see heaven now."
A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.
"Wait a minute," said the writer. "This is just as bad as hell!"
"Oh no, it's not," replied an unseen voice. "Here, your work gets published."

Have a great weekend!

INCREDIBLE New Product: Book!

2011-09-22T15:18:00.001-04:00

Querying for Emotion

2011-09-22T08:29:00.000-04:00

Querying an agent? Make her swoon.

We talked yesterday about how to forge an emotional connection between yourself and your concept question as a way to make your writing more powerful and true.

But there's another sort of emotional connection we'll have to make when our novels are finished--the connection between our query and our dream agent.

Over on her kidlit blog, Mary Kole put this clearly. She says she wants a query to make her care. Well and good. But she's talking about more than showing high stakes and conflict, or teasers about the troubled backstory of our MCs. What Kole is asking for is a gripping, powerful emotional connection that occurs through a finely wrought combination of language and storytelling.

Kole: Looking for Love

"I want to feel something," Kole says. "Even if it is just a stirring of feeling or concern or nervousness or longing. Most queries fail to elicit even one feeling (other than boredom)."

What Kole is asking for here is a pretty tall order. It's a little like being told: I want you to walk into a room and make me fall in love with you. You have exactly 60 seconds. Go.

But the order is even taller. You're going to walk into the room at the same moment with 100 other people. And they'll all be trying to make the agent fall in love with them. And all you know about the agent you're courting is what's on her blog and her list of clients. Now go.

Querying for emotion appears to reverse what I heard last weekend at my plotting workshop: That what agents and publishers are looking for, above all, is good stories. Not so. The what happens ought to elicit the powerful emotional response. Keep it in mind.

Now go forth and revise your queries.

Do You Connect With Your Concept?

2011-09-20T18:32:00.000-04:00

Rockin' Around the Plot Clock
I just spent an amazing weekend with a dozen other writers, holed up in a house in Mount Dora, Florida. We dedicated 48+ hours of workshop time to thinking about plot.

I did a pretty good job plotting my first novel by the seat of my pants (I went back in revision and created a detailed step sheet), but I never really felt like I "got" plot. No matter how many craft books I read on the subject, how to structure a novel for maximum impact (and I mean, I wanted it to kill) just wasn't gelling for me.

After this weekend, consider me gelled. I get how the plot points fit together now, and how they ought to resonate off each other. I merely had to spend some time with Joyce Sweeney and Jamie Morris's brilliantly simple Plot Clock. The Plot Clock features in most of the Sweeney/Morris Next Level Weekend Craft Intensives, and I can't recommend these workshops too highly).

Sweeney and Morris:
High Concept

But there were other epiphanies.

One was the recognition of my personal, emotional connection to the concept question we students wrote for our WIPs.

Your concept, as Sweeney and Morris see it, is best phrased as a universal question. If all goes well, your main character will answer it. The concept questions we came up with from picture books sounded something like this:

"If I am different from what my parents expect of me, will they still love me?" (The Little Matador).
or:
"How do you go about getting something that seems impossible?" (Tia Isa Wants a Car).

The best thing you can do for yourself as a writer--or do for your work--is to forge an unbreakable connection between your deepest self and your concept question. It should be a question you burn to answer. That passion will translate to your protagonist.

Once I understood the grip my concept question had on me, the way I could look down into it and see myself mirrored there, I knew the novel I'd started writing this month was going to fly.

So think about this: Have you written a concept question for your novel? And if so, how true and deep is your connection to it?

Amy Shaw Publishes MeeGenius Picture Book App

2011-09-19T13:13:00.000-04:00

A wonderful announcement:

My friend and workshop-mate Amy Shaw has just published the most amazingly imaginative picture book on MeeGenius. If you don't know this outfit, they make interactive online books (apps available for a variety of platforms) that help kids learn to read by highlighting words as the books are read aloud. The illustrations by Susan G. Robinson are beautiful, and they're clearly open to extraordinary storytelling. Amy's book is about a creature that's half Seguaro cactus and half Pacific octopus, who has a hard time making friends. You could say he's a little prickly. MeeGenius! books are a bargain at $2.99.

The Great Gays in YA Controversy: A Summary

2011-09-16T09:27:00.001-04:00

Who will rep the next
Will Grayson?

If you happened to be on another planet this week, you missed the Great Gays in YA Controversy bubbling away in the blog-and-twittersphere. I won't go into the gory details: You can read the original article from the Publisher's Weekly blog. The gist is this: Two authors argue that an unnamed agency tried to "straighten" their gay characters as a condition for representation. They further argue that a sort of subtle intimidation operates within the system to discourage YA authors from writing gay characters.

You can check out agent Michael Bourret's two cents on the subject (he also passed on the novel). And then the unnamed agents outed themselves, under a bit of pressure. Agent Joanna Volpe, speaking for the Nancy Coffey Agency, was one of the people who allegedly tried Conversion Therapy on said gay characters.

Volpe says the agency wanted the novel revised from YA to Middle Grade, and two (or maybe three) of the viewpoint characters cut. The authors demurred. Finally, the authors have responded to Volpe's response.

Some gay YAs make
it through the gantlet

Hoax? Or misunderstanding? Lies? Or Counterlies? Anybody with any sophistication knows that the "truth" in matters of the heart (and this controversy certainly qualifies) is as complexly layered as an English trifle.

What will come of this controversy, I hope, is a public reckoning on the subject. I truly feel for all the parties. Publishing is a business, and as Bourret points out, novels with gay protagonists just don't sell as well as their straight counterparts (I seriously doubt if this is true, though, for novels with secondary gay characters.) But gay teens need to see themselves represented in fiction. All I can say is, it's a brave soul who jumps into this fray.

Nancy Coffey agents wanted authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith to revise their manuscript from YA to middle grade. I find this baffling -- to do that, they'd have to excise all the sexuality, of course, but to my mind Middle Grade is to Young Adult as Apples is to Oranges.

And then, another secret, selfish, thought was wriggling around in my brain. You mean, Nancy Coffey Agency thought the novel needed THIS much work, essentially an entire rewrite, and they were STILL willing to consider it? With me and all my hopeful sisters and brothers out here, madly polishing our WIPs to tatters? Seriously?

And then I banished that thought, as unworthy.

Ann Patchett on the PRACTICE of Writing

2011-09-15T08:49:00.000-04:00

Patchett: No getaway
from practice.

A nifty outfit called Byliner is publishing excellent original e-titles in miniature, and Ann Patchett's memoir, part writer's craft, part subtle encouragement, part autobiography is more than a bargain at $2.99 for the "Kindle single."

The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life weighs in at 195 KBs and is meant to be read in one sitting. But you'll want to spend many sittings with this little book, not least for the support Patchett offers aspiring writers, and the no-nonsense "get back on track, you nitwit" advice she dishes out. When you stray, she reminds us, remember: Good writing comes down to practice:

"It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entemological specimen, is achieved through regular, disciplined practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools and discipline to bring it out."

and

"If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish but because you long to learn to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story. Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment: the only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. We must get them all out of our system...

You've heard the advice a thousand times, but maybe never as eloquently, as Patchett keeps circling back to it in widening gyres.

And now here's a funny story that happened to a blogging friend of mine, Joanna Marple, and a famous children's author, Kathleen Duey, only this week:

Duey: Go forth
and Tweet no more.

Duey tweeted a cry for help in the form of a contest: Would fellow twitterers please tell her something that would make her get back to work?

Because Duey was procrastinating, she couldn't seem to focus, her mind was a billion miles away from her work-in-progress.

Duey said she would choose the best advice she got and give the winning tweeter a 30-minute page critique. So Duey got dozens (I don't know, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands) of entries. Kind tweets, stern tweets, wise tweets, snarky tweets, earnest tweets. But she finally picked Joanna's. Which read, in full: "To quote a friend, 'the secret to writing novels is to get off Twitter.'"

And nary a tweet has been heard from Kathleen Duey, YA fantasy writer, since.

*crickets.*

Is Your Book Like No Other?

2011-09-14T12:27:00.000-04:00

Mirror, mirror, what do you see?
I think I look like Harry P.

A tweet from literary agent Amy Boggs has got me thinking, lately. She said: "When a query says: 'I haven't seen a book involving this before,' I can usually think of 3 such books off the top of my head."

The notion of "comparables," in pub biz parlance -- those (preferably bestselling, famous) books that are enough like yours, but not too much like, has been occupying me lately, and also occupying both of my crit partners. One partner's agent asked her for a list of comparables, and she had a hard time thinking of any. The other, who is in the process of querying, is worried that her novel is too much like another (bestselling, famous) one with a similar subject -- so her job is to set it apart. In literature, of course, there's nothing new under the sun, and there's not a thing wrong with that. But the notion of comparables when it comes to marketing is particularly slippery -- because what, precisely, are we comparing?

Could be like my book?
Should be like my book?

Storyline? Genre? Theme? Characters? Mood? Some nebulous audience? If you're writing paranormal, can you compare your book to a contemporary romance if the conflict is similar? Is a sci-fi quest story "like" a quest story set in a fairy world? Are all "fast paced adventures" genetically similar? Is it possible that avid readers of Rick Riordan's mythic fantasies might connect with your (ghost/mystery/sports-themed) middle grade novel, too?

When I was helping one of my crit partners look for comparables, I found stories that shared some of her themes, but not her settings or storyline. And researching comparables for my own book (science fantasy), I found lots of books that had ecological themes, or super bright kids, but few of them were in my genre.

And it's an important subject to think about, because you may want to include comparables in your query (some agents like to see this, some don't care), and you'll probably want to mention comps if you're pitching verbally at a conference. So, fellow novelists and aspiring novelists -- how much do you think your WIP shares with other books out there? Is it something you're conscious of, or something you've put off thinking about? Asked to come up with "three books off the top of your head," like Amy Boggs, could you do it?

Writing the Second Novel: Three Things to Consider

2011-09-13T09:10:00.000-04:00

I "started" novel number two this month, although I'm realizing that the verb "to start" is a slippery one. But I'm finding it useful to change up my process this time.

Here's what I'm doing differently:

1) I've got myself a new Scrivener program, which is going to make my research organize itself. Well, I hope so, anyway. Because novel number two is historical (Vietnam War), I'm going to have copious notes to keep track of. So far, I love Scrivener, which has all kinds of nifty gadgets for organizing characters, scenes, and locations, and umpteen methods of outlining. Anybody else out there in blog-land using it?

2) I'm starting out with an intensive "Next Level Plotting Workshop" run by Joyce Sweeney and Jamie Morris. The workshop runs this weekend, from Friday through Sunday in Mount Dora, Florida, and Joyce says we're barely going to budge from our computers for the whole 48+ hours, so I expect to come back with not only a good chunk of writing, but an outline or plan that I'm proud of. I'm not sayin' I'll stick with it (novel number one was written seat-of-the-pants.) But I have very good intentions.

3) In spite of the fact that marriages between journals and humans are not yet legal in the State of Florida, I'm unofficially joined at the hip with my (paper) notebook. I plan to take it everywhere, so whenever I have a brilliant idea, Lo, I also have a place to immortalize it. So many of those Eureka! moments got lost during the writing of my last novel -- they got scrawled down on cocktail napkins or matchbook covers (then promptly misplaced) or not written down at all. This time, no matter how dumb or misguided the notion seems at the moment, it's going into the notebook (a very pretty leather one with its own little strap). I can sort the wheat from the chaff later, when I'm recollecting my emotion in tranquility.

So, anybody else changing things up for their second (or third, or fourth, or fifth) shot at literary greatness? Tell me your tricks.

Interview With Author Louis K. Lowy

2011-09-12T12:31:00.000-04:00

Lowy: Penning a mid-50s riff on flying
saucers and commie paranoia

If I’d been an agent pitchingLouis K. Lowy’s novel Die Laughing, Imight have called it Mad Men meets King of Comedy meets The Outer Limits. As Lowy notes in thisinterview, he spent a lot of time researching his 1956 setting for his firstnovel, and the period details—from the “burnt orange cigarette slacks” andblack beret of his leading lady to his main character’s quest for TV fame (SamE, a stand-up comic, is slated for “The Steve Allen Show” when things start togo downhill fast)--are exacting and very, very entertaining. Lowy’s work hasappeared in, among others, Coral LivingMagazine, New Plains Review, Ethereal Tales Magazine, Pushing Out the Boat, TheMacGuffin Magazine, and The ChaffeyReview. He’s been awarded a Florida Individual Artists Fellowship, and helives in Miami Lakes.

Lowy will be participating in a panel sponsored by Writers'Network of South Florida

Author Publicity: Promoting Your Book

Yay You're Published!Now Comes the Hard Part 

Wed. Sept 21, at 6:30pm

Broward County Main Library, 6th Floor, 100 S Andrews Ave., 

Fort Lauderdale, FL  

RSVP to: contact@writersnetworksofla.org

On Oct. 17 at 6:30p.m., Lowy will be reading at

Park Road Books

4139 Park Rd., Charlotte, NC

(704) 525-9239

Questions for Louis K. Lowy:

You were a firefighterturned fiction writer, is that right? Had you written fiction before, or wereyou really a newbie?

That’s kind of the story. Besides being a firefighter, Iplayed in bands nearly all my life, mainly original music. I wrote a vast majorityof the lyrics to the songs we played, so I was always dabbling with words. Ialso studied film a bit, too. I wrote a couple of short screenplays and onefeature length. As far as novel and short story writing goes, yes, I was prettymuch a newbie.

How did you settle on a genre? Didhumorous science fiction call to you, or did you consider and discard othergenres before settling in with alien abductions and stand-up comics?

I’m not sure that I did settle on a genre. Die Laughing has many elements in it,including humor, noir, mystery, and suspense. Because it also hasaliens, it’s easiest to label it sci-fi. I’m okay with that because labels helpto settle things easier in a reader’s mind.

Why’d you decide toset Die Laughing in the 50s? Theperiod details are fabulous. What kind of research did you do?

Thank you for the compliment. To answer the first part ofyour question, it has to do with my love of sci-fi and horror flicks from thatera like the insanely bad ones like Robot Monster (shot in 3D!) and the insanely good ones like The Day the Earth Stood Still. I also consider the 1950’s to be anexciting era, what with the Joe McCarthy communist witch hunts, the Little RockHigh School racial showdown, the threat of the atom bomb, the birth of rock ‘nroll, and the golden age of live television. I thought it would be intriguingto try and capture all those elements.

To answer the second part of your question – I did a heck ofa lot of research. I started by listening to rockabilly and rhythm and bluesrecordings from that period to get in the mood. I also purchased a slew offashion books that delved into ’50s dress. Of course I researched thevernacular, which was coolsville, daddy-o!

My story takes place in 1956 so I had to be sure that everyitem mentioned existed in that time period, and not in 1957 and beyond. I’m thetype of writer who doesn’t like to ‘fill in the blank’ and come back to itlater after the story is finished. I’d literally stop my story to research,say, what a TV station looked like in 1957 if my characters were about to enterone, or if someone was shaving, what kind of razor and shaving cream they wouldhave had in 1956.

Because my characters do a lot of traveling I was luckyenough to have found a 1954 road atlas on Ebay. It became my best friend when Iwas mapping their course out.

It was a meticulous process, but one that was at the sametime interesting.

Is Die Laughing the first of a series, ora stand alone novel? What's your next book?

I plan an eventual sequel to Die Laughing, though most people who’ve read the book can’t seehow.

My next novel, which is a couple of revisions away fromcompletion is a complete turnaround. It’s about a 49-year-old fired musicteacher who struggles to get her life back through bicycle racing. I’m alsoworking on a third book, this one’s another sci-fi, but it’s still a bowl ofpasta. It jumps in time and place.

Do you plot in advanceor write seat of the pants?

Will Sam E meet
Steve A?

Both. Die Laughingstarted without a concrete plot but with a general idea, though about a quarterof the way I knew my ending, which helped a great deal. As I wrote on Isolidified the plot. My second novel about the school teacher had a solidoutline. The third novel – the one jumping time and place – started as adiscarded short story. When I picked it up again and decided to make it anovel, I wrote a couple of weeks, hit a wall, and spent another week or twoworking out an outline. Given a choice I would much rather work with a plot oroutline than by the seat of my pants. It’s difficult to work them out in thebeginning, but once you have direction the writing goes quicker, smoother, andis a lot less stressful.

What’s your revisionprocess like? Have you ever tossed out a whole book, or a large part of one?How do you judge what’s not working?

Yes! The first draft of DieLaughing I pretty much ditched because after I completed it I wasintroduced to Joseph Campbell’s The Powerof Myth. In it he outlines characteristics of the hero mythologicalstories. Some of those things I knew needed to be in my story. Once I startedto add them, it changed the way my own protagonist behaved. He became moreproactive, which was good but which also caused my first draft to fall apart.It was hard to abandon something I’d worked so hard on, but in my heart I knewit was the right decision, and in the end it was the correct thing to do.

Do you read a lot of sci-fi? Who inspiresyou as a writer?

I read a lot of sci-fi in high school and college. I wasalso a huge comic book fan and grew up on sci-fi, horror, and super-herostories.

What piece of advice would you givefiction writers hoping to break in? What piece of advice helped you the mostwhen you were hoping to break in?

The best advice I can give to anyone trying to achieve theirdreams is to work hard, have a thick skin, and believe in yourself. "One piece of advice that I always rememberwas given by a college instructor who was teaching screenwriting, she said, “Awriter writes.” It’s simple, but speaksvolumes."

I know you’re participatingin a panel this month about self-marketing for fiction writers. What sorts ofself-marketing do you do, and what form works best for you?

Because this is my first novel, it’s been a great learningexperience. Specifically, I’ve been doing the gamut, from online networkingthrough Facebook, blogging, Goodreads, and my personal website. I’ve beenmaking contact with reviewer and interviewer sites.

I’ve also discovered that – given a choice – there’s nosubstitute for face-to-face contact. Reading before a group of people orwalking into a store that sells books and introducing yourself and your novel goesa long, long way to establishing a relationship. With self-marketing, I think theauthor is the best weapon in a writer’s arsenal.

UPDATED: Paradoxy Wins Two Bloggy Awards!

2011-09-09T08:14:00.000-04:00

Thanks to generous fellow blogger and writer Cortney Pearson, who was kind enough to recognize my new blog, just under a month old, with a Versatile and a Sweet award. By accepting these awards I agree to:

1. Thank and link to the person who nominated me. Check
2. Share 7 random facts about myself. -- I've previously posted 10, click here to see them
3. Pass the award to 5 blogger friends. ~~Will do~~ Done.
4. Contact and congratulate the nominated blogs. ~~Will do~~ Done.

I'm formatting a scintillating interview with sci-fi author Louis Lowy today, and hope to have it posted soon. And I'm thinking about a post on self-publishing: pros, cons, and the changing consensus (or lack of it) on the topic. There's a tremendous amount of buzz on the net about self-publishing lately, including from respected agents. Anybody who's had experience with self-publishing, please email me or comment, because I'd love to pick your brain.

~~Check back tomorrow to see who I passed these lovely awards to!~~

And The Award Winners Are:

But Lo: I seem to have squeezed in an hour to pay forward these blog awards, to writers I GENUINELY admire. The blogs below are absolute founts of info: they are wise, they are witty, they have tons of links, and I learn something every time I click over to them:

1) The bluestocking http://thebluestockingblog.blogspot.com/

I don't know who the bluestocking is, she appears to maintain her anonymity. But lawd, she is smart.

2) Laura Barnes http://laurabwriter.blogspot.com/, Laura is a marketing maven and writer, and her tips and tricks for social networking have been invaluable to me.

3) Lynda R. Young http://lyndaryoung.blogspot.com/ W.I.P It. Not least because I love the name of her blog, but also because she's a deep thinker on craft.

4) Susan Kaye Quinn http://www.susankayequinn.com/, Conjuring Tales for Young Minds. She's a former rocket scientist. 'Nuff said?

5) Sommer Leigh, http://sommerleigh.com/, Tell Great Stories. Because she does.

Thanks to all you peeps for increasing my net-pleasure.

Interview with Author Deborah Sharp

2011-09-08T09:55:00.000-04:00

Celebrating Day 3 of Random Acts of Publicity

Sharp: Training her lens on a disappearing Florida

Mystery writer Deborah Sharp is a former reporter for USA Today. She tradedthe sad stories of the news business for writing mysteries, set in a little-known rodeo-and-ranches slice of her native Florida.Her books are funny, with a Southern-fried edge: Think Stephanie Plumwith a plate of BBQ and a couple of cousins named Bubba.

Deborah's “Mace Bauer Mysteries'’ debuted with Mama Does Time (Midnight Ink, 2008). To research her second, Mama Rides Shotgun (2009), she saddled up for a cross-Florida, six-day trailride. Dressing up as a tacky bride was almost as grueling for2010's Mama Gets Hitched. For her fourth book, Mama Sees Stars, Deborah plans several red-carpet soirees in honor of her titlecharacter's grab at Hollywood stardom. Trouble is, Mama's big closeupmight just end in murder.

Deborah’s short fiction and essays have appeared nationally,and she's been interviewed on the "Today" show. She lives in Ft.Lauderdale with husband Kerry Sanders, a TV reporter. No kids. No pets. Theyhad goldfish once. Turned out badly.

Visit Deborah at www.deborahsharp.com; or direct your lonely-heart and etiquette questions to Mama at ask-mama.blogspot.com. For a limited time you can download Mama Does Time for FREE by clicking here (if you have Kindle) or here (if you have a Nook). Lots of events this month and next: a couple of big galas to launch Mama Sees Stars in Delray and Fort Lauderdale, and Sharp will be speaking on a panel about marketing yourself as an author. Click here for the full schedule.

Questions for Deborah Sharp

You were a journalist first, and only turned to writingfiction at age 50, is that right? Had you fooled around with writingfiction before, or were you really a newbie?

Hollywood lands in
lil 'ole Himmarshee

I fooled around with fiction only minimally. Likemost reporters, I had that Manuscript-That-Shall -Not-Be-Namedsitting in a dark drawer for about 10 years. I had no idea what I wasdoing. Shifts in point-of-view all over the place, it clocked in at about100 pages (or a third of what it should have been), and the maincharacter was a dark loner, a hard-hitting reporter on the trail of a serialkiller (gee, how original!).

When I turned 50, I grew weary of writing sad stories andquit the paper. Now, I had the time to finish that long-neglectedmss, but I didn't like the character anymore. Bad sign. If Ididn't like her, who would? I got myself into some writing classes (Thankyou, Joyce Sweeney and the Thursday night group!), started going toconferences, read a lot more, and learned how to write fiction. I knew Iwanted to do something much lighter and COMPLETELY different fromnews. I spotted an ad in a newspaper of an older woman driving aturquoise convertible, and the idea for Mama just popped into my head.What if, I thought, there was a body inthe trunk of that shiny blue convertible? And what if Mama couldn't explain how it gotthere? I wrote a short story (my first-ever), which morphed into Mama Does Time, which then became the series.

What skills did you bring with you from journalism tofiction? What skills did you have to learn from scratch?

Discipline, observation, research skills, a tendencyto eavesdrop, and a good ear for dialogue are some of the bestthings I learned from being a reporter. On the other hand, I did haveto learn how NOT to reveal my entire story in my first paragraph. Nota good

thing for a mystery writer! Seriously, I had tolearn to e-x-p-a-n-d my writing, especially coming from USA Today, the home ofbrevity. Writing in scene, putting in characters' thoughts, emotions,and motivations ... all these things were new to me, as was actual

plotting. Remember, newspaper reporters who make things uprisk getting fired. Fiction writers get rewarded for it.

How did you settle on a genre? Did cozy mysteries call toyou, or did you consider and discard other genres before settling inwith Mace Bauer and her Mama?

After that initial misstep with the dark manuscript,I never really considered any other genre but light-heartedmysteries. That's what I like to read, and I knew it was what I wanted towrite. My books are ''cozies'' in the sense the violence is not bloodyor graphic, no one gets autopsied on the page, and they'refairly PG-13, but I usually call them ''traditional'' or ''funny.''

"Cozy to me conjures up crochet-covered teapots and oldladies with cats (not that there's anything wrong with that!). Mymiddle-Florida mama and her three grown girls are a little rougher-edged.The tomboyish main character Mace, who works in a nature parkand traps 'gators and other nuisance critters on the side, could crushsome of those tea-sipping, cat-petting protagonists under her workboot."

Got any idea how many books you’ll run with Mace? Do youhave ideas kicking around for future series or stand-alone novels?

The newest release, Mama Sees Stars, is my fourthbook. I’m contracted to write # 5, “Mama Gets Trashed,’’ which will beout in 2013. I have lots of ideas for more. In fact, think of atitle, and I could probably write a book: Mama Hunkers Down (a hurricanethreatens, events in the storm shelter go murderously wrong); Mama Hitsthe Jackpot (Mama and Mace sail off on a gambling cruise,someone comes up snake-eyes); Mama Goes Wild (Mama joins Mace at a naturepreserve, where the wildlife is the least-dangerous threat) . . . Stopme when you've heard enough.

I still love the characters, and have no plans to doanything else. I'm too lazy and uni-tasking to add another series, or writea stand-alone, like a lot of my colleagues do. I do have arecurring nightmare, though. Suppose the series goes on so long that Iget crazy

fans like Kathy Bates in ''Misery?'' I can almosthear the shouting as my kneecaps shatter: "You KILLED off the Mamacharacter! I'll kill you!''

What’s your technique for plotting your novels? Do you beginwith an ending? (I’m assuming you’re not a seat of the pantser,since few mystery writers are, but if you are, tell us about that).

Good assumption; I'm the opposite of a seat of thepants writer. I usually do know the ending when I start, thoughthat can change. I also write long, detailed outlines. They're 35pages or so (for a 300-plus page book), complete with fully fleshed outdialogue

in some scenes. Other parts of the outline might be a bitsketchier, for example, I'd instruct myself, ''Mace and Carlos need tofight in this chapter,'' or, ''Note the sights, sounds, smells of thewoods here,'' so I don't forget to put in some descriptionoccasionally.

Your central Florida settings are so richly detailed(including the characters that people them). Are you a native Floridian?How much is Himmarshee based on a real place?

Thanks for that nice compliment. One of the things Itry to do in the books is show a still-wild, natural part of Floridathat most people don't even know we have. I am a native, born in Fort Lauderdale. My dad's people were the Griffins, among theearly pioneers in Davie, Fla. I grew up riding my horse throughorange groves and ranches in then-rural Davie, on land that'smostly planted now in strip malls and subdivisions. Himmarshee is abouthalf the feeling I remember from those days, and about half today'sOkeechobee, a ranching town just north of the lake. I was going toactually set the series in Okeechobee, where my husband and I have someland along the Kissimmee River. But once the Wal-Mart moved in, Irealized the little community had gotten too big for what I wanted tocreate in the books.

What’s your revision process like? Have you ever tossed outa whole book, or a large part of one? How do you judge what’s notworking?

See above, about the Manuscript-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. That one was really just too hopeless to revise, and I vow hereand now I will never self-publish that stinker for the Amazon Kindle,like some of my mystery colleagues are doing with early ''work'' fromtheir pre-published days. Some stuff is meant to stay in thedrawer.

I know this breaks a cardinal rule new writers are taught,but I tend to revise as I write. It's the way I learned it in the newsbusiness, and I still write that way. That's kind of easy for me, sinceI usually do my first draft in long-hand. (I know, I know.Dinosaur.) As I'm typing it into the computer, that's already a seconddraft, since I'm improving/revising as I go. As to how to know what's NOTworking, I read out loud as I write, and can generally hear ifsomething is clunky and needs to go. I also still occasionally attendwriting group, and other writers' ears on your stuff is a big help.Before I send my mss's to the publisher, I give them to a few trustedreaders, including my agent, a former newspaper editor ofmine, and my husband, whose TV-trained attention span is quick to tire ifsomething isn't working.

What piece of advice would you give fiction writers hopingto break in? What piece of advice helped you the most when you werehoping to break in?

Here are my top 3 tips for novice writers:

1. Join a writers' group for thebenefits of sharing your work with others and learning from critiques.

2. Try to attend seminars orwriting conferences held by professionals in your genre, whether it's travel writing, romance novels, journalism...whatever. Joining Mystery Writers of Americaand attending the Florida chapter's annual national conference, Sleuthfest, was a huge help to me. In fact, I met myMidnight Ink editor at one of the conference's pitch sessions. Like inany business, networking is a valuable tool for meeting peoplewho may help to get you published.

3. This one seems obvious, butwrite. Paul Theroux says: "You can't WANT to be a writer. You have to be one.''

What do you do when you needinspiration?

I honestly find the best way to get inspired is justto sit in a chair and clear your head. Then, start writing ... even ifit doesn't have anything to do with your current project.Sometimes, I just sit in a public place and watch people, writing downwhat they're

doing, wearing, saying. Eventually, that gets my creativejuices flowing and I find I'm back to my project. That, and looking at my bank account does it, too!

What's the weirdest compliment you've ever gottenfrom a reader?

One man told me he loved the fact my chapters are soshort. I thought that must be because the pacing heightens thenarrative tension, each chapter leaves him wanting more, someblah-blah literary stuff ....

''Nah,'' he interrupted. "My doctor's got me on ahigh-fiber diet ....''

Uh-oh.

"Every morning I take your book into the can with me. Ican read a quick chapter, do my business, and get on with my day.''

Uh, thanks?

And thanks to you, Gail, forinviting me here today. I've enjoyed it!

An Interview with Author Donna Gephart

2011-09-06T20:20:00.000-04:00

Celebrating Day 2 of Darcy Pattison's Random Acts of Publicity.

Gephart: Embracing her inner nerd.

Imet Donna Gephart through a lucky accident: We were stuck in line for a bus atlast year’s SCBWI-Florida conference. Which was my great good fortune, sinceshe invited me to come to the monthly SCBWI critique group she co-hosts inPalm Beach Gardens (the group just celebrated its seventh anniversary). Donnahas made her mark with gut-bustingly funny middle grade novels about smart,quirky kids; her newest book, Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen, about agirl determined to get on the TV quiz show Jeopardy!, comes out inMarch from Delacorte Press/Random House (pre-order it at Amazon and Barnesand Noble). Her most recent novel, How to Survive Middle School, received a starredreview from Kirkus and School Library Journal (click here for the singing hamster video). Her firstbook, As If Being 12-3/4 Isn't Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running for President won the Sid Fleischman Humor Award. Visit Donna at http://www.donnagephart.com, where you'll also find out she makes a mean lemon square and apple cake.

Questions for Donna Gephart:

I’malways curious how writers choose the genre they write in (or does the genrechoose them?) Did you try writing other genres of fiction before you settledinto humorous middle grade, or did this category appeal to you strongly fromthe get-go?

Itried everything from picture books through adult novels. Thetwelve-year-old voice was the one that rang true, the one that worked. Isuppose there's a twelve-year-old lurking inside me, and she apparently has alot to say!

What’s the hardest thing about writing for kids?

Ilove writing for kids. And the hardest thing is probably revising untilyour head wants to spin around in different directions, but doing it anyway. The ability to do substantive revisions as often as necessary is thedifference between being published or not, whether writing for children oradults.

Intoday’s market, what do you think an aspiring kidlit writer really needs todo/know/focus on to be successful? Is just writing a fantastic book enough?

"Ithink it's essential to know what's been done in your genre."

If it'spicture books, KNOW picture books from past and present. If it's middlegrade novels, make sure you've read classics and contemporary novels by thescores. For YA, thumb through Twilight and you're good. Kidding! We have to know what came before so we can be stunninglyoriginal in our own writing. We have to create something so compelling aneditor can't say, "No." Our storytelling must be exceptional. I learned a lot about the art of telling stories from Robert McKee'sbook Story.

You’reworking on your fourth book now. In what way is writing yourfourth harder or easier than the first one?

It'sgood to know that I am able to write and revise a publishable novel. Andit's good to know I already have an agent and an editor waiting to read my newbook. But the writing -- starting a new project and keeping with it --doesn't get easier.

Dothe ideas for your novels come to you whole, or do you test and discard manybefore you start actually writing the first draft? Have you everdiscarded a partly (or entirely) written book?

Hmm. There is a 400-page novel in a filing cabinet that my agent nicely toldme wouldn't sell. She was right. I'm grateful for her guidance. I have reams of pages that never made it into a book, but they arenecessary for the two hundred or so pages that do make it in. I believeno effort is wasted; it's all practice.

Which issues of craft have been most challenging for you?

Eventhough it's short, I have a hard time with the form of a picture book. It's uniquely challenging, but very rewarding. As far as novels, Ihave a hard time with the logic sometimes. I might have three Tuesdayshappen in a row or have winter follow summer. And I don't write fantasy! I'm always caught up in the story and lose track of those details.

Yourmain characters are sort of nerdy, or super smart, or “outsiders” in somesense. Can you talk a bit about that? Do you have a favorite among your“babies”?

"I'msort of nerdy and felt like an outsider when I was younger. It takes awhile to find one's tribe."

Who knew those feelings of not belonging wouldmake for great fiction? I feel like I write for those young people, whowere like me as a child, in need of a friend, even if it's in the form of abook. Especially if it's in the form of a book. Now, I embrace mynerdiness and wear it proudly.

Ilove the characters in all of my books, but Olivia in my new book, OliviaBean, Trivia Queen, is probably the most autobiographical. And I'mmadly in love with Olivia's little "bother" Charlie, who spouts grosstrivia and dresses as Armpit Bacteria Man.

If you couldn't be a writer, what would you be doing?

I'dbe a children's librarian and writing secretly (because I have to write). Or maybe a food taster at Ben & Jerry's. Or Brad Pitt'spersonal assistant. Or . . .

An Interview With Author Meg Medina

2011-09-06T08:41:00.000-04:00

Launching Darcy Pattison's Random Acts of Publicity:

Meg, reading Tia Isa

I first met Meg Medina in the mid-'90s, when she wascollaborating with dancer/choreographer Cherie Carson on a theatrical piecebased on the life of her Cuban grandmother. Meg was a journalist for thenow-defunct alt-weekly iCE in PalmBeach County; she also wrote grants for the Center for Creative Education. Butfor as long as I’ve known her, Meg has been passionately and creatively engagedwith the Latino experience, and the joys and difficulties of navigating a bicultural heritage. I was bowled over when I found out she’d turned towriting fiction for children. And I was blown away by the beauty of her debut novel, Milagros: Girl From Away (ChristyOttaviano Books: An Imprint of Henry Holt Books for Young Readers).

Meg followed Milagroswith a picture book, out this summer, Tia Isa Wants a Car (Candlewick Press, Spanish and paperback editions tofollow in 2012). Her young adult novel, THE GIRL WHO COULD SILENCE THE WIND, isforthcoming from Candlewick in March of 2012. Although she still has family in South Florida, she now lives inRichmond, Virginia, with her husband and kids. She’s one of the smartest and most eloquent people I know.

I'm glad to launch Random Acts of Publicity with Meg, since September is also National Hispanic Heritage Month (see Meg's recipe for arroz con pollo, and her author's blog, here, and follow her on Twitter here. I've got a giveaway: a signed copy of Milagrosgoes to a randomly selected commenter on this post. I’ll contactthe lucky winner at the end of the week about how to mail it to you.

Questions for Meg Medina

When I knew you, years ago, you were a journalist andpoet. What attracted you to writing for kids?

It’s been so long since I’ve thought of myself that way, butyou’re right. That’s how I started in writing. In fact, one of my first coverstories was about a man who claimed he could do breast augmentation throughhypnosis. He found his clients atbowling alleys and strip clubs.

I was, and still am, attracted to writing in general, but inthe end, all parts of my life converged around children.

I had been a teacher for many years – a job that I adored. Iwas also a young mother, and I was spending a lot of time reading aloud children’sbooks and stories, which is such a treat. So maybe it was a case of my circumstances,life experience and talents finally converging. When I started to writeMilagros, the character who appeared was a child, and the story that unfoldedwas natural to her. I still write pieces for adults, but the place I am happiestis the world of children’s books.

It’s rare to find an author who writes in all threechildren’s lit categories—you’ve published a middle grade, a picture book, andnow you have a YA forthcoming. Do you have a category you feel most at homewith? Where do you see your next book going?

Several years ago, I attended an SCBWI conference and theadvice was to write a few books in one category before branching out. I sat inthe audience thinking, Uh-oh.

It’s probably greatadvice, but I haven’t done that. I’ve written each story in the format that isbest suited to the tale. The challenge of being this spread out is that youdon’t get to build a readership quickly. But I don’t see how I could have donethings otherwise. Sometimes, a storyneeds the poetic world of picture books; sometimes it needs the meandering timeof a novel. When I feel unsure, I try to remember Sonya Hartnett, one of myheroines in children’s book writing. She refuses to even consider category whenshe’s writing. The story is the story.

Your imaginary settings, Tres Montes and Las Brisas, areso important in Milagros and The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind. Were theybased on real places? How much research did you do about place, time, andculture while you were writing?

I make every place imaginary, although naturally, I pullfrom my own family roots, which are in Cuba. Basically, I try to suggest aregion. Latino culture spans 20 countries, each with its distinct history andworldview. The Latino experience, so tospeak, is really many Latino experiences.

Milagros is closely modeled on the Cuba that my familymissed and idealized after they left in the 1960s. I gave myself permission totake their descriptions and maximize the magic of the place even more. I am notinterested in writing historical fiction – at least not yet. I am interested increating a world for my characters that feels real within the novel.

For Tres Montes, I pulled more from Central America, drawingon broad strokes of the many cultures there and again juxtaposing magic. In the end, what was most important to me wascreating a setting where the earth’s wealth and poverty were all strangelylinked. I tried to write a magical story that touched on the current issues ofwhy young people migrate and the needs that lead them to that dangerous choice.

The concept of the milagro (charm) appears in both yournovels, as the name of your central character, and as the charms given to Soniaas a symbol of her destiny. Why are you occupied with this idea?

I am not a religious person, strictly speaking, but this hasnever stopped me from believing in the miraculous within each person.

Milagros seemed the perfect name for a girl who would haveto cross the world in the care of stingrays. But, as you know, milagros are alsoreligious charms used in Central and South America. They’re left as offeringson altars, etc., when people pray for a specific need. You might have a littlemetal mouth milagro if you have a toothache, or a car charm if you are going ona long trip and hope for safety.

"I love the idea of a physical representationof our hopes to remind us not to keep them secret, but to put them out there,literally, for the world to see. Most of getting what you want in life is, after all, sayingit aloud, letting your desire be known."

Are you writing “magic realism?” What does that mean foryou?

I do write in magical realism. It’s the style of so many ofLatin America’s iconic writers, and I love the idea of taking that style andbringing it to bicultural kids, especially those Latinos who are Englishdominant.

To me, magical realism means writing in a style where wefind the magical in the absolutely ordinary moments of our lives. That’s very different from the world-buildingof fantasies, such as Harry Potter.

Are you a careful plotter (in advance of writing) or aseat of the pantser?

I am most definitely a seat of the pantser – in almost everyaspect of life. In terms of writing, I can honestly tell you that the quickestway to kill one of my manuscripts is to ask me to outline what will happen. Itstarts to feel like a checklist and all of my characters get sucked dry.

For me, the joy of writing comes in meeting the charactersand events unexpectedly, the way we face things in real life. You just neverknow who is going to be important. For example, one of the main characters in TheGirl who Could Silence the Wind, is Pancho, a taxi boy. In one of my earlydrafts, he was just one line….a boy waiting to pick up Sonia and her Tía Neliat the plaza. Interestingly, he kept speaking up, showing up in scenes. He keptcharming me with his shyness and humility, until I said, “Bueno, Pancho, comeon then. You’re in.” He is one of my favorite characters in the novel today.

Why did you choose to write your two novels inthird person rather than first? Do you feel you're bucking a trend in YA?

Point of view – what a hassle! I am currently working on afirst person YA called FINDING YAQUI DELGADO. I can tell you, I find firstperson very challenging. It forces me to stay with one character, to seeeverything through her eyes. Some days, I find that extremely limiting. I cansee why YA tends to be first person, though. It’s sensible. Adolescence itselfis sort of a first person experience, very focused on the individual. Still, the beauty of third person is that youcan take a break from one character’s mindset and expand. I also think thatwhen you’re dealing in the more morally complex world of YA, third person has alot to offer the reader. Part of maturing is being able to hold anotherperson’s view in mind. Third person is exactly that.

As for choosing audience, you know, Milagros fit the middlegrade format pretty perfectly – but that was by accident. I had absolutely noclue about any of the parameters before I wrote the novel. Luckily, it wasunder 200 pages. The character was 12. The problems and solution were cast in away that a 12-year-old child would understand them.

When it came to writing The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind,I struggled more. My agent would sometimes say, “Make the characters feelyounger.” An editor who saw an early draft rejected it as being too adult. But in time, I’ve learned that theseconsiderations are often very individual to the editor and to the publishinghouse. Kate Fletcher, my wonderfuleditor at Candlewick, believed in the bones of the story and hung with methrough many, many revisions. To their credit, Candlewick has a long history ofpublishing books that don’t necessarily fit our strict notions of audience. (I’mthinking here of the work of Silas House and again of Sonya Hartnett, two of myfavorites at Candlewick.)

There are guidelines, of course, for those who like morecomfort. Nancy Lamb does a great job of describing the differences of eachcategory in her book The Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Children (WritersDigest Books, 2001).

Who are your favorite fictional characters? What do youread for inspiration?

I don’t have a specific favorite fictional character. Instead, I have a type that I’m drawn to. Ilike the outcast or the pure-hearted person who does something big. It’s notterribly original as far as the world of children’s books go, but it appeals tome.

Almost everything I read is inspirational. I will readLatino authors, of course, but I read everything. My favorite of the past fewmonths is actually an adult novel. It’s Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones, whichwas largely based on her own experiences of being 10 years old during the timethat a serial killer was murdering African American children in Atlanta. She islyrical and deep – and the portraits of each child are really astounding andlovely. Tayari also has Silver Sparrow out, which has been getting good press,too.

One piece of advice you’d offer aspiring kidlit writers?

Work on your craft. Nothing will substitute.

When are you coming to Florida? Soon, we hope?

My mother still lives in Florida, so I do come to the Ft.Lauderdale area pretty often. I’m open to book talk invitations!

10 Not-So-Random Facts About Me

2011-09-02T09:54:00.000-04:00

Right, we know these facts are not random, right? If I were really picking random facts about myself I'd be telling you I spend inordinate hours worrying about my dog's bowel movements (hey, she's really old, okay?).

Blogger campaign buddy Jessica has started a fun get-to-know-each-other game, which I found out about from Joanna (don't ya just think the universe is one big divine web of connectedness? Don't ya?). Rules: Post 10 facts about yourself, link back to Jessica's blog, and leave a link to your own blog in the comments section of this post.

So here goes:

1. People often think I'm aloof, or even snobby, but the fact is, I'm painfully shy. (working very hard on this).

2. Brittle cynical exterior masks mushy heart (see #1. My goal is to reverse this equation before I die -- downy exterior/rock-solid sense of self).

3. I quit high school a month before graduation and went surfing in Puerto Rico, where I lived on peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and coconut milk (kindly supplied by a nice beach-bum with a coconut pick. You have to have a coconut pick if you want coconut milk, which may be another way of saying: Always arm yourself with the right tools, or find somebody who has them).

4. My mom took me to see lots of movies like Night and Fog and Woman in the Dunes when I was 8 or 9, which pretty much explains everything.

5. If I won the lottery I would open a progressive elementary school.

6. When I'm not obsessing about my dog's bowel movements, I am trying to figure out how to be a better person: wiser, stronger, braver, truer.

7. I'm living the life I want.

8. Will always choose savory over sweet. (applies across the board)

9. Jumping out of an airplane was one of my peak experiences. I will NEVER do it again.

10. My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.

Beginning, Middle, and End Blogfest

2011-09-01T14:07:00.001-04:00

Meadows's fix for saggy middles: Blow it up!

Fellow writer-blogger Kate Larkindale is running a Beginning, Middle, and End blogfest. A pretty great idea, since beginnings get a lot of attention among writers in the blogosphere; endings a bit less -- and middles? Least of all. And we do know that middle-of-the-novel sag tends to be a major problem for some writers (not naming any names). See Jodi Meadows's middle-fix tricks here.

I'm not sure how much you can tell from single lines, but it would be cool if one's first, exact middle (check your page count, divide in half, put finger on midpoint), and last line could tell the whole story of a novel. Here's the trio from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

First: Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Middle: "Trillian," he said, "is this sort of thing going to happen every time we use the Improbability Drive?"

Last: "Okay, baby, hold tight," said Zaphod. "We'll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

Sweet! And by the way, I'm LMAO reading this Douglas Adams classic. Pick it up if you need a lift.

And here's a famous kidlit first line quiz that's kind of fun, as long as we're vaguely on the subject.

Ursula Nordstrom: Keeping the Channel Open

2011-09-01T08:13:00.000-04:00

Mama Bear Nordstrom

Whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself, in a writerly sort of way, I have a two-pronged approach to shaking myself out of it: 1) Reread the letters of Ursula Nordstrom, and 2) Pretend that she's writing them to me.

Nordstrom was the doyenne of kidlit--an assistant, then editor, board member, VP, and finally semi-retired "consultant" to Harper Books for Boys and Girls from the late '30s until she died of ovarian cancer in 1988 -- she extricated children's literature from its vat of sugar-and-spice, dusted it off, and set it down firmly in the real world. Nordstrom had no fear of the dark side. She edited and championed E.B. White's Charlotte's Web (First line: "Where's Papa going with that ax?"); her letters to White about Garth Williams's spider illustrations are priceless. She discovered Maurice Sendak and gave him a real job (he was dressing windows at F.A.O. Schwartz), hiring him to illustrate Little Bear. Under her aegis dozens of authors won Newberys, National Book Awards, and Hans Christian Anderson Medals. If you haven't read her letters, Dear Genius, you must.

But her accomplishments have nothing to do with why I turn to Nordstrom in moments of self-doubt. Nordstrom knew how to precisely calibrate writerly encouragement: each letter an ingenious recipe of flattery, exhortation, modest advice, call to action, gentle suggestion. They're exactly the kinds of letters you'd kill for from an editor. And when all else failed to move whichever blocked or recalcitrant or less than amiable writer she was dealing with, Nordstrom would pull a crumpled paper from her purse, flatten it out on her desk, and read it over. It was a quote from Martha Graham and it went like this:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time this expression is unique. And if you block it it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Dear Ursula, I keep that quote in my purse now, too.

Seven Great Years with SCBWI

2011-08-31T11:54:00.001-04:00

No seven-year itch happenin' here.

Just a quick shout-out today to my peeps at the Palm Beach Gardens SCBWI critique group, which celebrated its SEVEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY last Wednesday. Under the guidance of Donna Gephart and Linda Marlow, who each bring along their unique literary and critical talents (and cookies!), this group gathers in one place the strongest passel of kidlit authors I've ever been blessed to spend time with.

Gephart (How to Survive Middle School and As If Being 12 3/4 Isn't Bad Enough (My Mother is Running for President)), who won the 2009 Sid Fleischman humor award, teamed up with Marlow at the request of Sylvia Andrews, who has her own long-running SCBWI critique group in West Palm. Pictured left to right above are Laura Fournier, Amy Ford, Ruth Darrington, Linda Marlow, Donna Gephart, Becca Puglisi (check Becca's outstanding blog, Bookshelf Muse, here), Sylvia Andrews, and Riley Roam. I was there too (taking the pic!)

And in other news: Query Writing Workshop
If you're getting ready to enter the big, bad world of querying your book, writer, editor, and librarian Amanda Bosky is running a timely workshop on crafting queries that kill. It's at the Royal Palm Library, Saturday, Sept. 24th, at 9 a.m. Call the library to sign up, at 561-790-6030. Trust me, as a writer currently on draft three-gazillion of my own query letter, this is a subject we could all use help with.

Three Ways to Develop a Sympathetic Main Character

2011-08-30T09:09:00.004-04:00

Agents handing out rejections have been known to observe that they "didn't connect" with a novel's main character. If you attend writers conferences, you're bound to hear variations on this theme. Especially in children's lit, agents tend to be looking for "character driven" stories. They're looking to sympathize and identify. They want to "fall in love."

So how to create main characters readers will love? My SCBWI writers group got into this topic recently when someone observed that when you've done your job with a character, really done your job, you'll feel "emotionally exhausted" after a writing session.

Digging Down Deep
That observation really hit home.
If your characters are flat, it means your writing isn't "taking"--in the same way that psychological therapy doesn't work if your session is too easy. I'm not suggesting you should weep or rant through every writing session, Heaven forbid. But you should be feeling, intensely, what your character is feeling. And you ought to be nailing those emotions precisely to the page.

New writers tend to rush through scenes of high emotion. We're so engaged with moving the plot forward--but I think, too, we have a built-in aversion to deep feeling. Deep feeling is uncomfortable. It hurts. The best writers learn to conquer their aversion, or at least tamp it down. So the first method for drawing sympathetic characters is a basic one.

1. Put yourself there.
Before you start writing a scene of high emotion, or as you're revising it, take a few minutes, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in that exact place.Visualize. Think about what you'd be seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting. What are your associations with this experience? What are your memories? What are your physical sensations? What (most certainly mixed) emotions are you experiencing? Then get those sensations, emotions and memories down on your page.

2. Sympathetic characters have problems.
In his book on screenwriting, Save the Cat*, Blake Snyder notes that from the first scenes of a movie, the audience needs a clear idea of "six things that need fixing" in the main character. Snyder admits it's an arbitrary number; that's not the point. He's talking about a "laundry list" of issues that the audience knows the character must come to terms with before the end of the film. Let's say your main character, a detective, has: 1) a fear of heights that, 2) caused his partner's death. He's so crushed that he, 3) retires from police work, and is, 4) reduced to hanging out with his ex-girlfriend. Sound familiar? By the end of Vertigo Scottie Ferguson will have fixed each one of his problems. And because Hitchcock set them up right from the get-go, we sympathize and identify with Scottie. Why? Because we all have fears. We've all made terrible mistakes. We've been down and out.

3. Use your pain
This wonderful piece of advice comes from Cheryl B. Klein in her book Second Sight. I love this tip because it asks us to channel the pain we get from rejection letters into our manuscripts! And specifically, into our main characters. "Use that emotion you're feeling from a reject to make your manuscript stronger--the grief, the pain, the anger, whatever it is. Give that to your characters when something goes wrong for them, and see what happens. There's a line in Emily Dickinson: I like a look of agony/because I know it's true." You have to have the courage to draw up your own demons if you truly want to make your character real. Just another way of saying that, yeah, writing a great character is going to be emotionally exhausting.

*The title of Snyder's book refers to yet another method for developing a sympathetic main character early in the story: He can be hard-boiled or unattractive, but audiences will love him if he "saves the cat" -- or some equivalent gesture of compassion and kindness.

Monday Book Review: A Bunny Caper

2011-08-29T13:25:00.015-04:00

The bulk of my reading is middle grade, YA, and adult, but getting the galleys for Polly Horvath's Mr. and Mrs Bunny--Detectives Extraordinaire! made my week, and I'm not even exaggerating. I haven't howled through a book this way since David Sedaris's Naked. And to think it was a chapter book that left me gasping! Mr. and Mrs. Bunny is targeting two completely different demographics, I suspect: seven- to ten-year-olds, and the adults reading to them. The book is due out February 2012, but you can pre-order it now from Amazon. Do it now so you don't forget.

The under-ten crowd might miss the satire (New Age parents and chain restaurants come in for a lot of goosing; and couples will recognize themselves in the happily married, if long-suffering, Bunnies). But the non-stop silliness is equal opportunity fun. Madeline's parents have been kidnapped by foxes running a rabbit by-products factory; she hires Mr. and Mrs. Bunny to track them down. Half the joke is that Mr. and Mrs. Bunny--who wear fedoras and drive a Smart car--are kindly but incompetent. When a very stupid marmot (named The Marmot) is added to the mix the tangles increase exponentially.

The Marmot Question
Just how stupid is that marmot? Well, for starters, he uses a card printed with a precious secret code to wipe his bottom, then flushes it down the toilet. Horvath knows how to take a good joke and keep drawing it out. The Marmot asks Madeline to call him "The," his first name, but Madeline finds this impossibly confusing. "Listen," she says, "can I call you something else? Don't you have a nickname?"

"My Mother sometimes called me her Special Precious," said The Marmot.
"I don't think I could do that," said Madeline, shuddering.
"Look, just let her call you Mr. Marmot," said Mr. Bunny.
"How about Poindexter?" said the Marmot.
"Why Poindexter?" asked Madeline.
"Please do not ask him questions. Please. We'll be here all night. When it comes to marmots, give orders," said Mr. Bunny.

The problem of what to call The Marmot goes on for pages, getting progressively crazier. All the while Madeline's annoying parents, who have brains the size of mung beans, are having an insane conversation of their own with a fox called Grand Poobah. They're tied up back to back in the by-products factory, and Madeline's dad believes--wrongly--that he's getting the hang of speaking fox. Zakszokeyid! Little do they know the foxes are planning to have finger food for dinner that night. Can you guess what the main ingredient is?

The illustrations by Sophie Blackall are charming.Among her twelve previous kids books, Horvath has picked up a National Book Award and a Newberry Honor; I can see why. I plan to go back and read them all.

Genn Albin's 50-page Critique Contest

2011-08-26T15:07:00.001-04:00

Albin: Crewel to be kind.

YA writer Genn Albin (first book, Crewel, sold at auction, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux this fall) is offering a 50-page critique in exchange for some lively 100-word pitches. Your book doesn't have to be complete, since there's a three-month window to claim your prize. The rules are semi-complicated, so don't take my word for it. Go here to learn all about it.

Beta Reader? Critique Partner? Or Two-Headed Monster?

2011-08-26T10:19:00.009-04:00

Nope, this is a betta.

What IS a Beta Reader, Anyway?
I hooked up with my first two beta readers (via Mary Kole's kidlit blog) before I knew what a beta reader was. It worked out fine (*hugs Katherine! *hugs Michelle!), but I blundered my way through it, stepping on toes, nudging when I should have been stroking, keeping silent when I should have been praising, critiquing when I should have been beta-ing -- well, you can imagine.

I've seen writers make a distinction between betas and critiquers (and a third category: test readers-- kids, family, house guests, quick readers), but I'm not sure how widely held these assumptions are.

The Beatific Beta
Betas, in this view, are big picture people. They refrain from line editing, correcting punctuation or word choice, or really close reading.
Instead, they give general impressions: This is working for me, this isn't. Or, to follow novelist Kathleen Duey's method, you can do a BCD (Boring, Confusing, Don't Buy It) and just put a letter in the margin whenever you feel inclined. To be even more minimalist: a checkmark where you're bored, a smiley face where you're laughing. And then maybe a paragraph at the end detailing your big picture thoughts. The beta only has to be smart; she doesn't have to be a writer.

The OCD Critiquer
Critique partners get into the nitty gritty--removing words, rearranging paragraphs, flagging spelling errors, putting metaphors to the test, eradicating cliches, pointing out inaccuracies, in other words, acting like an editor -- along with the big picture stuff. Generally they are writers themselves. It's more time-consuming for the reader, and it can be a lot rougher on the author's ego.

Who You Gonna Call?

Left to right: Beta, Critiquer, Tester

There's no best or worst draft-stage to call on either kind of partner. The OCD critiquer can be great with a new writer who hasn't quite learned to compose a tight sentence (too many words, too many cliches, the bane of first drafts and beginners). But that manic critiquer can come in handy for a final, pre-query polish. Same thing with the beta, who might identify your yawning plot hole, the one any agent's bound to fall right into, never to be heard from again...

Generally, I've moved away from critiquing toward beta-reading, but I'm still a two-headed monster. My first instincts were critique-ish, a habit of mind cultivated over years of being a journalist/editor/copyeditor, where every sentence will be hacked up and pasted together by a string of people filing their red pens to points on your ms. You develop a strong stomach for editorial input. And I have found it very helpful--especially where my lines are flaccid, my word choice awkward, my character descriptions riddled with cliche, or where I just had too many damn words.

The salient point here is: You need to get this straight with your partner before you begin.

I had a nasty experience with one potential partner when I blithely dove in doing line edits, and her knickers got majorly bunched up over it. We were both to blame: She hadn't said what she was looking for in a reader, and I hadn't asked. Because you and your partner have put in months or years on a manuscript, you might even go so far as to exchange a questionnaire:

What issues do you need most help with? Plotting? Characterization? Voice? Pacing?
Describe your ideal reader. (What do you honestly want from me?)
Line edits? True or False?
What time frame do you have for a complete read? How often will we be exchanging?
Anything you DON'T want to hear from me?
I'd also add: send me a jacket-flap synopsis of the book. If I'm going to read the whole thing, I want to be able to see where you're deviating from your concept.

And then start slow. You don't have to fall into the arms of any potential partner who comes knocking. You can reserve the right to say, "This isn't really working out. But it's not you. It's me."

[Looking for a reader? Go to the querytracker forum, check SCBWI forums (for kidlit), or check out Absolute Write Water Cooler.]

SoFla Writers: News, Classes, and Signings

2011-08-25T07:30:00.015-04:00

Workshops and Classes

Hunky Dr. Sean

A FREE workshop for published authors (although I'll bet non-published ones can sneak in), sponsored by The Writers Network of South Florida: Publicity and Social Media Bootcamp, takes place September 21, featuring authors Deborah Sharp, Louis K. Lowy, and author and Survivor survivor Sean Kenniff. This is an amusing assortment of presenters, folks. Highly recommended. Contact the Writers Network for further info, or email me, and I'll forward you the announcement.

YA author Marjetta Geerling has added a second kidlit class, The World of Picture Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult Fiction starting September 20; it runs for eight consecutive Wednesdays at The Center for Literature and Theater, Miami Dade College. Cost is $170 ($120 for students). Marjetta is the author of Fancy White Trash, selected as one of the American Library Association's Best Books of 2009. Click here to sign up.

Blue Planet Writers Room offers three adult creative writing classes beginning Monday, September 12: How to Pen a Fascinating Memoir on Monday nights; Writing the Short Story on Tuesdays (I'm teaching that one); and Reading as a Writer on Wednesdays (click here for the syllabus; I'm teaching that one, too.) Click here for full details.

NOW FOR THE WINE AND CANAPES: Book Launches

Lewis: Wicked happy

Fort Lauderdale kidlit author Joanne Lewis will be spilling the champagne on September 10th to launch her new book, co-written with her sister Amy Lewis Faircloth: Wicked Good, with a luncheon at the 11th Street Annex in Fort Lauderdale. Only a few spots are left, but if you miss it, she'll also be signing the book on October 12, and hosting another luncheon that month. I'll post a reminder. In the meantime, download the book Kirkus Reviews has called "A funny, frazzled tale of extreme parenting" here.

Sharp: Star-struck

Deborah Sharp kicks off the latest installment of her Mace Bauer series with a star-studded party for Mama Sees Stars on September 15th. Sharp is a former USA Today reporter turned wacky-Mama-mystery writer (for all you late bloomers, she started writing fiction at age 50). Mama Sees Stars is set in fictional Himmarshee, Florida, and takes off when a Hollywood production company lands in town. "A terrific combination of sleuthing and silliness," opines the St. Pete Times.

Mama Sees Stars Launch
Thursday, Sept. 15, 7 pm
Murder on the Beach, 273 Northeast 2nd Avenue, Delray Beach, FL 33444
Phone: (561) 279-7790
Glam it Up, Mama Movie Star Style!
Tacky Diva (and Divo) Duds Encouraged
Sip Red Carpet Libations; Snack on Movie Treats
**
Phew! I think that's it for now!

How to Write A Killer Ending, Part 3

2011-08-24T06:00:00.004-04:00

A billion of him typing in a room would certainly generate a killer ending.

We're talking about last lines in fiction that resonate. That final sentence can seem truly satisfying when it chimes with or against the novel's opening. A reader may not get it consciously, but on some level the line stirs a memory and feels just right. We've come full circle on the wheel, the ride is over.

Here's an example from a YA novel I'm reading now, A Long, Long Sleep, by Anna Sheehan. The premise: a Sleeping Beauty tale set in the distant future. Rose has been asleep in a stass tube for sixty-two years. The opening line:

"I'd try to hold on to my stass dreams for as long as I could."

The line sets us up: We know that Rose is very comfortable in dream-mode; you can feel her clutching at sleep, refusing to relinquish herself to life.

Now the last line of the book, and I don't think I need a spoiler alert here:

"But if nothing else, I am wide awake."

It's possible to guess what happens to Rose, in the broad sense, isn't it? Her live wakefulness is exactly opposite of where she started, refusing to get up and face the world. Her eyes are open physically, emotionally, and intellectually. hold on to my dreams >>>>>>>>>>wide awake.

You can do this too -- Last lines are fun!
Here's another example, from Scott Spencer's novel, A Ship Made of Paper.

First Line: "Daniel and Hampton were paired by chance and against their wishes."
And the end: "He reaches for her. 'No,' he says, 'it's too late for that. There's no turning back.'"

(Yeah, yeah, I know, that's three lines) Daniel has no volition, he's stuck with an intolerable partner >>>>>>>>>>Daniel reaches out to the woman he loves, trying to hold on to her.

Yowza, isn't fiction cool?!

Okay, one more ending-- you see, I can't stop.

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.
Begins: "CLARE: It's hard being left behind."
Ends: "He is coming, and I am here."

I don't even need to parse that one, do I? See how simple it is? Now all you have to do is write the 80,000 words in between and you're golden.

How To Write A Killer Ending, Part 2

2011-08-23T08:16:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we were thinking about what makes a great fictional ending--a final line worthy of the 300-odd pages you've put into reading a novel. I chose (at random) two unlikely candidates:

#1"We lived happily ever after," (from A Year Down Yonder); and
#2 "Over in England they married and lived happily ever after." (from Loving, by Henry Green)

No Fariy Tale Ending
No serious writer could end a book this way without tongue firmly implanted in cheek, and Green's choice of an ending is made even twistier because as a writer, he's obsessed with the concrete, the close observation of life as it's really lived. Loving is about as far away from fairy tale as it's possible to get. It's set during WWII, and it concerns the downstairs shenanigans of butlers, maids, and cooks in an Irish castle: hilarious, a little raunchy, dialogue-based, full of psychological depth. By the time you get to the end of Loving you could practically finish sentences for his cast, you know them so well.

So to end this book with "happily ever after" conveys a kind of writerly exhaustion.
It says, in a way: "I've told you everything I possibly can about these people. I've done my job and done it well. You're on your own if you need to know more." And also, because it's set during the war you can't help but think--that's not quite the way it works, is it? There will be more wars, we know, lots of them. But also, on balance, there will be lots more loving.

To Resonate and Reflect
I adored Loving, by the way, and highly recommend it. I'll finish today with a few famous last lines that aren't quite so baffling. In her book Second Sight, editor Cheryl B. Klein calls lines like these "fermata," from the musical term, which means "a pause of unspecified length on a note or rest."

"In novels," Klein says, "it's the final line that resonates or reflects upon the emotional experience we've just had in the preceding text, distilling and sustaining that tone as a fermata does."

(Or, like a brass gong, the tone is drawn out, it reverberates, and fades away gradually, leaving a lasting impression).

A Shortlist of Great Last Lines

Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision. --Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is. --Russell Banks, Continental Drift
Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. --Catcher in the Rye.
"All that is very well," answered Candide. "But let us go and cultivate our garden."--Voltaire
The old man was dreaming about the lions. --Hemmingway, The Old Man and the Sea.

Looking at these now, it strikes me they all seem to be not just about the story, but about writing and storytelling itself.

Post your own favorite last lines in the comments, or brave hearts, the last lines of your own novels or WIPs.

How To Write A Killer Ending, Part 1

2011-08-22T09:30:00.006-04:00

And they lived happily ever after.

There's a lot of focus on beginnings in the writing community, and for good reason. Your beginning is going to make or break you -- it'll either hook an agent, editor, or reader, or it won't. For a good analysis of first lines, see agent Mary Kole's ongoing discussion here.

But endings are just as vital. A good one will lift your reader, make her cry, satisfy her soul. Your ending should set us down (gently or not) at exactly the right place and time. If you've done your job, we'll also be a little sad to leave the book.

So how, exactly, do you accomplish this?

I opened two novels at random this morning and read the last lines. Here's what I found (I swear I did not rig this):

1) We lived happily ever after.
2) Over in England they married and lived happily ever after.

"Oh. My. Gawd!" I can hear you saying. "These are terrible endings!" Not so fast.

Ending #1 is from the Newberry Award-winning A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck. It's an upper middle grade/YA novel about Mary Alice, who has to leave Chicago and go spend the summer with her Grandma Dowdel. The year is 1937. Grandma Dowdel is an insanely funny and truly scary force of nature. Mary Alice is fifteen.

This synopsis should tell you why the last line of the book: "We lived happily ever after," has escaped cloying cliche. A Year Down Yonder has nothing whatsoever to do with Mary Alice's romance with her husband; the poor guy is mentioned almost as an aside, in a flash forward, in the book's last two pages. What Peck does do with his ending is take a giant leap in time, letting us understand that Mary Alice's relationship with Grandma Dowdel goes on and on and on. Peck's happily ever after is a little bit tongue-in-cheek (who could write the line straight?). But it tells us that relationships last, that family is enduring, and that it's just as possible to fall in love with irascible old lady relatives as it is with handsome Royce McNab.

So what makes this a great last line? When the book opens, Mary Alice can't imagine that she can live "happily," even for a single summer, with awful Grandma Dowdel, who says things like: "Them Burdicks isn't worth the powder and shot to blow them up. . .They'd steal a hot stove and come back for the smoke." By the time we get to the end, at page 130, we've learned a great deal about love, and Mary Alice has revised her definition of happiness.

Ending #2 Is from Loving, by Henry Green. A classic piece of literature, published in 1945. And because I promised myself I'm going to keep these posts short, I'll get to a discussion of that last line tomorrow. In the meantime, feel free to post your favorite fictional last lines in comments -- or, if you're really brave, the last line of your own work-in-progress.

A Few Things This Writer is Grateful For

2011-08-19T10:38:00.000-04:00

Okay, maybe it's a little corny to do the gratitude stuff, but last night I just had this wave of it wash over me, and I felt so damn lucky. Or, all the yoga I've been doing is finally starting to have an effect.

1. I'm Free
I get to spend my days doing exactly what I want: Writing. Reading. Thinking about writing and reading. Teaching what I'm reading. Talking to other writers about what I'm writing and reading. Reading to other writers what I'm writing. Listening to other writers read what they're writing.

2. I'm awed by the writers I've met.
Incredible talent within my two writers groups. So many distinctive voices, ways of looking at the world and figuring out what's important to say. The most beautiful ways to say it. How to best arrange all those wonderful insights. Every one a role model.

3. The generosity of my mentors and beta readers and critiquers.
Thank you thank you Kathryn, Michelle, Donna, Linda, Joyce, Marjetta, Becca, Tera, Sylvia, Sandra, Barbara, Sue, Amy, Lexi and, and, and....so many others.

4. Don't even get me started on the bloggers, my daily dose of info and inspiration.
If all goes well, I hope I'll have the chance to pay just a tenth of it back or forward.

Om, and out.

Four Must-Read Writing Books

2011-08-18T08:42:00.001-04:00

I feel like I've read 150 books on the craft of writing this year; in my nightmares I'm stumbling through a Dickensian fog of them, pages piling around me in drifts. All offer useful tips and tricks -- never do I close the book (or hurl it across the room, or weep over its pages) without at least a few takeaways. But a handful stand out as books that have changed the way I see the world; they're books that have sent me back for my 5th-plus revision on my work-in-progress with joy in my heart rather than dread. On occasion they speak to something that I feel I knew deeply all along but failed to recognize consciously until that "ah-ha" moment on page, say, 57. And the really great ones have lifted me, have made me feel I'm capable of more than I rightly ought to be. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Second Sight, by Cheryl B. Klein
I almost didn't order this book, because the jacket copy was so blaaah ("It always helps to get a fresh point of view. Try a little Second Sight"). Which is ironic, because as a senior editor for Scholastic (Klein, pictured left, works with Arthur Levine), she's had to write a lot of jacket copy herself. "Try a little" doesn't even begin to describe what aspiring children's writers (and indeed, published ones, and editors, and anybody interested in literature at all) ought to do with this book: If you know what's good for you, you'll memorize it. Klein's discussion in Chapter 1, "Manifesto: What Makes a Good Book?" is the single most brilliant summary of the elements that create lasting, beloved literature (for kids or otherwise) that I've ever read. Her blog, here, is also invaluable.

2. Story, by Robert McKee
I'll be honest, I haven't exactly finished this tome. But I've read the opening chapter many, many times. It doesn't matter a bit that McKee is focussed on screenwriting (he's mentored so many writers and directors it seems like even he's lost count.) Because what McKee does in Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principals of Screenwriting is manage to convey the strongly worded idea that crafting great stories is vitally important. Like, as necessary as food and shelter to human culture and history. That's what he means by substance. And McKee also conveys that should you be called upon to create stories, whether for page or screen, you'd better damn well step up. McKee hosts expensive weekend seminars all over the country (I think last time I checked the tuition was nudging at $1,000.) But buy the book, because Chapter 1, "The Writer and the Art of Story" is worth every penny of the $25 price tag.

3. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, by John Gardner
This was the first craft book I read this year, and I keep going back to it, not least because Gardner's style is so elegant. I love the very rhythm of his sentences. On the experience of reading, he says: "We read on--dream on--not passively but actively, worrying about the choices the characters have to make, listening in panic for some sound beyond the fictional door, exulting in characters' successes, bemoaning their failures. In great fiction, the dream engages us heart and soul..." Gardner also offers dozens and dozens of lively exercises to get the creative gears turning. Particularly helpful when the cranky old genius is feeling a little sluggish.

4. Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose
Writers should be reading, and doing it carefully, n'est-ce pas? And since, as Prose so rightly points out, there are only so many hours in the day, we'd best start with the really great books, just in case we don't have time to get to the merely good, or the not-so-good, or the rotten ones. Prose's analysis of Austen, Henry Green, Tolstoy, Flannery O'Connor, Kafka, Nabokov and a great many others would have been enough to hold us, but she's structured the book by chapters in ascending order, from words and sentences to paragraphs, from narration to character and dialogue, details and gesture. And then, when your head is about to explode, she devotes a whole chapter to "Reading for Courage." If there were ever a quality a writer needs in spades, it's that one. Here's a single wonderful quote that we should all paste to our mirrors: "And as I wrote I discovered that writing, like reading, was done one word at a time, one punctuation mark at a time. It required what a friend calls 'putting every word on trial for its life.'"

One More Fall Creative Writing Class Opens

2011-08-17T09:25:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post today, since I'm still immersed in WriteOnCon, the online Kidlit conference that runs through tomorrow. Children's author Gloria Rothstein (pictured left), author of Sheep Asleep (HarperCollins), will be teaching From Fairy Tales to Book Sales: The Magic of Writing for Kids beginning September 13th. This looks like an excellent class for picture book writers; it includes writing exercises, selected readings, and manuscript critiques. The class runs Tuesday nights 7-9 p.m. in Boca Raton. Call Sugar Sands Community Center for further details at 561-357-4900. The full schedule of courses offered this fall is here.

For other creative writing workshops this fall in South Florida, see this post.

Three Easy Ways to Refresh Your Writing Today

2011-08-16T08:23:00.002-04:00

1. Jump In to WriteOnCon

This free, two-day, on-line live writers conference starts this morning and runs through Thursday, featuring live forums for pitch sessions, queries, Q&As with agents, and critiques. Agents featured include Jessica Sinsheimer, Carlie Webber and Christina Hogrebe, Sara Megibow, Suzie Townsend, Jenny Bent, Kelly Sonnack, Ginger Clark, Holly Root, Alissa Eisner-Henkin, and Roseanne Wells, among many others.. Plus a slate of top-notch authors. The full schedule is here. The submission threads open 24 hours in advance of the live event, which means, basically, that you should be getting ready to submit right now if you want a pitch or query critique. Hint: the Middle Grade/Young Adult query critique opens at 10 a.m. ~~this~~ tomorrow morning. Click here to get started.

2. Find a Page of Dialogue in your WIP and Rewrite It

Taking your revisions a page/one technique at a time seems a lot less daunting, doesn't it? When your ms. is starting to weigh like an albatross, the best way to deal is to think small.

Find that page and ask yourself: Why are these people talking to each other? Instead of, say, walking away? Or coming to fisticuffs? Hint: Good dialogue often involves two or more people who want radically different things. They're pulling against each other, but they're attached, like a bad marriage. And just like a bad marriage, they're failing to "communicate effectively." They're lying a little bit, or changing the subject, or sniping, or being passive aggressive, or sometimes aggressive aggressive, or playing sweet and false. In fiction, life is a battle. Look at your page and figure out who's winning and losing, and why. Click here for agent/author Nathan Bransford's take on great dialogue.

3. Connect with a Writing Buddy

Been holed up like a woodchuck in December, clawing your magnum opus to shreds? It may be time get your snout out of the snowdrifts and connect to at least one likeminded soul. If you're sick of your flesh and blood frenemies, and they're just as tired of hearing you read aloud your 57th rewrite of page 277 anyway, hook up through Twitter or on the net. I've been expanding my Twitter base lately and I've already connected (and reconnected) with people I'm liking, if only because there's no chance they'll "drop by" at dinnertime or borrow my favorite sweater.

A good page for Florida writers who tweet and twitter is here. Among my finds further afield: Latina Y/A, M/G, picture book writer Meg Medina, whose haunting magic-realist novel for middle grade readers Milagros: Girl from Away was one of my favorite reads this year; and friendly (famous, award-winning) sci-fi author Kathleen Goonan, who told me she spends part of her year in Key West and even offered to meet me for coffee! (see the glowing Washington Post review of Ms. Goonan's latest book here.)

South Florida Writing Workshops: Sign Up Now!

2011-08-15T08:00:00.001-04:00

A bunch of creative writing workshops, intensives, and seminars are busting out this fall, thanks to Blue Planet Writers Room (West Palm) and at Florida Center for the Literary Arts (Miami).

Among the gems at the FCLA: Urbane travel writer and bon vivant Tom Swick, formerly of the Sun-Sentinel, where he was travel editor for a couple of decades, will be teaching "Writing the World." Marjetta Geerling (pictured left), whose hilarious, heartfelt Young Adult novel Fancy White Trash was published by Viking, will guide aspiring children's writers through the ins and outs of picture books, middle grade, and young adult fiction. (I took one of her workshops last summer, and she's a fantastic teacher.) The Center is also offering a memoir class, intro to fiction, a plotting workshop, and two Spanish-language creative writing classes.

I'll be running three workshops for Blue Planet Writers Room: Cover to Cover: Reading as a Writer; Intro to Writing Fiction for Kids; and Intro to Poetry Writing. Blue Planet will also host a memoir writing and a short story class -- full info on those below.

And master teacher/YA author/mentor Joyce Sweeney and Woodstream Writers director Jamie Morris have a few openings left for their Depth Charge workshop in Lake Worth, a weekend intensive running November 11-13. Joyce and Jamie will be coaching writers on how to deepen their novels with subplot and backstory For further details and registration email Jamie@WoodstreamWriters.com or call 407-644-5163, or email Joyce Sweeney at grackle@bellsouth.net. By all accounts these are terrific intensives--I've registered for their plotting workshop in September, which is now full.

At Blue Planet, West Palm Beach Click here for full details and registration

Writing Your Life: How To Pen a Fascinating Memoir 

Mondays 6-8:30 p.m. Begins September 12 

Instructor:   TBA

The Lie That Tells the Truth: Writing the Fictional Short Story 

Thursdays 6-8:30 p.m. Begins September 15 

Instructor: Cece Daratany  

Cover to Cover: Reading as a Writer 

Wednesdays 6:8:30 p.m. Begins September 14

 Instructor: Gail Shepherd/ See right-hand sidebar for syllabus, under "pages" 

After Harry Potter: Intro to Writing for Children 

Dates and times TBA -- check back or visit the website

 Instructor: Gail Shepherd/ See right-hand sidebar for syllabus, under "pages"

  Introduction to Poetry Writing 

Dates and times TBA -- check back or visit the website 

Instructor: Gail Shepherd/See right-hand sidebar for syllabus, under "pages"

At FCLA, Miami Click here for full details and registration.

 Mondays, September 19 - November 7

6:30-8:30 p.m. Writing the World with Tom Swick    

Tuesdays, September 20 - November 8  6:30-8:30 p.m. What's Your Story? Writing Memoir with Andrea Askowitz  

Tuesdays, September 20 - November 8 6:30-8:30 p.m. Introduction to Fiction Writing with George Tucker  

Wednesdays, September 21 - November 9

6:30-8:30 p.m. KidLit: The World of Picture Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult Fiction with Marjetta Geerling

 Thursdays, September 22 - November 10 6:30-8:30 p.m. Talking Plot: Structuring Fiction and Nonfiction with David Beaty  

Sábados, 24 de septiembre al 12 de noviembre 12:30-2:30 p.m. La Ventana Infinita: Taller de Literatura Infantil con Andres Pi

(Creative Writing Workshop in SPANISH) 

Sábados, 24 de septiembre al 12 de noviembre 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Construccion de Personajes Inolvidables: Taller Especializado de Narrativa con Chely Lima

(Creative Writing Workshop in SPANISH)

I'll be adding to this list as I get more info from other teachers and venues. Please contact me if you know of other writing classes this fall that you'd like to see listed.

"Beginnings are always messy."

2011-08-12T08:27:00.002-04:00

John Galsworthy said that. It's as true of the first blog post as it is of most endeavors: starting a novel, overhauling a career, sorting out a new friendship. Galsworthy should know -- in his grand opus, which snagged him a Nobel prize, he managed to juggle dozens of main characters over many generations; The Forsyte Saga seemed to go on forever, like life -- not the individual life, but the sprawling mucky whole of it.

(that's Galsworthy, above, contemplating another messy beginning)

And then there were all those sequels! An entire trilogy called End of the Chapter, which turned out to be no ending at all. Then One More River. At the height of his career Galsworthy was publishing three, four books a year.

Beginnings obsess writers. We pour over the first lines of our betters and mentors, searching for clues. On her kidlit blog, agent Mary Kole ran a contest a couple of days ago, where aspiring authors submitted their first lines for dissection. We had a handful of words in which to convey character, emotion, plot, theme, genre. Talk about the world in a grain of sand!

In today's market, beginnings are almost never messy, at least not the ones that make it to the shelves. Those beginnings cut to the chase. They break from the gate like overtrained thoroughbreds.

So, to honor new beginnings, here are a few famous fictional first lines, good ones to chew over.

"It was a bad time."

"124 was spiteful, full of baby's venom."

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

"All this happened, more or less."

"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain, he fell madly in love with him."

"Once upon a day an old butler named Eldon lay dying in his room attended by the head housemaid, Miss Agatha Burch."

"The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida."