George Michael, Tell Me More About This 'Faith'

It's been a productive few writing months.  I've entered a contest, fine-tuned my work for a double-critique session in April, and finished a packet to mail off tomorrow for a SCBWI writing grant.  My goal has always been to submit one piece of writing SOMEWHERE every month (give or take, deadlines are finicky), and I certainly hit that goal for February and now I'm ahead of the game for March.  Today, though, I hit a wall.  A very smart, friendly, exactly-what-I-needed sort of wall.


The wall ordered me to stop editing.


I've re-conceived, reread, and rewritten the opening chapter to my newest project at least a dozen times.  Probably more but after two or three I stop counting because I've become hopelessly obsessed with getting things right.  I change words back and forth.  I hunt for misplaced modifiers.  I add detail, only to realize it contradicts other details later on causing a terrifying chain of events that makes everything different in the book.  Not  necessarily better or worse.  Just different.  


Then I play with tone and dialogue and every other thing I can possibly fuss with.  Some of the editing is necessary.  Nothing emerges perfect the first time.  Ever.  Not for me.  Not for Hemingway.  Not for JK Rowling.  (I have to mention Harry Potter at least once in every blog.  It's just necessary.)  And it drives me insane when students refuse to believe this fact.  I teach a high school Creative Writing course, the writers in it are talented and inspiring, but some live in the stubborn land of refusal.  They treat editing suggestions like lepers and shun them away as quickly as they can.  


Unfortunately editing can take an ugly turn for a writer.  Over-editing can feed the pool of self-doubt that so many writers swim in.  Will it ever be good enough?  Have I made it perfect?  Can it ever live up to the great writing out there that at times dwarfs my own and makes me feel like a novice?  (Moments like this, I apply the Stephenie Meyer principal.  Read a page of Twilight.  You will feel so much better about your own writing.  :-)  At any rate, while it may be hard to motivate yourself to start editing, sometimes it's near impossible to force yourself to stop.  


This is why identifying the line, that spot where you've done all you can, is so important.  This is where the faith comes in.  You have to have faith as a writer that you are good and the words you've graced the page with are important.  It's a hard type of faith, particularly in the face of rejection.  And let's face it, almost all writers drown in rejection.  One of my favorite books, MetaMaus, shows a handful of the rejection letters Spiegelman received before a publisher accepted his beautiful project.  I guarantee he came to a point where he let faith override the 'no's' to accept that the graphic novel he'd created was worthy.


Let's face it, we're not all going to be famous writers who end up on the New York Times Bestseller list or in English anthologies that high school students are bludgeoned into reading.  And if fame and fortune are your only end goals, it realistically won't play out that way.  Instead come to the realization that you are a good writer already, of course with lots of work to do, but a good writer nonetheless.  And your writing will be important.  To someone.  It will be very important.  Maybe life changing.  Or maybe it will end up being a book that person holds on to for the rest of their lives.  That reader will give you all the faith you need.


One of my favorite childhood books was The Teeny Tiny Witches.  No, the author Jan Wahl is not super famous, and while he still may be living, I don't believe he writes books anymore.  This particular book is no longer in print, although Ebay has a copy or two bouncing around.  But I still have my copy.  And my daughter Sophia will read it.  (My son Matthew is more of a giant, scary cyclops sort of kid.)  I've conservatively read this book one hundred times in my thirty-five years, and I haven't even scratched the surface.  I'll read it again many more, and with some good preservation my grandchildren will end up owning it.  Wahl may have had doubts when he wrote it and gone through a few dozen revisions, but I'm hoping that faith in his story got it published and into my hands.


I'm putting down the editing pen for a few days and sending off my works with a smile on my face.  It's not the easiest thing in the world to find, but I've definitely found faith that what I'm writing is good enough.

A Big Person's World?

With a healthy dose of editing this week I will finally, finally, finally have my young adult novel prepared and ready(?) to submit into the big bad world of publishing.  I've had a few people take a quick look at drafts with favorable feedback, so keep fingers and toes and eyes (not too long of course) crossed for me.  It will be a slow and torturous process, I'm sure, but I have a few other projects to flesh out which will keep my mind off of the inevitable waiting game.  


I am, however, struggling with a final component that will likely occupy the majority of my editing time this week.  How big a role are adults allowed to play in a young adult/middle grade novel?  Popular wisdom varies, and modern examples range all over the place.  The Dumbledores and Snapes of the world lead me down one path, authors like Lauren Oliver, one entirely different.  This leaves me in a quandary about the opening two chapters of my novel.


The aunt and uncle in the book occupy a huge space.  Mostly the aunt.  It's a long, complicated story, but the first two chapters are filled with the heroine's blossoming relationship with a pair she's never met and really knows nothing about.  I worry, is that too much time to spend with them?  Will a young adult reader scoff and say no, I'd far prefer to hear about the folks in the heroine's generational nook?  Or is good writing good writing and solid characters hold their own regardless of the age?


One of my biggest problems with bad YA books, and I've felt this way since I started reading them as a teen myself decades ago are the non-parent parents.  I don't want adults in my book to sit and smile at good grades or frown and remind the kiddos of their curfew while adding no value to the narrative.  I generally dub them the 90210 parents where in the first run of the series Jim and Cindy honestly did nothing.  Towards the end of the series there were one or two pithy episodes where they got their hands dirty, but it was far too little too late.  And if I minimize the presence of the adults my book may as well head into a Lord of the Flies zone where the adults can be dispensed with altogether.


On the other hand, this is a teenage girl's story.  Her experiences are the most important, her life changes the most drastically, but I keep finding myself on the precipice of falling into the aunt's story.  She is an older, bitter woman who would gladly snatch the narrative under her skirt and run away with it.  I think I've written her well, patting myself on the back a bit, and then I worry that I've written her too well.  Is she necessary in so many chapters.  Does she outweigh the other young girl who is supposed to be a villain?


I don't really have too many answers this morning.  Mostly questions.  I will do my best and see how the scales fall.  As always, I'm left with the thought that if struggling with my writing is the worst thing I have to do today, I'm pretty darn lucky.  


Happy Martin Luther King Day.          

Time freeze, pleeeeeeease

I never want to write when I'm supposed to.  My husband has taken on the grocery shopping for the morning, Sophia is worshiping he who is Elmo.  Matthew is at a friend's house.  The dog and cat are curled up under my elbows like adoring furry armrests.  There is absolutely no reason on this earth why I'm not chugging away on one of the twenty writing projects having their own personal fight club in my brain to get down on paper.


And I got nothin'.


I can list the exact moments this past week when I've wanted to write.  First, right in the middle of reading aloud a chapter of Of Mice and Men to my vaguely interested students, I wanted to write.  In fact I could barely focus on Steinbeck's salty words in front of me because I had a great first line in mind.  A wonderful first line in fact.  And the students would not have minded one bit if I'd stopped, told them to go do something else and started writing.  But of course that would be bad teaching, so I read on and now for the absolute life of me I have no idea what that stunning first line was.  No clue whatsoever.


It also happened at the dentist's office, mouth wrenched open, a Novocaine shot hovering above my lip.  (If you know me at all,  you know that sharks and dentists terrify me more than just about anything else in the world.  And if a shark ever became a dentist, I think I'd just drop dead :-)  I'm guessing my dentist would not have been thrilled if I'd told him he could wait while I wrote down a resolution I'd been struggling with for weeks.  Is it still in my brain somewhere?  Probably.  But when I write it down now, nothing sounds as good.


I don't know if my writing muse is screwing with me, if I'm not as dedicated a writer as I'd like to think I am, or if the creative process is far too mysterious and arbitrary to ever understand.  I'm hoping it's the latter.  But these random bouts of creativity and lack thereof still challenge my weekly time management.


I'm never one to wish to travel back in time.  I have my memories and experiences tucked neatly away along with boxes of keepsakes.  I don't wish Matthew was still a baby because then I wouldn't be able to argue with him about the best way to make a Sherlock Holmes-style trap or watch him dominate on the tennis court.  And I never wish time away.  At some point my parents will no longer be here, I will not have a house full of children and animals and crazy.  But I would give anything to freeze time.  Could I find a whistle that I can blow the second I've got an idea and the world stops around me, providing those glorious few moments to jot down what I'm thinking of?


Since the magic whistle is not likely, my Plan B involves purchasing a Powerball ticket this evening, winning the lottery, and enjoying the luxury of hiring a stenographer to follow me around and take down all pearls of wisdom I come up with at odd moments of the day.  I do realize that Plan B is a stretch as well, but a gal can dream, can't she?

Words Should (Even)Flow

I write this blog while watching a live Pearl Jam concert on tv, listening to Vedder play his guitar while the enamored crowd sings "Better Man."  He is grinning from ear to ear.  I am grinning from ear to ear because I love him (in the platonic musical god sort of way of course).  And I am distinctly jealous because no matter how well I write, there will never be a crowd of a thousand bookies chanting catchy phrases from my work.  


Actually not completely sure I'd want that.  But it did cause me to pause and think about the strong tie between good music and good writing.  Both should be listened to and appreciated for their lyrical qualities.  How often, though, do we actually listen to good literature.  Just listen?  


I was recently lucky enough to hear Margaret Atwood read from both her fiction and nonfiction works.  Sure, I love it when writers talk about writing and their process, but the reading of the literature itself was just beautiful.  She is a force.  That's for sure, but her change of pacing, the nuances of tone, even her subtle gestures made the words all the more powerful.  It's been ages since I've listened to an audio book or simply let someone read to me.  It doesn't have to be the actual author but at least someone invested in the reading.  And listening to a reading will quickly dispense with bad literature.  A mismatched, ugly sentence flows about as well as a river full of molasses.  


When I am hard up for inspiration, I often think about a song.  Not the words per se or even the melody but the feeling I get when I listen and the overall message conveyed.  One of my first short stories, seventh grade I think, sprouted from the vaguely hippy Judy Collins music my mother bought for me on a vintage grey cassette.  I think I was still sporting my Fisher Price tape player at that point with the rainbow buttons.  I hit play and rewind and play and rewind to "Michael of the Mountain."  And no the story I wrote wasn't about Michael or a magical mountain or anything else starting with an m.  But it was about a feeling of isolation and contentment all neatly wrapped in one.  It was what I thought the song would be had it been distilled into a few pages and a few hundred words.

For me, framing the writing process this way (in lyrical terms) can also force me to slow down.  The pace, the rhythm, the wording morph into notes on a page, and how they each fit and follow one another is a special process.  It's my personal heaven because I'm miserable if I've stuck things together and it doesn't sound pretty.  And I don't mean pretty like a princess or glitter, but pretty in the sense that words fit perfectly.  A musician hits a wrong note, we wince.  An author hits the wrong word, we should shudder all the same.

Will I write a raucous, bawdy romance story if I listen to Lady Gaga?  Not necessarily, but I always want my writing to sound as pretty as a song even if no one ever says the words out loud.  The effect should be the same.  The rhythm, the movement, the things that are not about plot or character but just the language need to be present.  Maybe it's an archaic view, but so much modern writing is rushed.  Slapped together with glue and rubber bands and concept, that not so often do readers look for those lovely phrases that, like our favorite line from a song, mean exceedingly much to us.

*Since I started this post, my husband introduced me to The Talking Head's Stop Making Sense concert/film which only reinforces everything I've mentioned above.  David Byrne is such a force.  Thanks, sweetie :-)

Ho Ho Hold Up, Where Are We?

This post won't be of much use to anyone writing-wise.  But blogs by their very nature can be self-indulgent and ramble from time to time.  That or I'm prematurely preparing for my senior years where I'll be a retired teacher who puts my feet up on other peoples' desks and regales other peoples' students with my own vaguely amusing stories.  (Yes, I fully intend to use phrases like whipper snapper and getting jiggy with it to further date myself.)

Regardless I have found myself falling into frequent writing trances over the last few days.  (To clarify, a writing trance by my own definition is a moment where I stop paying attention to everything else going on because I've been inspired, and I gather details to use in a story either that day or a month or a year down the road.)  Perhaps it's because I'm on holiday break, luxury beyond luxury, or maybe excessive turkey induces strange bursts of creativity, but I stop every few minutes and mentally jot down notes.  Usually this happens from time to time and more often than not with people.  A strange movement.  A funny phrase.  An irresistible outfit never meant to be.  But over this past weekend it's been more constant and more atmospheric.  I keep seeing places that look ready for action.  A Christmas tree lot.  An animal shelter that takes in any animal, literally any animal.  And then I wonder what comes first, the place or the person?

Intuitively I want to say the character.  How can you write a novel without a character?  But what about those lovely atmospheric pieces where the setting frankly takes over the people as if they're possessed by it?  (Wuthering Heights pops into mind immediately.)  And of course I must fall on a Harry Potter reference.  Hogwarts is actually alive.  The building is organic and moves and reacts to its inhabitants.  How often do we as writers slave over a characters only to drop them in humdrum surroundings?  Or they live in the wrong setting, one that is cliched or too complex?

I never give proper credit to setting, to be honest.  I often let it materialize on its own, but the piece I'm working on right now switches settings drastically and I think it's forcing my brain to be much more aware of their creations.  They can't be arbitrary, or worse yet generic, because they propel my heroine (yes I always write about women or girls) into utterly different states of mind.  Her exploration of the settings is key to her development as a character and her quest, albeit trite, is to understand herself through the places she visits and the people she meets.  Were I not to meticulously plan these out, to explore them fully first in my head, there's no way I could authentically write her experiences.

Maybe that's why I'm noticing every place I go, not the people around me but rather how the people interact and respond to their environments.  It's pleasantly draining because then I remember that other things should occupy my mind. School starting back up in two days.  The laundry in the basement that resembles the Fraggle Rock trash heap.  Holiday shopping lists barely touched by Black Friday shopping (another provocative setting).  But I believe in striking while the iron is hot, and if the creative Sarah is hyperactive this holiday season, I'm tempted to let the laundry grow and sit on a bench somewhere watching the places, not the people.  

NaNoWriMo, You Dirty Dog

Is anyone else being driven absolutely batty by NaNoWriMo?  (It's even exhausting to type out the acronym, with the correct capital letters and such.)  It has eluded me forever, and while I am progressing along at a beautiful pace this year, I find the endeavor seeping into almost every inch of my life.  And my jury is still out on whether or not this is a useful practice.


Sure it's pushing me to write write write.  And if I have to type the word 'the' 60,000 times ala Nicholson in The Shining, I am finishing out the month with a novel in my pocket.  I am in fact writing through my normal blockades where in past projects I've just stopped or skipped on to something else.  Characters who misbehave are tossed into the trash for now and make way for those who will fall in line and skip along with the plot I've devised.  I've simplified the novel's settings to track them more easily and add richer detail.  I downloaded the new index card application for my iPad (which is lovely, can't recommend it enough) and I am certainly more organized than I have ever been with previous projects.  This locomotive of a project is on schedule.  


But...and there is always a but...is it healthy to go nose to nose with a project and not come up for air until it's finished?  Does life allow for this sort of a luxury?  I am lucky to have a support system like no other. My husband picks up the odds and ends rattling around the house that I may be dropping because I've got one eye on word count and one eye on plot progression.  My parents chip in too, constantly, despite their ridiculously busy jobs and responsibilities, providing baby back-up whenever necessary.  But I still feel like I'm walking around with one of those adorable/evil cones dogs wear to keep from scratching themselves. I feel like the 150 percent I'm pouring into my YA novel is coming at a cost to other areas.  Do my children understand that I can't be quite as fun this month because I'm writing nonstop?  Will my teaching suffer if I'm watching the clock and wondering when my next free hour comes to knock out the required 2,000-word chapter?


And fellow writers, aren't we already an obsessive and escapist group?  (Also repetitive, because I feel certain I've blogged about this before.)  I remember these writing blinders sustaining me in high school, a place that I was never too fond of.  I say this loving it now, although being on the other side of the desk as a teacher is a far cry from the angst-ridden and teenage nightmarish place many students experience.  As a teenager I wrote for hours, read for hours, reminded myself that there were a million unexplored worlds to creep into that made my own feel finite and not so oppressive.  I remember writing a novella in middle school actually, after Gary Paulsen came to speak to us, and I'm fairly certain I did nothing else for three months solid but write until my orange Mead notebook and Trapper Keeper were chock full of the stories.


No wonder NaNoWriMo is only a month, because any longer and I might forget my name.  Or my address.  Running a mental marathon filled with metaphors and alliteration, conflict and resolution, is no easy task.  But then again, at the end of November while I am feasting on turkey, I will in fact have my novel in my pocket.  So NaNoWriMo, let's call a truce.  Get me to the end of my book, and I'll stop griping about the annoying acronym or the fact that I may have forgotten to tie my own shoes, that brain space occupied by my writing.

Conferences, They Do A Body Good

Get thee to a writing conference.  Right now, this second.  Drop your Starbucks, board your pets, call in sick (and cough for good measure.)  But make your way to a writing conference because it is like a shot of writing adrenaline right in the good old chest plate.


I say this as I rarely take my own advice.  I worry about how much a conference will cost or if it's worth the expense.  (I've been lucky enough to receive two scholarships - check for them.  Usually one or two are available.)  I mentally list the five hundred and seventeen things that I ought to be doing instead of traveling, settling in, and conferencing.  Grading and parenting are often the two big ones I can't quite dismiss.  And of course  I miss my children, my husband, even the fat orange tabby cat who masquerades as our pet and is in reality a slash and claw machine.  Sure I see them every day, but between school, sports practices, and the daily minutia the weekend days are precious downtime to enjoy with them rather than running on the frantic hamster wheel that is our life.    


But honestly the thing that most keeps me from conferences is an ugly voice in the back of my head that tries to remind me with its acid tongue that I'm not a writer yet.  I don't receive a steady paycheck.  My books are not on Barnes and Noble's shelves.  Most of the free world does not know me as an author.  A teacher?  Sure.  A mother, daughter, neighbor, friend?  Yup.  But not an author.


With that laundry list of reasons why I shouldn't go to a conference, there need to be major ones on the other side of the teeter totter to balance things out.  Or frankly why go to another writing event ever again?


Well, there are.  There are plenty of reasons, and I can offer a few from my own humble perspective.  But by reading them, you (as a writer, and you ARE most likely one if you're reading this) are promising me that you will get yourself to a conference this year, next, or within the decade.  Life of course throws obstacles aplenty, but the obstacles should only show us how impassioned we are to make writing real in our lives.


First, meeting other writers is just neat.  We're eccentric, we're spread out across the universe, and we're not easily identifiable like say those ladies who wear the red hats.  I spoke with a mother from Utah, a criminal attorney from NYC, and a teacher from Connecticut.  Except in the banquet room over breakfast we were all writers, many of whom had not yet experienced their big breaks.  Not that I'd ever be pleased with anyone else's misfortune, but it's encouraging to know that the highly publicized stories of twenty-year-olds with six figure book deals are certainly not the norm.


And there are mentors and advice galore.  I was lucky enough to attend the Rutgers One-on-One Conference, and I worked with an agent who was exceedingly helpful and could concentrate on my manuscript and query.  (Of course my hope is that I can submit a revised version and snag her as my agent in the near future.  I'll keep everyone posted about that.)  But even when the ratio's not that favorable and there look to be two dozen writers for every agent or editor, there are still moments to touch base.  Or sit and listen to the wisdom.  And there's plenty of it.  Not just from the formal presentations and workshops.  Eavesdrop on the juicy conversations that more times than not describe situations and questions you have or will eventually find yourself in.  Even if it's something simple and obvious like, "Write like your life depends on it."  I've been repeating that phrase in my head a lot the last few days.  It's a far better voice to listen to than the negative one.  


And finally, more than the other reasons, the conference will energize you to write.  I came home realizing that my writing regiment just wasn't cutting it, and usually I consider myself pretty prolific.  I manage to find kernels of time, but since the conference I've been religiously knocking out two and three chapters each day of writing or revision even if all my other duties are screaming at me to stop and please instead pick up a stack of laundry or sort toys. The conference reminded me that I am most certainly a writer who, along with many other talented men and women, should work each and every day on my craft as if it was not only a hobby, but as if my professional happiness depended upon it.