Category Archives: Writing

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What’s the Big Idea?

Writing

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

You’d think after ten years together, you’d know someone really well. And, no, I’m not talking about my husband. I’m talking about a character, and January marked ten years since she showed up out of nowhere, demanding I tell her story.

When eleven-year-old Emma popped into my imagination, it was shortly after I really got into reading young adult lit. I figured it was a sign that that was the writing path for me. Early drafts of her story were promising; readers liked it (and gave me a lot of constructive criticism). I finished writing the novel in nine months. That was a first for me: finishing a novel. I was good at beginnings and endings, but I always had trouble making that connection in the middle. But I finally felt ready to face the big boys; I learned everything I could about queries and began looking for a literary agent.

Then reality set in: no one was interested.

Rejection is discouraging, yes, especially when you know that your story has promise. But the wonderful thing, the part that makes me sure I’m not wasting my time, is that I never wanted to stop writing, even when I learned to expect that every SASE would come back containing a form rejection. I got excited when agents wrote something personal, even if the answer was no.

Each rejection I took as an opportunity to better my story; maybe it simply wasn’t ready yet. I continued revising, or sometimes it just sat and kind of stewed while I worked on other projects (like being a mom). Many authors recommend leaving the book for six weeks or so after revising, then coming back for a fresh look. To date, I’ve gone through ten major revisions (sometimes revisions within revisions) since I finished the first draft. Each time I’ve returned to my story, I’ve seen changes that I needed to make and might not have noticed if I hadn’t taken a break. I rediscovered clever bits of writing that I couldn’t believe I actually created (unless there’s a little word fairy that turns garbage into poetry when I’m not looking). It’s a fantasy novel, so I really delved into the world of the story and made up words in my own fictional language, gave my fictional kingdom its own history, wrote pages of backstory. I changed the title four times, and I think I finally have the one that fits.

With each revision, I felt like I was getting closer to my goal, but it wasn’t until recently that I finally felt satisfied with it. Even though all the components were there, including that tricky middle bit, I think part of my problem when querying was that I wasn’t completely confident. I was almost relieved by the rejections, as much as I wanted someone to love my book, because I didn’t know if I would be happy publishing it as it stood.

Then, last fall a friend clued me into a webinar given by a literary agent, which led to me buying the agent’s book and discovering perhaps the biggest roadblock in the way of me truly knowing my story—and thus being able to tell it. The agent is Mary Kole, her book Writing Irresistible Kidlit (which I recommend to all authors, not just those of “kidlit”). In it, Kole addresses many aspects to which I never gave conscious thought. Perhaps the biggest, aptly named, is the Big Idea of the story. Even if not clearly articulated in a novel, the Big Idea needs to shine through. It’s also something an author should be able to clearly state in a query letter. Well, I can tell you that every query I ever wrote before reading Kole’s advice was all over the map when it came to describing my book. I could not specifically pinpoint what it was about without giving a lengthy explanation of the plot (which is extremely difficult to pull off in a one-page query).

Other authors such as Madeleine L’Engle and Anne Lamott further encouraged me. (Click the links to read about them in previous posts.) I thought about my story, went to sleep and awoke in the middle of the night with Emma on my mind. One thing that always bothered me was that I had no idea what her middle name was. Now, Sarah, you’re probably thinking, how could you not know your own protagonist’s middle name? You made her up, how hard is it? The problem was that when I thought of Emma, a middle name automatically came to mind, but even though it sounded right, it wasn’t hers. The same thing happened with her hair color. My first, hand-written draft made it brown, but Emma’s hair isn’t brown, it’s red. Sometimes, there are things that authors try to force on their characters—attributes or bits of history—that don’t suit, and they have to go.

Then it came to me—the perfect name and with a perfectly logical reason for why Emma’s parents gave it to her. It’s a name that defines her. . . because she hates it. If you told me at the beginning what her middle name was, I would have laughed and said it was stupid. I hadn’t gotten to know my story yet.

And it turns out that Emma’s middle name has a lot to do with the Big Idea, which I only started to figure out a few months ago. With that final bit of requisite knowledge, I not only composed a better query letter, but I finally did so with confidence. For the first time, I have a firm grasp on what I wrote and what I need to do moving forward. Am I happy that it took me ten years to get here? Of course not, and if I’d known it would take so long all those years ago, it probably would have killed my spirit. Nor does it mean that I’m done making changes, finished struggling, or guaranteed a best seller. But I am satisfied and ready to share Emma’s story. And I think she is ready to share her middle name, even though she doesn’t like it.

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A Dirty Beginning

writing

Writing (Photo credit: found_drama)

 

In the afterward of a sci-fi book that my dad recently finished, the author said that writers don’t come up with ideas, but that ideas find writers. I didn’t want to be rude and say, “No, duh.” After all, this was an epiphany for Daddy. But I said, “Yeah, any real author believes that.”

There is the chance, however, that I spoke out of turn. There very well could be an author out there who spins a little wheel that points to a variety of plot possibilities. The first spin: heroine is in an unhappy marriage. Okay, onto spin two: hero makes heroine believe in love again. Spin three: hero and heroine escape heroine’s dastardly ex-husband and save the world in the process. Alrighty, plot decided, time to crack the knuckles, take a deep breath, and write. Unfortunately, I’ve read more than a handful of bestsellers that felt like they were the victims of similar plot devices.

For the rest of us, though, writing is a tightrope walk across a pit of ravenous alligators, often sweating and exhausted and hopeless. But sometimes we find our footing and make it across. Sometimes we gather our courage and leap. Sometimes we fly.

I’ll be the first to admit that I fall into the pit more often than I fly. But usually, I’m somewhere in between, swimming like hell, struggling to keep my head up. What does that look like, outside metaphorical language? There are a lot of starts and fizzling-outs. Compositions books, notepads, journals, Word documents, full of millions of unpublishable words. When I realized that I had this propensity years ago, I started keeping a journal that was specifically for these little scenes that may or may not make it into completed novels. Sometimes a good bit of writing just doesn’t have a home yet. One of these scenes turned into the middle grade fantasy that I’m currently shopping with agents.

Even though I don’t consider myself superstitious or very mystical, I do believe that stories—true stories that need to be told—find their writers. One way in which they find me, at least, is what I think of as my inner narrator. She never shuts up. Often it’s in the third person, less often the first. The tense varies.

Earlier this week, it started when I saw a line of muddy footprints tracking from one end of the house to the other. Almost immediately, a line popped into my head. She should have known something was wrong when she saw dirt tracked across the house—BAM!—a story was born. No, that’s not actually the opening line; I tweaked it. But as soon as I thought it, I wondered what exactly went wrong with the nameless “she”? I’m still finding out; her story hasn’t let me go all week.

I don’t know this story’s future, as far as publication is concerned, but I love it that it found me while I did something as mundane as sweep a dirty floor. I don’t even have to leave my house, or my own mind, for creation to happen. So, I suppose, if I silently narrate about doing laundry or brushing my teeth—you know, the really exciting stuff that people can’t wait to read about—instead of worrying about the psychological issues behind talking to myself, I can be excited that (even if I am crazy) there might be a story in it one day.

But there still is one problem. If a story found me through the dirt on my previously clean floor, where did the dirt come from, exactly?

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You “Read It With Interest,” My Foot

Mail

Mail (Photo credit: Bogdan Suditu)

There’s no way to stop them from happening. Rejections. I’m talking about in the publishing industry. I have yet to hear about a published author who sent out queries and never received a rejection. The only way to achieve such a feat is to never send a query. Even the most successful authors went through many a rejection before they broke through.

So what’s the big deal? Someone like little ol’ me should expect rejection, right? Yes. And I do. I remember back in the days before e-mail queries were acceptable (and when every agent I queried preferred exclusive submissions), I snail mailed them one at a time, each with my SASE included, and then I waited. Never for acceptance, although I pretended to keep my hopes up. Usually, within a week or two, I would find my self-addressed envelope in the mail, creased from where I’d folded it into thirds. I would carry it inside, almost not wanting to open it. If anyone was around, I would wave it and say, “Here’s another rejection.” I was always right.

The types of rejections varied. Every once in a while, I received my query back with a coveted, hand-scrawled note, giving me some encouragement that at least someone had read it all the way through. Other times, the agency in question couldn’t be bothered to use a whole piece of paper for their form rejection. I do understand that it’s wasteful to use a whole sheet on a message that boils down to, “We’re not interested. Bother someone else, please,” but it just adds an extra little sting.

Worse were the rejections that never came. There are a few agencies that inform authors up front that SASEs are unnecessary. You can assume you’re rejected if you don’t hear anything within a specified period of time. If they want to see more, they’ll either call personally or go to the expense of using their own envelopes and stamps. You can guess the kind of “response” I received from these agencies.

One time, I received a form rejection that made it very clear that no one ever read my query. It so offended me that I got in a huff and wrote the most sarcastic query I could muster in response. The idea was to see if I could make an agent mad enough to respond, even if it was just to say, “How dare you!” Of course, I never sent it. The act of writing it calmed me, and I eventually decided that agent wasn’t worth my time, anyway.

But it made me wonder if querying was a futile effort. Why spend my time polishing a letter that no one was going to so much as glance at before rejecting? I understand that agents are extremely busy. Some even have periods when they do not accept submissions because they have to get other work done (like working with their already-established authors). Is there some kind of magic trick for those of us who don’t have an “in” in the industry?

Nowadays, more agencies are open to simultaneous submissions, and with so many accepting e-mail queries, as well, it keeps the process from stretching out for years. Already this month, I’ve sent ten queries, whereas I don’t think I ever sent ten in a year before, what with doing them all one at a time and then waiting for the mail. Still, it doesn’t make rejection hurt any less.

One day this week, I sent a query just before 5:30 P.M., and a lot of these agencies have an auto-response e-mail that lets you know your submission went through and is waiting in line with all the other millions of submissions. Most agencies have a response time of four to six weeks. I was surprised, however, that the auto-responder said someone would be in touch with me “shortly.” That was different. They seemed to pride themselves on expediency.

Well, “shortly” turned out to be midnight. Or that’s the time listed on the e-mail I received the next morning. And the opening was quite cordial. They thanked me for my query, which they “read with interest.” But they were so sorry that it just wasn’t right for them. Now, who are they trying to fool? This agency isn’t two time zones over, where someone might possibly have read it before the office closed. It’s in my time zone. In my state, actually, which, to be honest, was one of the few things that attracted me to it. So either someone stayed after hours to read submissions and then sent the robo-rejections, or some computer program scanned it for key words, didn’t find what it was looking for, then sent the rejection when it was done. I’m going with the latter option.

There are a lot of things that bother me about this, but the first is that their response flat-out lies. You don’t want to do business with me, so why sugar-coat it? Just say, “You know what, your type of submission isn’t what we want right now. No thanks.” I’ve heard this before and moved on. Don’t tell me you “read it with interest” when the only person in the building was the janitor. And, of course, since this is a form rejection, all authors receive it. We’re all being lied to.

Second, they asked for a writing sample. Why bother? Well, I suppose the software that reads for them could send up a red flag if the writing sample was full of typos, but even if I don’t write the most gripping queries, they’re grammatically correct. (Well, one that I sent out did have a big typo that I didn’t catch until the next day, so when I receive that rejection, I will fully deserve it. But I digress.) I always bemoaned that, when querying by mail, the agents judged me based on a one-page cover letter. I would try to throw in lines from my book, hoping to show my style, but that approach never worked. I recently had the opportunity for an agent to critique an excerpt of my story, and she said the voice and opening were strong. So if they’ll just read the bit of story that I send (and I only send the length they ask for), they’ll have to admit it’s well-written, even if it’s not subject matter that they want to represent.

The vindictive part of me wants to become the next J.K. Rowling, so I can rub it in the rejectors’ faces. But really, I just want someone out there to give my middle grade fantasy novel the time of day. They certainly don’t seem to mind representing some of the absolute garbage that litters the bookshelves. But I refuse to write something sensational, just to sell copies. If no one wants to publish my story, I know a great place that’s friendly to indie authors, and it’s called Smashwords.com. (I’ve already published my short story “Stranded” there and have another story in the works.) There are many indie authors out there who are doing pretty well, even getting discovered by big agents and publishers. I was encouraged when my cousin sent me Hugh Howey’s publishing story this week. It would be a stretch for the same kind of circumstances to happen for me, but. . . maybe there’s hope for this girl, after all.

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Weeding

biltmore garden peace rose

Biltmore Garden Peace Rose (Photo credit: zen)

For the first time in our married lives, Thomas and I have a house, and we love it. I could write a blog just about all benefits of living in a house versus living in a condo, one of the biggest being that my kids now have a fenced yard where they can play in safety. But with that yard comes one drawback: yard work. Of course, Thomas says that’s why we have two boys, but since one of them still tries to cram dirt into his mouth every time he goes outside, it’ll be a while before we can turn that duty over to them.

My least favorite part about lawn upkeep is weeding. I did enough of that as a teenager to make me swear off the practice for the rest of my life. If ever I had a house, I promised myself that a yard man would be included in the budget. As I often do, I spoke too soon. And it seems that our lawn, more than any other, is mostly composed of weeds. My husband set aside an afternoon for working in the yard last week and said he filled two of those big, black garbage bags with weeds, and when he surveyed his handiwork, he didn’t know if anyone else would be able to tell he’d done anything. Part of me thinks, Just mow it. Mow those suckers down, and get it over with. This, however, is only a temporary solution. The roots are all still there, and they’ll pop up again in no time.

As I struggled with one of those nasty weeds—you know, the kind you have to dig down about seven feet to really get—it struck me that I actually weed all the time. It’s something I’ve been doing for years. I’m an editor.

This weekend I’m finishing weeding my own book. It’s almost ready for the presses! Ha. I know if I’m lucky enough to find an agent, the next step will be another thorough edit. It doesn’t matter how well I think I’ve done, there will always be something that can be tweaked just a little bit. I know the yard analogy isn’t one hundred percent accurate, but think about it this way: how many people plant a garden, stand back, and never lift a finger again? Same thing goes for writing. If someone had been foolish enough to publish my book after I finished the first draft, not only would my publishing career have died right there, but the book would have looked like a kindergartner’s half-tended bean sprout with a compost heap in the middle of it, not the Biltmore gardens. (Not saying that it’s reached Biltmore quality yet, either, but it’s a heck of a lot closer.)

And just as there are people who love to get outside and dig their fingers into the dirt, stir up earthworms, and toil the day away, there are those like me who would rather pay someone else to do it. I can say that I feel a sense of accomplishment and pride when the job is done, but I am also not brave enough to start a flower garden or do anything artistic, for that matter. We have grass. End of story.

With writing, however, I do like to get my hands dirty. I don’t mind mentally sweating. I love the initial outpouring of the story, too, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing like having a brainwave, sitting down, and getting it on paper. But it’s a different kind of fun to go back through it, pruning and weeding and clipping a choice blossom to display in a prominent place, where others can see my accomplishments. Some people hate this part. They would rather mow. This scene isn’t working? Just get rid of it. But in the process, while many problems might be solved by such a drastic approach, some of the good stuff is lost, some really small but glaring mistakes are left to grow up between the cracks, and it’s obvious that the writer hasn’t learned much. The only growth is of the wrong kind: overused artistic license, misplaced apostrophes, passive voice popping up at the worst possible times.

Editing isn’t glamorous, whether you’re an editor by trade or just revising your own work. While authors often thank their editors, the readers don’t know who these people are. They’re largely invisible, but if they do their job right, the work is invisible, too. Or, I suppose a better way to say it is that their work is seamless. A badly edited piece is, on the other hand, painfully conspicuous. I’ve read many wonderful books that were full of some of the worst typos I’ve ever seen. Typos that would not be forgiven if I were to submit a manuscript in such a state. And these are big-name authors with bestselling books. I would be embarrassed to work for those publishing houses that put out books like that. (In fact, I’ve often thought, Note to self, don’t ever go with that publisher.)

Take the time to edit. Take the time to learn the rules before you submit, and then go back and make sure you followed them. Or, if you don’t have the time or really need help polishing your writing, we editors are waiting for you to call on us. Your name will still be on the cover of the book, and it really is your garden, anyway. We’ll just make sure that when others stop by to admire it, there aren’t any weeds choking your roses.

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Write Like It’s Your Job

Writing

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

 

Someone asked me recently if I always knew I wanted to be a writer. My answer: “Always. I was going to make millions of dollars as an author, and I would never need a regular job.” I assumed that something magical would happen in college, and by the time everyone else was finishing internships and putting out job applications, I would be retiring to my bedroom with stacks of college-ruled notebook paper (yes, I prefer to write longhand), where I would churn out bestsellers eight hours a day.

Ha. It’s been years since I’ve been so delusional.

The tough thing about freelancing—or even tougher, doing something for which I have a passion but may never get paid—is making the time for it. That whole writing for eight hours a day thing was shot when I needed to actually make an income. Fresh out of high school, I figured that bookstores would be the perfect venue for me to work through college, and then I would turn around and sell my own books there.

Not only did I not get a job at a bookstore, but the job I did get was the last one on Earth I ever wanted: working for my parents’ small business. My job description had more to do with dealing with people (an introvert’s nightmare) and accounting than writing, although I did eventually become an in-house editor and writer for the company newsletter. I did what I had to do to keep from being a starving artist, and I wrote when I could. Sometimes that meant finding inspiration and writing every spare minute. Other times, I just didn’t feel like writing, couldn’t get motivated, so I didn’t. When I returned from my first maternity leave five years ago, I traded my forty-plus-hour work week and sporadic writing for a shorter work week and a load of responsibilities that left me with less time to write than ever.

Recently, I decided I’d had it. I’m not quite sure what made me fed up enough with myself to change–maybe the dissatisfaction of looking back on an afternoon when I had time to write but piddled around the house, made a shopping list, and spent too long looking at my budget instead. I realized that no one’s going to publish a book that’s not finished. No one will even know about it because I won’t send it out until I feel that it’s the best it can possibly be. And it won’t attain that level of perfection until I actually sit down and work on it. So I sat down and worked on it. Whereas most days I’m lucky to read through a few pages (and maybe fix a typo or three), I actually sat down and read more than two chapters aloud, added a scene, cut a bunch of extraneous fat. . . and I still had time to read the mail and clean up the stuff my kids dumped all over the place when we walked in the door.

It was somewhat of an epiphany (forgive me for being so dense) when I realized that, for someone who wants desperately to write and no longer works full-time, I have no excuse for not writing. Oh, I do plenty of writer things–volunteering for a literary mag and editing among them–but what about that career as a novelist I dreamed about? One of my problems is that I don’t know how to say no, so I fill my schedule with things that I may or may not need to do. And I do have my children to consider, but they nap every day. Why don’t I use those precious minutes to write?

I am not the first writer in the world with this issue. Stephen King, before he published Carrie, was a high school English teacher who typed something ridiculous like two thousand words every night after his wife and kids went to bed. Madeleine L’Engle, after having initial publishing success, went through a decade of rejection, during which she felt useless as a writer and contributor to the family budget. She almost gave up. Almost.

The last thing I want is to look back on my life and see that I gave up. Do I expect to be Stephen King or Madeleine L’Engle? Of course not. I just want to have no regrets. I don’t want to say, Well, fitness was important enough for me to get up early and exercise five days a week, but I just couldn’t ever find extra time to write. I never dreamed of being a workout nut; I dreamed about being an author. No more excuses, no more feeling sorry for myself. I am going to write, to show that I care enough to be serious, and then maybe I will actually be taken seriously. Maybe if I work hard enough, as if there’s actually someone out there who is paying me to do it, I will write something worth paying for. Maybe if someone says, “I’d really like to read the rest of your manuscript,” I’ll feel like I did my best and be proud of what I have to hand over.

Decision made. Mind-set changed. I’m the one in my way, and I’m stepping aside.

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What Ever Happened to Pen Pals?

“There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding.”

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

stationery box

Stationery Box (Photo credit: Spyderella)

When I read the above quote recently and got to the part about corresponding, it really made me stop and think. Granted, Anne Lamott wrote Bird by Bird in the mid-1990’s, so a lot has changed since then. Still, if writers don’t keep the art of correspondence alive, who will? There aren’t many great epistle writers anymore simply because there isn’t the necessity these days (one exception is my father—ask anyone who’s read one of his emails).

It is a sad reality that the art of letter-writing is becoming rather dinosaur-ish. An elderly woman I know who has bravely moved into the world of technology starts every email to me with “Dear Sarah,” and she ends with “Love,” followed by her name. She types it exactly as she would a letter, complete sentences and all. The first time I received one of these emails, I chuckled to myself, but I also appreciated the thoughtfulness behind her message. She sat down and carefully chose every word, and I’m sure she proofread it at least once. I am also sure that she hand-writes letters, too, probably on monogrammed stationery, and everyone who receives one of these feels special because of the time she takes. (Granted, she is a retired English teacher, but that means little these days. I can’t tell you how many of my college English professors sent emails full of typos, yet took points away if I so much as misplaced a comma in an in-class essay.)

Here’s what Aibeleen from Kathryn Stockett’s The Help has to say about writing:

I been writing my prayers since I was in junior high. When I tell my seventh-grade teacher I ain’t coming back to school cause I got to help out my mama, Miss Ross just about cried.

“You’re the smartest one in the class, Aibileen,” she say. “And the only way you’re going to keep sharp is to read and write every day.”

So I started writing my prayers down instead a saying em.

When I read this, I was struck by the novelty of writing prayers. The whole “use it or lose it” cliche applies here, and cliche or not, it’s absolutely true.

Of course, I do write a lot, always have. And I must confess that one of my weaknesses is stationery. As a girl—well, even now—I loved to go into bookstores and lose myself in the writer’s gift section. I’ve turned into a little bit of a Moleskine snob, but I still love looking at all the leather-bound journals, just waiting to be filled, or the fountain pens, fancy notebooks, writing cases, and all the different note cards. I used to scrape together what precious spending money I had to buy these little goodies, and when I was much younger, I used that stationery like it was going out of style, starting with my first pen pal. I guess I was in the second or third grade—old enough to write complete sentences and get annoyed when my pen pal couldn’t copy my address correctly (ever), much less get my name right. But I digress. I had a reason to use that stationery, and use it I did. It also gave me reason to practice writing cursive, which I loved, or as I got older, I experimented with different styles, changing the way I wrote A, E, S, and Z. When I separated from many friends after eight years at the same school, I spent the whole summer writing to a handful of them; I still got the occasional letter from one of them until well after I was married.

As for my sons, I wonder if they will enjoy this same activity. Or will they Facebook or text message each other? I admit, I love using Facebook to keep up with old friends without having to be too social. It’s a great way to keep tabs. But it’s also not very personal (or sometimes a little too personal, and that’s when that “Unsubscribe” option comes into play). Peter, who is five, loves getting things in the mail, though. And at his age, anything with his name on it is always positive. He doesn’t get bills or reminders for his annual eye exam. I can’t tell you how many times he walks with me to the mailbox, hopeful that something in there has his name on it. So is the art of correspondence going to survive his generation? When he’s old enough to fill out an address on the front of an envelope, will he have someone to write to? I fear that one of the reasons our country’s literacy rate is so low is because many people have given up. They don’t care, don’t see the value in it, especially when spell check (they think) will find all the errors for them.

I’m here to say that I care; I want to continue buying and using stationery. Besides, it’s not just the children who appreciate receiving letters in the mail, nor are they the only ones who need to be reminded how to write. I’m not going to let progress and this technological age turn my brain into a smooth glob of mush that only absorbs what it’s fed in one hundred forty character bites or only understands three-letter abbreviations. Oh my gosh, yes, I went there.

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Someone Tapped My Brain Again, and Her Name is Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott (Photo credit: mdesive)

Did you ever read an article or a blog or a book, and afterward, you felt like the writer tapped your brain (but probably wrote everything much more coherently than you ever could have)? That is how I felt when I read Anne Lamott‘s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life “It’s one of the best books about writing ever written,” my writer/avid-reader cousin-in-law Julie told me. And I must agree. I only wish I’d known about it sooner. So now it is my turn to pass the good stuff onto other writers or people who are just interested in learning more about the writing process.
Although Bird by Bird is full of hyperbole, the exaggerations really aren’t too far off, at least with how writers often feel (even if we don’t literally move to a trailer park near our therapists, as Lamott suggests at one point). Her style is candid, humorous, and unafraid of pointing out some of the ugly realities of which new and non-writers are unaware. She explains writing truths that experienced writers know but that are so difficult to verbalize.
Below, are some of my favorite passages, although you should just do yourself a favor and read the whole book. If you want (or need) to be inspired, if you want to read about the trials and truths of what an author has experienced, this is the book for you.

Upon the publication of her first book, “it seemed that I was not in fact going to be taking early retirement. I had secretly believed that trumpets would blare, major reviewers would proclaim that not since Moby Dick had an American novel so captured life in all its dizzying complexity. And this is what I thought when my second book came out, and my third, and my fourth, and my fifth. And each time I was wrong.

“But I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. . . The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.” (pp. xxv-xxvi)

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“A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It’s a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.” (p. 52)

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“Just don’t pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don’t. Stay open to them. It’s teatime and all the dolls are at the table. Listen. It’s that simple.” (p. 53)

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“I do the menial work of getting [the words] down on paper, because I’m the designated typist, and I’m also the person whose job it is to hold the lantern while the kid does the digging. What is the kid digging for? The stuff. Details and clues and images, invention, fresh ideas, an intuitive understanding of people. I tell you, the holder of the lantern doesn’t even know what the kid is digging for half the time—but she knows gold when she sees it.” (p. 56)

 —

“Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write down for them because their handwriting, is so bad.” (p. 60)

 —

Regarding writer’s block, “I no longer think of it as block. I think that is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If your wife locks you out of the house, you don’t have a problem with your door.

“The word block suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty. . .

“The problem is acceptance, which is something we’re taught not to do. . . But if you accept the reality that you have been given—that you are not in a productive creative period—you free yourself to begin filling up again.” (p. 178)

 —

“We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you’ll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you’ve already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words—not just any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.” (p. 198)

 —

“Many nonwriters assume that publication is a thunderously joyous event in the writer’s life, and it is certainly the biggest and brightest carrot dangling before the eyes of my students. They believe that if they themselves were to get something published, their lives would change instantly, dramatically, and for the better. Their self-esteem would flourish; all self-doubt would be erased like a typo. Entire paragraphs and manuscripts of disappointment and rejection and lack of faith would be wiped out by one push of a psychic delete button and replaced by a quiet, tender sense of worth and belonging. Then they could wrap the world in flame.

“But this is not exactly what happens. Or at any rate, this is not what it has been like for me.” (pp. 210-211)

Why our writing matters: “Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.” (p. 237)

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To Prologue or Not to Prologue?

Storm Brewing, Vancouver

 Photo credit: world of jan

I am getting ready to do the whole submit-and-reject thing again with my list of agents. Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky this time. Like I’ve said before, my novel is much improved from the last time I tried to get an agent. And this time I have a little more hope for my query. The thing I’m nervous about, however, is the bit of story I’m submitting, the bit that will make an agent excited (or not) about my writing. The bit that kids will probably read and then decide if they want to spend their allowances on my book.

I recently attended a webinar with agent Mary Kole, and the first topic she addressed in her Q&A (and it also gets a good-sized section in her book Writing Irresistible Kidlit: The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Fiction for Young Adult and Middle Grade Readers) is about prologues—and she strongly suggests not to write them. The argument against them is that the prologue will pack a punch, fooling readers into thinking the first chapter will continue being just as exciting. In actuality, the first chapter is a big disappointment, including back story and info dump and blah-ness. Why not just write a strong start to begin with?

I’d never considered prologues in that light before. I can think of plenty of books that had prologues that I really enjoyed, but in none of them did I feel cheated when I got to Chapter One. The first chapter of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone is like a prologue in that it starts years before the present of the rest of the story. Whether you call it a prologue or the first chapter, it is what it is, right?

The opening of my book is the same—an opening years (actually decades) before the main story. It sets up the plot and gives a taste of what happened to get us to the story. And beta readers like the book much better with this bit of fore-story included. So what’s a writer to do? I’m going to include it, dadgummit. But just for kicks, I’m going to put it here, see what you think. I’ve always hesitated to put my unpublished fiction online because, if readers like it, but it gets changed, they might be disappointed with the published work. Or if it’s terrible now, I’m metaphorically shooting myself in the foot. Well, I’m shooting away. Here it is, the prologue/opening/whatever-you-want-to-call-it of what is currently titled Kingdom of Secrets. Read below, or download the PDF from the My Fiction page, and then let me have it!

 

Kingdom of Secrets: Prologue Excerpt

by Sarah Cotchaleovitch

Ella knew she shouldn’t do it. Mama wouldn’t like it one bit.

After much lip gnawing and twisting of her brown hair between her stubby fingers, Ella decided she couldn’t let the poor pup die.

She ran inside to fetch her mother’s emergency kit from the cupboard over the sink.

Climbing onto a chair, Ella scrambled onto the counter and stood on her tiptoes, but the cupboard was still too high for a girl of four to reach. Not to be thwarted, she got down and dragged the stool up to the chair. She hoisted it onto the counter, stood on top, and swung the cupboard door wide, revealing Mama’s kit.

Movement through the kitchen window caught her attention, reminding her there was a sick pilfit pup waiting outside.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Ella whispered. She nearly toppled off the stool in her haste.

Kit held in front of her, she scuttled outside. The pup lay panting in the shade of the hedge, looking for all of Terra like a cross between a raccoon and a dwarf rabbit.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make you all better.”

The pup gave a half-hearted yelp and closed his eyes.

Ella’s favorite thing about the emergency kit was the bottle of hot water. Whenever her mother bought another one, the merchant always promised her silver back if it went cold before two months’ time.

How often had she seen Mama brew a restorative? Into a bowl went a splash of hot water; steam spiraled into the air. The first part was a success, at least.

“Let’s see, let’s see.” Ella’s fingers played over the jars. She couldn’t read, so she trusted her memory of what the ingredients looked like. A bead of sweat formed on her brow and slid down her nose. She brushed it away, gave her concoction a quick stir, and held the bowl under the pup’s snout. “Drink, boy. It’s good.”

The pup opened his eyes and whimpered.

“It’s okay, I promise. Just—just take a sip.” She tilted the bowl toward him.

His black nose twitched, and the pup tested the liquid with his tongue. Starting slowly, he lapped every bit and licked the bowl clean.

Ella moved the pup’s head onto her lap, running her fingers through his silver fur. After a wash and a brush, he would be the fluffiest pilfit in Jackson Village.

The pup sighed. Ella held her breath. He opened his eyes: blue with brown flecks.

“You’re so pretty, Clumps,” she said, naming him without a second thought.

He sat up and yelped, an almost-human sound, the sound of a healthy pilfit.

“Oh, Clumps, you’re all better!” She hugged him to her chest.

“Ella!”

The girl stumbled upward, Clumps dangling without protest in her arms.

Her mother stood at the kitchen window. “Is that my emergency kit?” Dark-haired and blue-eyed like Ella, Mama was madder than a fish in firegrass at the moment.

“Mama! Mama, he was dying. I had to! His mama—she got into the poison mushrooms. All his brothers and sisters died, but I saved him, Mama! Oh, please, please can I keep him?”

Her mother’s face told Ella that she could not keep Clumps, nor would she be allowed a pet for the rest of her life. She mightn’t ever be allowed in the kitchen again, either.

But next second Mama was gone from the window, and that was worse. She was coming to Investigate the Situation.

“Clumps, maybe you’d better go.”

Too late, here she was.

Ella’s mother leaned over and scooped the pilfit pup into her arms. Gentler than her tone suggested, she scratched behind Clumps’s ears, prodded him a little, made him open his mouth. “I’ve got to be more careful around you,” she muttered. “You brewed that restorative perfectly. How did you figure it out?”

“Just. . . just watching you, Mama.” Ella pressed her lips together. This was turning out differently than expected.

“Well, you know I’m going to tell your father when he comes home. We’ll talk about whether you can keep this pup—”

“His name’s Clumps, Mama.”

“Oh, you’ve named him already?”

“Yes, Mama.”

Ella’s mother handed the pup back to her. “Let me be very clear,” she said in her this-is-your-last-warning voice. “You may never get into my things without asking permission again. And never brew a cloakbane without my help. Got it?”

Ella’s eyes were wide and tearful. She nodded slowly twice. Maybe it would be a while before she brewed another, but if she could save the life of a pilfit pup, she knew she could do other wonderful things.

She would give the whole incident some time to filter to the back of her mother’s memory before mentioning that, though.

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Stop Making Excuses and Write

“All I can do. . . is write daily, read as much as possible, and keep my vocabulary alive and changing so that I will have an instrument on which to play the book if it does me the honor of coming to me and asking to be written.”

Madeleine L’Engle

Writer's Stop

Writer’s Stop (Photo credit: Stephh922)

I just don’t get writers who don’t write. If you say you’re a writer, make sure you have something to back up that claim. And I’m not talking about struggling writers—people who desperately want to write but don’t have two seconds of free time to rub together or those other tormented souls who would only write if the mental block would move out of the way.

There’s a particular type of so-called writer that drives me nuts, the type that enters a writing course, presents a piece to a class full of writers, and is unprepared, even offended, when the other writers pick apart her precious offering. Or how about the guy who writes something that has potential but needs some major work before it’s submission worthy? After a round of constructive criticism, he knows his creative process wasn’t appreciated, and he refuses to revise his original draft because that would somehow mean that the words that poured from his imaginative well are no longer pure. I’ve gone to school with both of those types. Many drop out of the writing courses that they assumed would showcase them as beacons of creativity to the rest of us. One guy I knew wasn’t “feeling it.” When the requirement of the class is to apply the necessary changes your classmates recommend, and you can’t bring yourself to so much as fix your spelling errors, you not only don’t make the grade, but you also let yourself down as a writer.

Now, I am certainly not saying that everything we start must be publishable. There is a reason that we write first (or what some call “drawer”) novels. Maybe they are worth resurrecting, but if so, they most likely need considerable revision to make them readable. What I am saying is that there are so many of us who would love to have the time to make mistakes and learn from them, but that little thing called life makes it very difficult to for us. It’s why I abhor lazy, excuse-making writers.

I have an uncle who I don’t see very often, and invariably, when I do see him, he asks if I’m still writing. He asked me once when my elder son was a year old. I felt the question coming and squirmed in my seat. Write? I knew he didn’t mean my daily journal. He was asking about my story, and at the time, I was concentrating mostly on finding an agent, slogging through my old copy of Writer’s Market, hoping to find the perfect match. The problem was that I wasn’t trying nearly hard enough, and when I did send out the occasional query, my lackluster attitude showed whoever read it that I wasn’t ready to publish yet. That happens sometimes. At that point, I was not only a struggling writer, but an uninspired one, as well.

All writers go through those periods. And when we do, it’s best to be honest about them. Sometimes writers do need a break, either from a particularly difficult project or just altogether. (By the way, those little vacations are great times to read.)

For those frustrated writers, the ones who want so badly to say, “I’m a writer” and mean it, remember that writing isn’t the only part of your job description. Reading is a must, as well as being a part of the greater writing community. Years ago, when I first got involved in Fiction Fix, I had to attend and even participate in public readings, and there was little I dreaded more than getting in front of a bunch of people and putting myself in the spotlight. I want to share my work, yes, but I am shy in large groups. With the internet, however, I can choose how much I want to participate and be much more comfortable. If you have the time to read one blog a week to stay motivated, by all means, do so. If you don’t have the time to visit a bookstore or library, much less read the books you already have, consider picking up magazines or literary journals. There are great articles and short stories out there that you can read while you wait in line for a cup of coffee. (Shameless plug—check out Fiction Fix or my short story “Stranded” at Smashwords.com.) If you have a smart phone, welcome to your new e-reading device.

You don’t have to read to be inspired, though. Visit a museum if visual art does it for you, or listen to your music of choice. At a time when it was particularly rough for me, just getting pen to paper, I read my friend Amy’s blog and found new hope when she suggested that the act of thinking is part of the writing process.

If you do have the time, and you choose to join a writing course, workshop, or conference, you have an incredible opportunity to be motivated and also to grow like never before. Just be ready to find out that your considerable intellect and creativity are not enough to save you from criticism and rejection. Those are two facets of the writing (and especially publication) process and no reason to feel unappreciated and give up (but that’s for another blog). If you quit at the point when you think it hurts most, you not only stunt your own growth, but you might not be available when that perfect story shows up, needing to be shared with the world.

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Where Do Stories Come From?

The stork, right? Oh, wait, I’m getting confused–the stork is for babies. With stories, it’s a muse, or some other mysterious Something Out There. And while I joke about my muse or a great cosmic ocean of stories that trickle or flood into the minds and out of the pens of the writers they choose, my most successful stories certainly were not born of classroom assignments or formulas.

Sometimes a fictional situation or character takes me by surprise. This usually happens when I’ve had some form of artistic stimulation. For instance, while listening to a particularly moving song, a scene might pop into my head, not just begging but demanding to be transcribed. Then I’m left with the problem of building the story that goes with it.

There are other times that an event in my life so moves me that I must write to resolve or discover my own feelings about that situation. My story “Stranded” at Smashwords.com is a good example. Many readers think it doesn’t resolve, but what I’ve discovered is that the people who have the most difficult time with it believe a story isn’t finished if all the loose ends aren’t tied in pretty little bows. “What happens?” they ask. And I want to say that that’s not the point. Believe me, I’ve tried to change the ending or write a sequel. But every time I attempted to put a pat ending on it, it rang false. I decided to let the story be true to itself, even if it ticked off certain of my audience. And, in my opinion, some stories should stay that way.

There are other writers out there who have tried to answer questions for readers, and they often ruin a good story for me. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre are two stories that, as far as I am concerned, should stand alone. Yet other authors wrote sequels (Mrs de Winter by Susan Hill and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, respectively) that turned the original stories upside down. I guess while they make for interesting discussion, I wish I’d never read them.

So if some stories seem so incomplete or displeasing that other people find it necessary to “finish” them, why are they told to begin with? I don’t think storytelling has as much to do with finding out whodunit or the good guy defeating the bad guy as exploring the issues and truths that stimulated the stories’ authors to write. There are far fewer stories that dig and claw with bloodied fingernails for the truth than those that are written for publishing’s sake. These latter writers I call hacks, and they cheapen publishing for those of us who agonize over cutting scenes that we toiled over for weeks. They write to make a buck, not out of passion or soul-searching need. I would argue that, if there is a muse out there, he or she is not welcome by these people. Why? Because if writers open themselves to being ambushed by stories, they have to do difficult things, think uncomfortable thoughts, and face dark moments within themselves in order to tell the stories that need to be told. Plus, it is never easy writing something you don’t want to write but, nevertheless, must. J.K. Rowling wept when she killed Sirius Black, but he had to die, otherwise she could not have finished Harry’s tale.

The reason I know that “Stranded” is done is because of the satisfaction I felt when I last revised it. I resolved my own feelings about the issues behind my story, and it serves its particular purpose. If someone, someday feels compelled to write more about my characters, I only hope that it is because the story has found the right person to pick up the thread, rather than someone trying to tie up loose ends that should have remained untied.