January MOVIE BOOK FUN

Here come two debut titles whose covers are already tagged SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. One will star Taylor Lautner and the other will be headlined by Elle Fanning. Can you guess which is which by the book covers?

TRACERS  and ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES both look like great reads, too!

New Year's Blah Blah Blah

2014 was a bumpy year in authorville. The second book is doing well but I'm struggling to get a third off the ground. I've been all over the place in terms of characters, plot, form, bouncing from one idea to another. I wrote an entire ms that's not quite right, along with giant chunks of two others. Maybe I wrote too much. You know, sometimes you ought to tell yourself to change out of the sweats and look up from the keyboard because this sh** isn't going anywhere.

Thankfully, I had an epiphany on Thursday, December 18th. Sorry for waiting to tell you about it :)

The afternoon began with 90 of minutes helping 100 kids (grades K & 3) make "Candy Trains," which are very messy gingerbread house type dealies. I left covered in frosting.

Isn't he darling?

From there, my third-grader and I raced to a local Panera Bread Bakery,
went inside, ordered fast, and met with a high school senior I am tutoring in writing. I ordered something delicious but full of onions. Translation: Bad breath to go with the eau-de-frosting I already had going on.

Dashed to my son's baseball clinic and thought about calling it a day. That was where my delightful husband turned up and said he'd take the boy home and I should go into Seattle for the SCBWI Holiday Meeting & Cookie Competition. I don't know why I went, but I'm so glad.

• Even though it took 90 minutes of driving in the pouring rain to get there.
• Even though I really smelled interesting.
• Even though my cookies didn't win.

It was wonderful to connect with my tribe, to hear stories of success and frustration, to admit things you can only admit to other writers. Then Martha Brockenbrough gave an inspiring presentation about the writing life in which the vital point was that THE ACT OF WRITING HAS VALUE even if a given work doesn't find its way into a binding. There was lots more but here's my take away.

1. Yes, it's worth doing what I'm doing.
2. (And this was more of an indirect lesson) I HAVEN'T BEEN WORKING HARD ENOUGH.

I've gotten cocky. A few nice reviews, and a couple of award noms (no wins) made me think I could send something imperfect to an editor. I've realized that, for whatever reason (and I know some people can sell books on a three-sentence pitch and a promise), I need to stop rushing, stop waiting for gratification because it "feels like time" to have another book in the pipeline.

I NEED TO WORK HARDER.  I NEED TO TAKE TIME. AND I NEED TO BE OKAY WITH IT.

I think, finally, I am.

PS: My friend Dawn won the Best Tasting Cookie Prize!

Happy, Happy Holidays!

Here's a present from me to you...

My 14yo photographing "his mountain."

I took up skiing as an adult. It has been a struggle to conquer fear, to develop discipline and technique, to not give up. Remind you of anything...?

WRITE ON

Fearlessly

With focus and determination

Do not stop

Go head. Go sit at the computer today! You're welcome ;)

Blogging from the ABYSS

Here we are at December again. The culminating month of the year and a time for both contemplation and celebration.

This year saw the publication of my second verse novel, THE SOUND OF LETTING GO, which has received some lovely critical notices including a star from PW and selection by the Junior Library Guild. Recently, I was delighted to learn that it's been shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Book Awards. Can I take any credit for this? Well, I did write the book, of course but, in terms of promotion, I have done far less than I did for AUDITION.

This is a photo of salmon swimming upstream,
taken near my home this fall.
Read to the end of the post and you'll get it :)

Why?

1.  MOTHERHOOD. This year my youngest started at a new elementary school, my eight-grader has been applying to different high schools, my senior is applying to college and my eldest is a college sophomore. Can you say complex family logistics and massive needs for "mom time"? Yep, I've been busy with the kids.

2. FACING FACTS. After coordinating a cross-country bookstore tour AND an epic blog tour for AUDITION, I have concluded that as a fledgling author who is not also a reality television star, chef, or dog trainer, there is little I can do to push unit sales of my books in any cost-and-time-effective way. (CAVEAT: The AUDITION book tour, called Stages on Pages, regardless of organization, time and travel costs, was an opportunity to make amazing writer friends I have to this day so it was worth it all the same and I'd recommend authors try it at least once.)

3. LIMITS. Without massive effort, constant giveaways and the generation of a great deal of newly-written content, my blog, FB and Twitter follow stats have pretty well plateaued (sp?). At this point, I feel a strong need to conserve my writing energy for a number of fiction projects that are exciting me beyond belief. I AM WRITING STORIES. In support of this decision, you can search the webs for articles about blogger burnout, the pros and cons of social media for authors, and agents reminding writers to focus on producing their very best work.

Yet, I continue to blog, albeit less than before, because I love keeping this online account of my writing journey and occasionally celebrating the work of other writers. I hope some folks out there in the virtual abyss stumble onto my blog and find it useful. I suppose what I most want to convey here is the VALUE of this writing life, no matter the financial outcome, no matter that sometimes we hunch over the keyboard feeling like we're accomplishing little more than salmon struggling upstream. Readers, however you got here, please know that the stories you tell MATTER and that IN YOUR belief in the act of writing as a vital component of the act of living, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.