Where It Began

For those of us who love to write, there are probably a few books that stand out in our early memories as The Ones That Started It, the paperbacks we read ragged that made us want to write books of our own.  For many up-and-coming writers, I suppose these may include the Harry Potter books, the Camp Half-Blood series, or, heaven help us, Twilight.

I didn't have the good fortune of having Harry around when I was growing up in the early 80s.  The first book that I remember tearing through from start to finish was a science fiction tale you've probably never heard of called The Tutti Frutti Connection, by Alan Cameron, about kids who go into an ice cream shop and get whisked into a strange future, or alternate world--some weird place where everyone is bald, wears a shiny jumpsuit, and walks on people-movers.  I sometimes wonder what happened to Alan Cameron and his wacky imagination.

Sara Crewe, I love you

As I grew older, I enjoyed stories about girls: Little Women is fantastic, of course, and I loved Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles.  And I adored Frances Hodgeson Burnett.  The Secret Garden took me a few reads to love (my elementary self: Mary is so unappealing! Dickon is such a weird name!), but I was immediately enamored with A Little Princess.  The part where she wakes up from a brutal scolding and discovers that a secret friend has filled her room with plush blankets and a hot breakfast--LOVED it.  I re-read that book until the cover fell off.

Another author that played an important role in my elementary years was Lloyd Alexander.  I tried to read The High King when I was still too young, and it made no sense (also not a good idea to start with the fifth book in a series, but I was already a sucker for the shiny Newberry Medal sticker).  When I finally read the Chronicles of Prydain, I loved them--ditto the Westmark Trilogy.

I totally wanted that cat

A brief aside: in eighth grade, our English teacher had us practice different forms of letter writing--letter of request, letter of complaint, letter of praise.  I wrote to Lloyd Alexander and told him how much I like his books, and he answered me!  He didn't actually write me a letter, but sent me a brochure about himself and his books, upon which he scrawled the answers to my questions in his own handwriting, and thanked me for my letter.  Pretty neat.

My love of fantasy is what eventually brought me to writing.  The stories I wrote back then--two girls on an epic quest with their horses in an alternate world, a girl who discovers she is a mermaid and has a whole mermaid family living in the ocean (leading to an epic underwater quest), two magical girls who must go on an epic quest to recover a magical crystal and save their kingdom (sense a theme here?)--were derivative and unremarkable, and completely enthralling to me at the time.  And as much as I enjoy reading good contemporary YA or literary fiction, I still love writing stories where I can build new worlds with my own rules, and use them to tell stories with underlying themes that matter in any world.

What kind of books did you read as a child?  Can you think of any authors in particular who influenced your desire to write?

Focus: more than just a Dutch rock band

Workspace of a highly effective person?

Like many, many other college students, I spent my undergrad years perfecting the art of procrastination. Twenty-page paper due tomorrow? No worries, I've got all my notes prepared--writing will commence at midnight. Why start anything yesterday that can wait for today? I always managed to meet the deadlines, and I graduated summa cum laude, proof to myself that waiting until the last possible second really was an effective strategy. Until.

In the real world, there are no professors hanging over you, giving you until Friday at 3 to get your work done. If nobody at all is awaiting your output, that finely honed procrastinating talent can become one of your biggest obstacles. Why work on something right now that I can put off until tonight, tomorrow, next weekend?

It takes a lot of drive and determination to write, especially when important things like family, friends and career compete for your attention. Some days I'm excited about what I'm working on and it's easy to get in the writing zone, but on others the distractions loom, and suddenly I've wasted an hour reading Wikipedia or cleaning my home office. Some days I'm "too tired," "too overwhelmed," and some days I just admit to myself that I'm feeling lazy.

I know that writing regularly is like building up a muscle, and you have to practice. Sometimes I set a timer for myself if I'm having trouble focusing. Sometimes it's listening to a particular song. And while I'm not trying to promote sports gear or athleticism here, I do like Nike's "No Excuses" ad:



Sometimes I'll watch it for a kick in the pants, to gun up my competitive side a little. What do you do to get and stay focused?


**Also, I won't post the video here, but if you've never heard of Focus the band, you really want to check out this mind-blowing video. I knew the song but was introduced to this amazingness when Maggie Stiefvater posted it on her blog.

Owning Up

All I need in my hotel room

Whew! I just got back from another holiday party, and I'm about ready to crash for the night in preparation for my short flight back to LA tomorrow morning.  It was a good party.  I'm not gonna lie--I like them dirty martinis. Anyhow, I've been thinking a lot lately about something, and I feel inclined to blather about it right now.

My question:  why is it so hard, especially for unpublished writers, to own up and publicly admit that we like to write? What exactly is the root of our secret shame in telling others that we enjoy fabricating people and places and writing their imaginary stories?

I don't like to call myself a writer. I write in secret, in my free time--I finished an entire novel before I told my friends about it. I still haven't told my parents about it. I slurk off to critique groups and tell people I had an "evening meeting." Good lord, they probably think I'm in some kind of support group. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Lately I've been trying to put myself out there on the internet in a writerly fashion--posting comments on writers' blogs, entering contests, tweeting inane comments about revisions.  It's uncomfortable, but I feel like its necessary.  Sure, it's embarrassing and it will probably live on the Internet much longer than I'd like, but it's a growing process.  I'm still a seedling.  It's okay for me to share this with a community that I very much want to be a part of.

I suspect that my reticence about my writing habit largely has to do with the fact that, as of yet, I haven't received the validation of a publishing contract. Until I can boast "I'm being published in/by," it feels like a silly, childish hobby, one I've had since the age of seven, when I won a beeyooutiful blue ribbon at a Young Authors contest. Until then, I'm just going, as Julia Child once said, on the courage of my own convictions.  And that will have to be enough for now.

What do you think? Can you relate?  Am I nuts? Does this ever go away?

A Dragon Flies To Space

No, that's not the title of my new fantasy/sci-fi mashup. It's a true story and it happened this morning in Florida.

(Wow, I've never embedded a video before. That was super easy.)

Space Exploration Technologies, or Spacex, just successfully launched their seventh rocket, the second of the Falcon 9 vehicles. This was a test flight carrying their Dragon capsule, the world's first commercial spacecraft and a contender to replace the space shuttle in ferrying astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station. The Dragon was successfully deployed and is currently making a few orbits, due to splash down in the Pacific in about an hour. What a great image--there is a Dragon orbiting the Earth.

For over six years now, I've had a courtside seat to the development of this remarkable company. Many of the engineers who worked on these rockets were fresh out of college or grad school, and they have pushed themselves like madmen, making countless personal sacrifices. They believe in the work they're doing and the advances they're making in the industry, and honestly, can you get a better thrill than watching a nine-engine rocket you helped design and build lifting off a pad in the birthplace of American spaceflight? They are all amazing, brilliant people.

Persistence is the key here. I'm not going to give you a rundown of all the past launches, but number one only got a mile high, and came crashing back down into the coral reefs of the Pacific island it was launched from. The engineers could feel the explosion several miles away, and I've got it on good authority that a few tears were shed. So they tried again, and again, and when number four finally succeeded, I was leaking at the eyes myself.

So this morning as I was huddled up in my hotel room, watching the live feed on my cell phone, what I was thinking was, Damn, they're getting kinda good at this. Persistence and practice.

Congrats Spacex, and all you hardworking engineers. I couldn't be prouder of you. And if I may take a second to brag, one of the voices in this video belongs to my rockstar husband. Congrats, sweetie. Now come home.

And What Have You Been Reading This Year?

I've noticed in my recent explorations that a lot of writers' websites contain book reviews. As a subscriber to many similarly-themed blogs, I find it funny when my reader feed rains multiple reviews of the same book all at once, often all raves. Anna and the French Kiss anyone? My goodness. I haven't read it yet, but once I get my hands on a copy I will, because according to the blogosphere it can't be anything but charming.

Right now I have no plans to review books on my blog, although I suppose this could change. I have, however, been reading a wide variety of literature. For my own amusement, I will now list some of the books that I have read this year, along with my brief thoughts:

Nerve by Dick Francis: I know his books are popular thrillers, but I thought this book was bizarre. He gave away the bad guy early on, and so I thought there would be a twist and it would be someone else, but it wasn't. If that was supposed to be the surprise, it worked. I bought this book when researching thriller writers, along with a Lee Child and an Anthony Hyde. Haven't read those yet.

The World According to Garp by John Irving: Excellent. I tried to read Owen Meany afterwards and couldn't get past the first ten pages. Possible due to extremely tiny print.

The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer: Light and entertaining, in a world full of fun techno details. The Time Paradox was my favorite.

The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson: Anybody who's read On Writing will know that Stephen King loves this story. I thought it was interesting, but it did not blow my mind. To each his own.

The Passage by Justin Cronin: I bought into the hype machine and it paid off, because I loved this book. It was engrossing and exciting, and his writing is so clean and lovely. I liked how he gave fascinating backstory on even the smallest characters. I also read his book Mary & O'Neil around this time. I don't remember much about that one except it was sad.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett: This book is amazing. I am giving it as a Christmas gift so more people will read it.

Lisey's Story and Under the Dome by Stephen King: Have you figured out yet that I'm a huge King fan? Sure, his plots are inane and sometimes the ending blows, but I will keep coming back because I just love his writing. I've been reading him since eighth grade and his books feel like home.

The Hunger Games trilogy: Lucky me, I didn't start these until the third one was almost out. Now I'm like a HG pusher, trying to get friends and strangers alike to read them. Team Peeta, if you were wondering.

Speak and Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson: Wow. That is all I will say.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi: Fantastic world-building, great writing. I feel like I need to re-read this one, because everybody loved it and I had trouble connecting with the characters. To be honest, I felt like it should have been a little longer. Anybody else think that?

Leviathan & Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld: Light and fun, I'm looking forward to seeing where the next book takes Alek and Deryn.

There were more that I could list, but this is getting long. I'm curious--let me know what books you enjoyed reading this year, and if you think there's something great I'm missing!

Plot = Panic

Oh, plot. How you make me want to beat my head against the carpet, sprint an hour, buy a mile of butcher paper and flow chart the heck out of it. It is because of you, plot, that my laundry gets done, my kitchen floor scrubbed.

Right now, I am the victim of my own impatience. I wrote my WIP on the fly, with an ending for one character in mind, but no clear path to get there. When I'd finished, I polished the writing and made a lot of little tweaks, but it wasn't until a conversation with my husband that I realized my plot was like a splayed hand, with lots of storylines tapering out to their own resolutions, but without the nice tight wrap-up that makes a good story so satisfying. Gah.

You know when I should have realized this? When I was trying to write a practice query, even just a logline, and could not for the life of me boil this book down to one strong sentence. Also when I was thinking about the sequels I would like to write, and came up with: the characters will be evolving like this! The backstory will come out like this! And the plot will be...stuff!

Trying to find/create the cohesive theme after the fact has been my monster challenge of late. Here are some of tools and methods I've been using to try to sort out my tangled strings:

• Writing out the character arc for each major player in the book
• Writing essays in the first person from the POV of select characters
• Making graphs
• Studying history
• Writing pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness notes
• More graphs
• Opening spreadsheets and making notes in different cells, then color coding the cells
• Writing a huge timeline
• Treadmill

I'm sure it sounds like an obsessive mess, but that's what helps me sort my thoughts, and when I figure out something that works, it feels like I've won the lottery. What tricks do you use when making plot revisions?

Space Invader

When you think of a Space Invader, what comes to mind? Is it this?

Or this?

Okay, I don't really expect you to think of my cat. But maybe you do have a little furry friend who enjoys spending his siesta time somewhere on your person. Makes it hard to get stuff done, but they're so sweet and soft and snuggly--I can't bear to toss him off my lap. I've found two ways to get rid of him: 1) offer treats, or 2) whistle loudly. Usually Mozart. He hates it.

Anyway, I promise that I'm not going to be posting about my cat all the time. I've been spending a lot of time lately just trying to get my footing in this whole social networking/self-promotion world, and I get the feeling I've come a bit late to the party. My critique partner told me that to get followers, I should sponsor giveaways, but since my audience right now numbers a grand 3 followers here and 10 on Twitter (and thank you very much to all of you), I don't think I'm going to reach many people that way yet.

Give me time, I'll get the hang of this. Dogged persistence is the answer to everything.

P.S. Upon reflection, I noticed that it may look like Space Invader is my tactic for breaking into the virtual literary society. Not so, not so.