Things every writer needs...

As we all know, the writing life is glamorous. It's all private jets, chocolate dipped strawberries and champagne. Oops, that's Oprah's life. And maybe John Green's.

Let me try again...for most of us the writing life is a big of a slog. It's all about frantically checking your Amazon stats, struggling to write and submit another novel, and drinking cold coffee.

Having lived the writing life for several years, I've decided to share with you a short list of MUST-HAVES so that you, to, can enjoy this enviable lifestyle.

1. FUZZY SLIPPERS. Replace yearly or when they begin to, well, smell.
2. A GOOD COFFEE MAKER or TEA KETTLE, depending on your preference in the hot-brown-beverage department. NICE MUGS are also good.
3. A PLACE TO WORK THAT HAS A WINDOW. Just admit it. You don't go outside much because you zealously guard your at-the-computer time and between that and the laundry, there's not a lot of daylight left. (Added tip: Occasionally wash said window.)
4. A PET. Good to have someone to talk to who will never give
   
   editorial feedback. Also, helpful for warmth if you can't find the aforementioned slippers. Mine is a dog, pictured here with two of my humans.
5. A NICE OUTFIT. Even if you prefer one-on-one time with your keyboard, it is important to attend the occasional conference, writing class, or author event and even participate in non-literary social activities. This outfit should not consist of your "best" jeans with a top. Get a whole outfit. No denim and no fleece (okay the fleece may just be my problem)!

What have I missed? Please share in the comments below!

The Act of Poetry

Hope you've joined the Amazon/Goodreads Author Shaming Experiment of Fun already but, if not, you can CHECK IT OUT HERE.

I am thrilled to be writing today's post in support of VERSENOVELS.COM hosted by the inimitable Gabrielle.

I wrote standard, prose-form manuscripts (never published) for years before meeting Ellen Hopkins at a conference and never turning back. Just hours after taking attending her break-out session, I began a self-directed crash course in "Great Works in Verse." I read Karen Hesse and Sonya Sones, Sharon Creech and Jaqueline Woodson, and on and on.

One of the things I struggled with then (and still do) is the WHY of choosing the verse format. Is verse akin to, say, Impressionism in painting--a choice of form? Or does verse require some greater argument? Haven't we all heard editors or agents say things like "to acquire a novel in verse, it has to be very clear to me that the novel HAS to be written in this style"?

Another struggle has been the tension between VERSE and linear PLOT. I feel like there are times when something akin to split-line prose--less imagistic, more pragmatic--is required to guide the reader and protagonist toward some critical plot moment. As a poet, can I give myself permission to let this type of writing in to serve the STORY?

I have found some answers in prose novels that deal with the act of creating poetry, or break the mold of form in a way that I find instructive to poets.  Here are four for your consideration:

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson - a grieving teen finds understanding and solace through releasing poetry into the world.

ADIOS, NIRVANA by Conrad Wesselhoeft - a gifted young poet and musician struggles to find his voice after the death of his twin brother.

THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak - a musing on death and reading featuring chapter titles that are word lists and imagistic, poetic structuring of all kinds.

JUMPED IN by Patrick Flores-Scott - a novel about two slacker-loners who become unlikely friends as they try to write kick-ass verse for the class poetry slam.

As a verse novelist, I find these books instructive and inspiring. They lead me to conclude that verse novels and prose novels do not exist separately but as the ends of a beautiful spectrum of forms through which writers deliver story.

Trying to Photograph Seagulls

Last month, while visiting my son at college in Massachusetts, we went to a footballgame. We sat on the bleachers, watching his school team get crushed by the visitors, eating kettle corn and smelling the crisp fall air. I looked up and a saw a flock of seagulls swooping hungrily above the field.  I pointed my camera upward.

All I could capture were the clouds. But, I promise you, the seagulls were there. They were beautiful. And now, what's left for me, is to try to use words to paint the picture my camera could not grasp. Like emotions, like the passage of time, like the sensation of a kiss. Writing is like trying to photograph seagulls. Even if all you wind up with is a bright, blue sky, the effort is entirely worth it.

What's your "seagull photograph" experience?

 

If you want to play along and give my upcoming novel a lift, click HERE.

I don’t write POETRY either

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the writing conference I attended (quite a few years back now) where an editor read aloud a page of my work then made a rather sharp comment about being “careful about the difference between poetry and split line prose.” Truth? It gutted me. I went back to my work and tried to figure out a way to weed out the split line prose. I reviewed my favorite poetry collections…checked all the poems magnetized to my refrigerator…reread favorite verse novels by Sharon Creech, Jacqueline Woodson, Sonya Sones, Ellen Hopkins, Caroline Starr Rose, Guadalupe Garcia McCall…delved into my beloved Paul Fussel’s POETIC METER & POETIC FORM for the zillionth time…

Here’s what I discovered.

There’s split-line prose in a great deal of poetry. And LOTS of it in verse novels. Because, to build an entire novel, you may want the reader to be able to hold onto plot, syntax.  That requires the incorporation of prose elements. THE ART LIES IN…

• where you choose to break each line
• creating subtle internal rhymes and motifs, and sometimes even poems within poems (see Hopkins’ work)
• the juxtaposition of abstract verses with strong, linear text
• choosing only the best words, unobstructed by grammar traditions but constricted by holding onto the verse format, to get close to the bone--to depict raw, visceral emotion
• using the freedom and flexibility of the verse structure to reflect shape, movement, music, the act of reading, and other abstract creative notions through form

• understanding the value of structure, white space...choosing what words to leave off the page

It’s funny. I think of myself as both a POET and NOT-A-POET. I do not know whether this is because I am afraid to commit; because I’m really not sure; because I fear I won’t be fully accepted by either more definitive poets or more traditional novelists; or because I am happy in this nether-space called VERSE NOVELIST—it’s where I sing.

Have I mentioned that I don’t write YA?

I write novels. Why do the protagonists tend to be teenagers? I really don’t know. I sometimes wish I could write humorous or action-packed middle-grade stuff like the amazing Barbara Park’s JUNIE B. JONES series or Mary Pope Osborne’s MAGIC TREEHOUSE. I can’t get enough of the gorgeous art of folks like Wendy Wahman and Paul Schmid. Heck, I kind of wish I’d been born Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle if you really want the truth. But I can’t. I don’t. I wasn’t.

I’m me.

Maybe someday I’ll write about protagonists who are older or younger. Maybe someday I’ll write in third person (or maybe even second). Maybe someday, I’ll be done exploring that fascinating, immediate, joyful, tragic, terrifying, limitless epoch that is being a teenager…

• WITHIN a family and a community including CHARACTERS who happen to be parents, teachers, siblings
• WHILE TESTING identities that may or may not fit

• AND EXPLORING friendships and romances for right and wrong reasons
• AND TRYING TO FIGURE out WHAT YOU MIGHT BE GOOD AT and WHO YOU ARE and WHO YOU WANT TO BECOME…and WHY

Actually, I’m still doing all of that. And I’m learning through the medium that, right now, frees my voice and lets me dive deep (albeit sometimes fearfully) into memory, curiosity and hope.

So, no, I don’t write "YA." I write the books I can write in the strongest, most expressive way I can. And I honestly hope that curious people of all ages will read them.

The difference between a great idea and a NOVEL

I’ve discovered that I have this time-consuming habit of being trapped between two stories and struggling (sometimes for months) to figure out which one is the beginning of the actual book I should be writing. It’s not pretty. I wish my brain worked IN SOME OTHER WAY. But it doesn’t. Maybe it can’t. All I can say at this point is that I’ve begun to learn how to listen to the warring factions of my creative brain and I have realized something.

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GREAT CHARACTER OR CONCEPT and the START OF A NOVEL. At the beginning, they may feel the same but they are NOT.

When it’s just a flashy idea, it can start with some cool lines, maybe the vision of a character or a great WHAT IF notion. However, as time progresses, you feel resistance. Maybe you’re wrestling with form or point-of-view. Maybe the plot feels overworked or you dread the thought of the research you’ll have to do to make it feel real. Time passes and the word count goes up and then DOWN and then up and then DOWN AGAIN. You WANT to see the book through but somewhere in your gut is this sense of dread each time you face the computer.

When it’s a BOOK, maybe it starts with a great scene or the voice of an interesting character, but then, as you mull and write and eat a bunch of junk food, the story begins to wash over you. Driving carpool, you suddenly realize that the supporting character has a complex relationship with his dad and older brother. Putting on your mascara, you see how to resolve a challenging plot issue by changing the WHO of an action. The story structure feels like it’s settling into place. The “AND THEN WHAT HAPPENS” strategy IS WORKING! It is still as grueling, sometimes requiring discipline you’re not sure you’ve got but you know that THE STORY IS THERE.

Sometimes, you actually like the IDEA better than the BOOK for a while. Or it’s just hard to abandon the curious character you’ve been writing about, even if s/he is going nowhere emotionally, or plot-wise.

HAVE COURAGE. Close the file. Write THE BOOK!

Flipping that Playlist - A Fun Writing Exercise

These days lots of writers share playlists--collections of songs that inspired their novels, helped them develop characters, etc.  I have such a roster of tunes for THE SOUND OF LETTING GO. As a forty-something, I like a lot of songs teen readers that may be unfamiliar to teen readers. Luckily, I am also the mom of two teenagers and, as such, have been exposed to a lot of great post-millennium bands and tunes. So my playlists are a bit of a mix of "vintage" and new stuff.

Today, though, I want to talk about a cool writing exercise I have discovered. Instead of finding
music to reflect the thoughts and moods of a character, I listen to the tracks my sixteen-year-old plays when I pick him up from school. They speak a lot to his mood and current concerns. And I build in my head a story about a character living out the same playlist he is choosing.

Give it a try: Ask a teenager to give you a list of three to five songs to play. Write the story those songs sing to you.

For me, it can be very freeing to not have to find the songs to fit into some character box, but instead to build the box that could hold songs you did not choose.

Lemme know how it goes for you.

Craft Chat: The "Why" of Mysteries and the issue of Immortality

A touch of insomnia this past week found me watching PBS at 3 AM which is how I discovered a terrific Masterpiece Mystery series. ENDEAVOR, charismatic (and handsome) Shaun Evans, explores the early career of detective Endeavor Morse, masterfully portrayed by the late John Thaw in the earlier series, INSPECTOR MORSE.

How does this relate to writing craft?

As a child, I was an avid mystery reader, devouring Nancy Drew, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, and Dorothy Sayers. In my late teens through early thirties, books by Elizabeth George, Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, Dennis Lehane, and Morse's creator, Colin Dexter, sat on my nightstand. Mystery novelists were some of my first instructors on plot, pacing, use of setting to create mood, and developing the character of your protagonist.

Then, one day, I stopped reading mysteries. Why? Pretty much every detective novel I read started out with a death. Not that that initial death is the point of a mystery novel. Mystery novels are most often not about the victims but about the detectives (pro or amateur) who discover their killers. Regardless, all those first-chapter corpses started to bother me. I stopped reading potboilers, stopped watching tv mysteries, like Prime Suspect and Poirot.

Until the wee hours of that recent morning when Shaun Evans' performance revealed this to me: Detectives are often tortured souls because they are philosophers. They embody our need to understand the inevitable outcome of human existence: death. Murder mysteries are not celebrations of criminal cunning but explorations of the minds that seek to figure out a reason one person becomes responsible for another dying. Because if a detective can find this answer, it might point him or her to a reason for living.

When asked the inevitable author question, "Why do you write?" I often tell people that it's my stab at immortality. Yes, it's a compulsion and a (sort of painful) joy, but it is also fired by a need to be remembered, to leave something behind, to prove I existed for a window of time.  Perhaps my occasional discomfort with the murder mystery genre stems from the fact that detective novelists pursue this immortality on both literary and meta-levels. Through the act of writing. The use of death as a plot catalyst. The employ of a hero/anti-hero detective who is both searching for a perpetrator of death and struggling with his/her own mortality or other personal/ethical dilemma. I feel like they are turning a mirror back on author-me and I'm not sure I feel about my reflection.

Gah, this reads like an English paper!

Go watch Endeavor and tell me what you think.

Craft Chat: Three Revision Passes

I am working my way through revisions before sending my current manuscript to my editor. Once I've laid the story onto the pages, I go back through the manuscript multiple times. Here are three of my revision techniques.

1. The Outline
When I write a verse novel, I number the poems. It helps me keep the ideas, pacing in order. My first revision pass consists of writing an outline of the novel with a one-line plot/theme description of each poem. This helps me look at story flow and spot gaps where characters or ideas are missing for too long.

2. Would She Say It?
For this one, I play a bunch of music that gets me into the head of my MC and then reread the MS again, beginning-to-end) asking myself if each line (dialogue or internal monologue) attributed to my MC feels true to her character.

3. The Mark Twain Pass
You know the old saw "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one"? I go back through the ms to eliminate RESTATEMENTS, ADVERBS, UNNECCESARY ANALOGIES, AND OVERWORKED IMAGES.

These are just three of the many passes I give the ms before turning in. I envy people who can sort of work forward without rereading their whole blasted book so many times. Alas, I do catch a lot of typos.

How many times to you read a MS before you consider it ready to share? Any suggestions to help compulsive re-readers like myself? ADVICE ALWAYS WELCOME :)

Happy Monday!

Fiction Friday: FIRST PERSON

Ah, the great YA-first-person debate! Writers, bloggers, critics and every possible combination thereof have opined on the popularity of first person in YA literature. In last weekend's Wall Street Journal, Meghan Cox Gurdon reviewed and compared three first-person YA's in her "Children's Books Chronicle."

POV has been weighing on my mind particularly since ms I am revising is currently in third-person, past tense, but having some rocky moments. So this morning at Barnes & Noble, as I procrastinated about settling down for my writing time, I decided to read every first page on the YA new releases shelf (really one of my more epic avoidance efforts, still, an exercise both enlightening and fun). As I read, I discovered that, not just many but THE VAST MAJORITY of new YA novels begin, more-or-less, in the "I."

My upcoming novel is written in first person (also in verse) so I'm not throwing any stones here. But, as I read, I noticed that Leila Sales' charming debut, MOSTLY GOOD GIRLS is in first person, along with NYT best-sellers Gale Forman's IF I STAY, Ellen Hopkins' CRANK, and Stephenie Meyers' TWILIGHT. Perhaps its the pervasiveness of this POV that has, of late, lead a few literary heavy hitters to throw punches at the old "I." As a YA-writer, it's made me insecure.

However, the great gods of procrastination pointed my feet toward literary fiction where...guess what? Living-writer- legend Philip Roth's AMERICAN PASTORAL, Ernest Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES, Arthur Conan Doyle's ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, Joshua Ferris's satire THEN WE CAME TO THE END, the framing chapters of Isaac Asimov's I, ROBOT, and F. Scott Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY all sit happily on the shelves, snuggling first person narrators inside their jackets. So, is the "I" a YA trend?

Happily, I was able to pull myself away from the stacks and get back to wrestling with my mansucript before all that deep thought made me need to nap :) However, I remain at a point of intense conflict, currently writing in third person, past tense but feeling like my character wants to speak for herself--you know, back to the "I." No conclusions here. Just observations...and questions.