Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

One of the coolest parts of the publication journey has been meeting other writers. We get along quite well, other writers and I. We like to complain and kvetch and giggle and support, and we’re bound by a mutual love of reading and books and a mutual compulsion to produce words. Occasionally it strikes me that I really am the luckiest author ever. I live in a great place for supportive writers, and I know a huge number of them.  And in recent weeks, a few dear ones have had amazing and well-deserved successes.

To wit: Eleanor Brown, the most fun lunch companion, well, ever, just hit the New York Times and IndieNext paperback bestseller lists with the paperback of The Weird Sisters, a book that amazed me and is likely to delight the many book clubs who have been chomping at the bit for a paperback edition. 

And Stephanie Burgis! Stephanie is a real dear, and not just because she turned me on to Georgette Heyer. She writes the best kinds of books: middle-grade fantasies with a strong dash of Regency, and her debut novel, Kat Incorrigible, was just included on VOYA’s Top Shelf List for Favorite Middle-Grade Fiction of 2011.

And the very wonderful Sandra Hume is deep in preparations for Laurapalooza 2012 in Mankato (won’t you join us?).

And Ellen F. Brown, whose Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind made my must-read list for 2011, just published an amazing article in Bloomberg on why book publishing will survive the digital age.

And Liz Michalski is hard at work on her next novel, and Daniel Hernandez keeps blowing my mind with his reporting from Mexico City (check out his Down & Delirious in Mexico City, you won’t regret it), and Kyla Calvert is working on an exceptional series on homeless youth in San Diego County, and Kj Swanson just was accepted to St. Andrews in Scotland, where she will dissertate about the Brontës.

What about you? What are your latest accomplishments?

Even though I’m regularly asked to speak on my perspectives on writing and literature, I never really feel qualified to do so. As is evidenced by ten blogs in a row about my writing process, it’s a tenuous and delicate and scary thing, so how could I ever master it? Luckily, I doubt I really need to. I just need to keep getting back to work, back to myself.

Rather than depressing me, a workmanlike (workwomanlike?) attitude toward writing keeps me going. It reminds me that I can improve with practice, that I need to plug away. Treating writing like work is not the most glamorous choice in the world (pro tip: neither is any aspect of writing, at least for me), but it results in writing that gets done with the minimum of fuss and emotional trauma. This is not to say that there is not emotional trauma galore in the process…how can you really get to readers if you don’t strip naked and wander around every once in a while? But for me, it always comes back to the work.

Luckily, I am a person who loves to work. I am a hard worker. This could be due to insecurity or incompetence or some other word that starts with “I”. I’m sure it’s safer for me to keep my identity as a worker instead of as an artist, but it works for now.

Might this change as I mature? I guess we’ll see. For now, there’s a big pile of work awaiting me—the work of finding myself and others on pages I create and the work of showing up for my work. That sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? And yet I relish the rolling up of the sleeves. Who’s with me?

 

 

You know the big, huge, terrifying amount of time, energy and love you pour into your writing? You know the dreams you wrap up in every word? It will all be for naught if you don’t show up to protect it.

I don’t mean go out and buy a gun, or go out and get all obsessed with the remote possibility of someone stealing your precious ideas, unless that’s your thing. I mean that letting your desire for publication trump your common sense and your sense of self-protection is somewhat ludicrous. So is allowing people to divert you from your higher purpose or giving away your self-respect to someone who seems to offer “something for your career” in exchange for your firstborn child, or something. Find the right people to bitch to and trust. Find a sense of unwavering something that lets you shut the door a few moments a week to write those words, or stand up on behalf of the draft you can’t get out of your head, or murder the character you love too much for your own good.

I won’t go into specifics, but I have had to learn all this the hard way. Ultimately, I must show up on my own behalf and on behalf of my work.

Look, the publishing industry is changing fast. Things are buzzy and kind of terrifying. There’s always something to compare yourself to—a stellar success that is just enough like you to make you really jealous, or a flameout that is just close enough to home to make you wince.

It might sound cliche, but the only way I know to combat this weirdness is to look for the book only I can write.

When I got close to my first book deal (spoiler alert: it didn’t happen), I really didn’t get this. I didn’t get that an editorial committee, or an editor, or a reviewer, or a librarian, or a reader would take a look at the cover of a book with my name on it and say something to the effect of “So? Why should I care?” And that’s okay. It really is. Because when I’m doing my job right, I’m writing the book only I can write, the book I was born to bring to all of you. This doesn’t mean that the book will change the world, but in order to succeed I have to bring my uniqueness and my voice and courage to the work.  It might be scary, or confusing, or really hard to get down to that essence, but I kind of feel like that’s my calling as a writer.

It’s also the hardest thing in the world to go for, because in order to pursue the book that only you can write, you have to figure out what “you” means at any given moment. That’s the really tricky part.

There are two types of revisers: the reluctant and the thrilled. Maybe it’s the former-school-newspaper-copyeditor in me, or the short drafter in me, but I love revision. At last! Drafting is done (ha) and I can make the damn thing a bit better, or at least I hope.

But revision isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. It’s a layered process, one with lots of nuance and fluidity. The layers I can think of are:

• Flow
• Story
• Voice
• Time
• Tense
• Facts
• Focus
• Pace
• Look
• Ease of Reading
• Grammar/Spelling
• Fun

I’m sure there are hundreds of other layers, if you look for them. But these are the common threads I look for in revision. I try to consider the piece from a reader’s standpoint. What comes before/after? Is the voice accessible or (woe!) dry and academic? Has the piece caved in to the wall o’text mentality or is it sparse and flimsy? Does it clog my throat when I read it out loud? Am I falling asleep with boredom?

As I get into revision, I always start with an assessment of what I’ve written. Usually this consists of me scratching my head and feeling mystified at my word choices and decisions, but then I get down to business and do a paragraph-by-paragraph summary, just a few words to describe each paragraph. Just going through that exercise usually immediately reveals big holes, things begging to be rearranged, things that can go now. It also, strangely, reassures me a bit. Okay, I have a slight idea of what I’m doing, or at least what I’m doing wrong.

I am pretty brutal about cutting, but every once in a while there’s a turn of phrase I find particularly brilliant and can’t bear to let go. This tends to be a warning sign of tunnel vision. Rather than forsake it completely, I force myself to experiment: What if I cut it out and put it in another document of dead darlings? Would it improve things or detract from them? Nine times out of ten it languishes in that file forever as I find I can live without it.

My last gasp is always what I call “the fun pass.” My insecurity tends to show up in wordy academic tendencies that make every sentence into a parenthetical disaster, so I go through one last time and get honest with myself. Is this fun to read? Really?

Since the revision process is a multi-layered one, there’s no right or wrong way. This is maddening and heartening at once.

How about you? Are you a reviser? What’s your favorite revision trick?