Tag Archives: Writing

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Haunted by My Story


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November is so close it’s almost scary.

It was just a few weeks ago that I was surprised by October’s arrival, so how could I let November sneak up on me, too? Lots of important things happen in November: Thanksgiving; Christmas shopping; several important birthdays, including my elder son’s; two clients’ book projects are due; a slew of writing assignments for a new client…

And the month-long time-gobbler that is both daunting and exciting, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Last year, I participated for the first time, and I will say again and keep on saying that it was the most fun I’ve ever had writing. In fact, I think it’s the best writing I’ve ever produced.

The goal this year is to at least match the enthusiasm and success of last year – or surpass it.

For the early part of this year, I wasn’t worried about NaNoWriMo 2014 because I was still finishing my 2013 novel. In early July, I produced 10 copies for beta readers. And then what typically happens when I’m busy with one project – I had a great idea for a new novel.

If you keep up with my blog, you’ll know that I decided to hold off writing, saving that new story for NaNoWriMo this year. But as my beta readers started giving me their critiques on my 2013 NaNo novel, I realized I wanted to edit it and write the sequel for NaNo this year. (And don’t worry about my new novel idea – I wrote a few important scenes and took plenty of notes for when I’m ready to start up with it again.)

I figured that it would be easy to edit last year’s book by October and even start querying literary agents again, saying, And if you like this, I’ll be working on the sequel in November.

Except that if today is the corner, then November is right around it, and I’m not done editing the first book yet.

Forget agents – I’ve got to finish this book in order to be able to properly start the next one. There’s nothing that says I absolutely have to start with the opening scene. If I feel like it, I can start with the last one (and yes, I already know what it will be – a cliffhanger leading up to book three, hee-hee). But I so want to start with confidence. That, and I don’t want a lot of editing to slow me down. 50,000 words in one month is a lot. Granted, I wrote 80,000 last November, but they say that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, so…

If only I’d written the first book perfectly to start with, right? But that would make me a magician or a novel goddess or something, which I am not. Or if I am, someone forgot to tell the big publishing houses because I’m still waiting for my million-dollar advance.

Instead of dreaming about gross improbabilities (or impossibilities if I don’t get myself in gear), I need to do both stories justice. The ending of book one was so hard to nail, but talking with several of my beta readers helped cement what I need to do to make it more satisfactory, yet leave readers hungry for the sequel. Now I’ve just got to make that happen, so I can pick right up where I left off on book two. By Saturday.

Picture me biting all my fingernails at once.

So I’m posting a tad earlier than usual in order to fully immerse myself in last year’s novel, and I hope that the next time I crawl out of my writer’s hole to blink at the sun, I will have nothing but positive results. And since sharing goals is a great way to stay on track, here they are:

  • Finish editing book one (soon!)
  • Get it under 100,000 words (I still have 3400 to cut – eek!)
  • Write seamless transition from the first to the second book
  • Write 14,000 words by the end of November 7th

Like I said, it’s daunting and exciting. And did I mention terrifying and exhilarating? Time to go to bed so I can indulge in a few NaNo nightmares.

Happy writing!

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When Books Disappoint

English: Open book icon

English: Open book icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was so proud of myself earlier this year: I’d created my 2014 book list, and I stuck to it. I read nine of the 23 books on that list in the first quarter of the year. That’s pretty good, right? I could even afford to get a little sidetracked. Which I did as soon as my birthday hit in April. Yes, I kept plugging away at my book list, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to treat myself to some new fiction.

I love books, but I also love my goals – to a fault. I’ll drive myself (and my family) crazy with them. At war with myself over the new books that I want to read and the books that I already own that I should read, usually the new fiction wins. I mean, it has the whole excitement factor with it. And in April, I discovered two new-to-me authors, both young adult. I can blame a movie trailer for one, and the other came recommended by several people. If you read this post in April, you may even know which books I’m talking about.

Being the dutiful goal-reacher that I am, I continued reading whatever it was I was in the middle of at the time, and I let my husband go ahead and read the new books. We were particularly excited about the newly-purchased series, whose first book-to-movie adaptation was due to be released in theatres over the summer.

As soon as Thomas finished the first book and moved on to the second, I had to know: “Was it as good as we thought?”

Poor dude. He didn’t want to burst my bubble. His answer was, “Well, it’s not The Hunger Games or Divergent.”

But of course, what is? I set my standards pretty high, but at the end of the day, I don’t want to read books that are just like the ones that I already like. I want variety, originality. But I also want excellence.

So I eventually got around to the series and plunged right in. It wasn’t a challenging read, but that’s okay. It was more action-oriented, which I already expected, after seeing the movie trailer. It also raised a lot of questions, which I love. But…

I was getting toward the end of the book, pretty much after the big plot reveal. Of course, the plot was still moving forward because there are sequels, but things were winding down. Then something gruesome happened, something that was written purely for its shock value. This one scene was written 1) to freak out the characters and 2) to appeal to the adolescent male readership. Marketing is important; I get it. There was still hope for the overall story. On to Book 2.

The weirdness continued. Gruesome and sometimes unexplainable (or explained on a very rickety foundation) things happened. The characters were baffled, so we were in the same boat. The story ended. The loose ends that got tied up didn’t make much sense. But there was still hope for Book 3.

Can you guess what happened? I was very dissatisfied with the ending of Book 3. And since it’s adolescent lit, I’ll put it in adolescent terms: it sucked.

Now, Sarah, you may be thinking, aren’t you being a little hypocritical? Aren’t you okay with not-happy endings?

Oh, there’s a big difference. If the not-happy ending is justified, if it’s realistic, if it fits with the character of the story, I’ll buy it. I may be very broken up about it, but I’ll bow to the author’s decision. But you know what? I still had an inkling of hope. Because there was a fourth book. Although it’s a prequel and wouldn’t change the crappy ending, I was hoping for some kind of explanation or justification. And the prequel gave an answer – sort of. It was still a very unbelievable premise for why things happened the way they did throughout the series, but I guess for 13-year-old boys, they’d buy it. I mean, people die and get shot up, so it’s all cool, right? I mean, as long as the hero gets the girl (doesn’t matter which girl), we can all go home happy.

I grasped for anything that could save these books in my very discriminating eyes, but a scene in that final book kind of killed the whole series for me. I won’t spoil what actually happened, but I’ll give you a for-instance:

Say we have a novel with zombies. They’re so in right now, so why not? So let’s have our protagonists being chased down a residential street by zombies. The only way they will survive is if they can get inside one of these deserted houses and lock the door. So what do they do? They outrun the zombies and make it into a house, and the zombies are so far behind that they feel pretty good about their hiding place.

Except.

Except the last idiot in through the door neglects to lock it. Not only that – she doesn’t even shut it! So when the zombies catch up, brainless as they are, they’re eventually going to try the wide-open door, right? But that’s okay because it makes for great tension, and when the girl realizes her idiotic mistake and has to kill a zombie in the process of slamming and locking the door, it will bring up all kinds of questions about life and death that she can now explore, and – BOOM! – we have an opportunity for character development.

Wait – you’re not cool with that? It ticks you off that she left the door open because no person in the world would possibly do that? Well, in this book that I read, although there aren’t zombies, something very similar happened, and it ticked me off that an editor would ever let something that flagrantly unrealistic pass. It was a device, and neither a subtle nor a good one, at that.

But, Sarah, these are kids’ books. Don’t be so hard on the author.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yes, kids’ books are written differently because the audience is different, but a terrible device is a terrible device, no matter the target age. And since the advent of Harry Potter, it’s not only become acceptable but expected that parents will read this fiction, too. Not because they’re screening it for their kids (although they do that, too) but for their own enjoyment. And it’s not just the parents. People of all ages, with and without kids, read YA lit now. And they’ve come to expect excellence, just like I do, because audiences of all ages deserve as much, right? So what if 13-year-old boys don’t appreciate all the nuances yet? Give them excellence, and they’ll appreciate it, even if they can’t articulate why. It’s like a taste test. You may not realize how awful that cardboard-tasting cake is until you taste the real thing, but once you’ve had that taste, don’t ever try to pass cardboard for the good stuff again.

I’m glad that people write lit that will excite young boys. What a difficult demographic to please! But after finishing that last book and reading some of the reviews, I saw that I wasn’t the only reader who was underwhelmed. Several expressed the hopes that a fifth book might be published, in order to right all the wrongs of the previous four. Others were outright disgusted in what they’d originally thought was the greatest series they’d ever read. And what’s sad is that it could have been a “greatest series.” I know the author has the talent. There would have been lots of changes, sure, lots of work, but he could have pulled it off.

Oh well, you win some, you lose some, right? It’s not like this is the first time I’ve ever been disappointed. And as my mom tells me whenever I come across something I don’t like, I can at least take notes and know what not to do, myself. So it wasn’t an entirely wasted experience. The author made me care for most of the characters, and the story had some cool elements. It just… wasn’t executed all that well. And I suppose that’s the most annoying part. When something has potential, when it’s grasping but doesn’t quite reach, I’m so much more disappointed than I would be if I had no hope for the book to begin with.

It kind of gives me hope that if those novels can be so successful, maybe someone will look at mine.

Or maybe the author just had a favorite uncle in the publishing industry. Gosh, I’m cynical tonight.

On the bright side, the other novelist I discovered at the time was John Green. And boy, does he ever deliver. So my birthday books weren’t a total bust, after all.

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Show Me a Story

Author J.K. Rowling reads from Harry Potter an...

Author J.K. Rowling sharing a story at the White House. Screenshot taken from official White House video. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last week, my son took some things to school for show and tell, except it’s not called “show and tell” anymore. I don’t know if this is a global change or just one at his school. For them, it’s “show and share” (and for younger kids, it’s just “share”). The cynic in me thought that it’s just another way to say the same old thing a different way.

But then I got thinking because that’s what I do. Is there a difference between show and tell and show and share? Certainly, people don’t like to be told what to do. Sharing seems a lot more friendly, and the change of one word could be a way to encourage children to take turns, etc., etc.

And for writers, of course, there’s something in that one poor word, “tell,” that just makes us cringe.

As an editor for a fiction journal, I throw that little four-letter word around all the time. It’s a great reason to reject a story. One part of the job description for readers and editors at Fiction Fix is to give notes on why we accept or reject each story. I try to pull quotes from stories, where applicable. If the dialogue is awful, I use an example. If the piece is full of malapropisms, I’ll list a couple. And if there’s too much telling, I include that in my notes, as well. Except one story this week… I couldn’t choose. There were too many examples, each worse than the last. In the end, I noted that the entire piece was one grand example of telling. Minor problems we can fix, but rewriting the whole story? That’s just a skill that the author needs to learn.

But what’s so wrong with telling, anyway? Isn’t at least some telling necessary? After all, they’re called storytellers, not storyshowers (well, and no wonder because you could easily read it as “showers” instead of “show-ers”).

Some telling is necessary, of course. But in this particular story this week, telling was in the form of: “And another nine years passed, and little Joey was suddenly in high school.” Yawn. I’ve read much more creative ways in which to show the passage of time.

One example of an author who I think did a great job with telling was J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter series. The more fantastical the world, the more world-building is necessary, and that can easily turn into info-dumping, AKA telling. To create the wizarding world, not only did Rowling have to introduce new names and places and ideas to her readers, but she also had to introduce them to one very important character: Harry Potter, himself. What a great way to present much-needed information! As Harry was fascinated with his first owl post and trip to Diaogn Alley, so were we, and we got to see it through his eyes. We were shown.

But then, there were other times when we had to learn important information, and an author with less finesse could have completely blown it. Instead, Rowling had two characters in place, Hermione Granger and Albus Dumbledore, who were storehouses of knowledge. Hermione, being the bookworm that she was, knew more than most witches and wizards her age to begin with, and if she didn’t know, she went to the library to find out. And Dumbledore… well, he was full of all kinds of bizarre and useful bits of knowledge, although he was slow in divulging it all. Potter fans, do you remember the end of the first five books? With a sense of relief, you knew that Dumbledore would tie up quite a few loose ends… and leave you hanging just a little, which was where the next book would pick up.

Other means of imparting facts in unique ways that Rowling and other authors have utilized are by having the characters find facts and discover clues in books, e-mails, letters, diaries, newspapers. We’ve all read dictionaries and textbooks, right? That’s where we get our info, too, so it’s perfectly acceptable for characters to gain their insights in this way, as long as the author doesn’t rely on it too heavily. After all, the narrative does still have to move forward.

But then there are the ever-so-awkward dialogues, telephone conversations, and internal monologues that are meant to convey something important. For instance, a first person narrator will have a more difficult time describing him- or herself than if the book has a third person narrator. Say the female narrator needs to come across as humble. She’s beautiful, but she can’t tell you that herself. So instead, someone says it to her… but it gets overdone:

“Oh, Celeste,” Amanda gushed, “the way you’ve braided your hair is just so becoming! I love the way the light catches your golden highlights, and your blue dress just brings out the blue in your eyes perfectly!”

Okay, so we know that Celeste’s hair looks nice and that she has golden highlights. And her eyes are blue. But do people talk like this? (Admittedly, some do, but they are few and far between. And doesn’t that drive you nuts? Also, note the use of the word “gushed.” Ick. Please don’t write or talk like this because your average person doesn’t.)

Here’s a more natural way to convey similar information:

“Oh, Celeste,” Amanda said. “Look at you! Didn’t I say you would clean up well? And that blue is just the perfect color on you.”

Wait a minute. What happened to the braid, the hair color, the specific reference to the eyes? What happened to the gushing? Although most people don’t like relying on italics, that’s how I tend to hear people when they’re talking, and an italicized word here or there saves you from overused dialogue tags, such as “gushed.” And how important was the physical description, anyway? The more you write, the more you’ll discover that things like this don’t always matter. But, if you’re still not sure, here’s another way to get your point across:

I tried the braid that my mom had shown me, and although I would have preferred sweats over dressing up, the blue sheath she had picked out matched my eyes, at least. I smiled in the mirror, already imagining how Amanda would gush when she walked in the door.

Okay, so maybe it’s not a masterpiece, but you get a little bit of description, plus some character development. (See how she’s uncomfortable but pleased at the same time?)

Oh, and the telephone conversation. Listen to someone talking on the phone one day. From one side of a conversation, you can pick up a lot, but you usually have to fill in a lot of the blanks yourself (or sometimes let them remain a mystery). So in books (and movies, too), should the characters spell out everything for the readers’ sakes? Check out this one-sided conversation for what not to do:

“Hi, Mom. It’s Cindy… I know you expected me to call earlier, but there was a line at the phone… Yes, I guess a lot of other kids are homesick, too… I miss you a lot, but it’s been a great week here at Camp Sparkly Lake, where you’ve sent me for two weeks… Uh-huh, I’ve made a couple friends already. Jessica is a cheerleader just like me, and she can do a backflip, also just like me…”

It could go on and on. Why would Cindy say so much stuff that her mom already knows? People don’t talk like this! I know that you’re trying to minimize the telling, but this isn’t the way to do it. Try instead:

“Hi, Mom… I’m sorry, but there was a line at the phone… Yeah, probably, and I guess I am a little, too. I mean, I miss you a lot, but at least I’ve made a couple friends… Yeah, there’s another cheerleader here named Jessica, and she can match me backflip for backflip. Pretty cool, huh?”

Here, you can imagine what the mom’s saying, and Cindy’s responses are much more natural. As for the other information, like the name of the camp and how long Cindy’s staying, these can be told quickly, but in a way that won’t turn off your readers:

Although the line to the phone looked about a mile long, I supposed it was time to call home and give my mom an update on my first week at Camp Sparkly Lake.

Ta-da! A teensy bit of telling can go a long way.

Which is good advice for me to heed. As an editor, telling slaps me in the face and leaves me reeling. Yet as a writer, info-dumping is so seductive. And since I tend toward the fantastical (or at least magical realism), there’s usually quite a bit of world-building involved.

It’s so difficult to craft those opening pages, believe me. On the one hand, you have to capture the interest of Any Reader, that fickle person who will drop your book like a live grenade if you can’t seal the deal within a sentence or two. On the other hand, you have to create the rules and boundaries of your fictional world up front. If you do a bang-up job of painting your characters in the beginning, waiting until ten pages in to wallop the readers with a garbage load of information, you’re not doing anyone any favors. You have to impart info without hanging a flashing, neon sign over it that reads: WORLD-BUILDING GOING ON HERE! LOTS OF INFO TO DUMP! DON’T GET BORED! I PROMISE IT’S IMPORTANT TO THE STORY, AND YOU WON’T REGRET THIS IN 50 PAGES! Yeah, right. As I’ve said countless times, every word must count.

If you follow my blog, you know that I’m almost done editing last year’s NaNoWriMo novel. The first draft clocked in at 148,000 words. The second draft, which I distributed to beta readers, was 129,000. It took lot of editing on my part to cut those 19,000 words, but it wasn’t enough. I have to take some of my own medicine, and my goal by the end of this month is to not only be done editing it but to have it under 100,000 words. (Right now it stands at 107K.) My readers have asked me how I can cut so much. And they liked the book, so I must have done something right. But at the same time, I know that my first person present narrator needs to keep some things to herself. She doesn’t need to think of what she’s going to do, explain it, and then act. Yes, I’m in the storytelling business, but I would much rather show it.

I would much rather leave my readers wanting more.

With a good book, even picky writers and editors like me won’t notice the craft. It will melt away, and the story will shine through. That doesn’t mean that we won’t savor great lines or powerful scenes. But what it does mean is that the writing won’t get in the way. It will serve the story completely, as it’s meant to. And in the end, we won’t think, Well, a lot of years passed, and those characters sure did grow up – they must have because that’s what the narrator kept telling me. Instead, we’ll think, Has this author written anything else? I’ve got to have it now! I’ve got to read more books like this, and maybe one day, I’ll be able to write something this great, too.

Something worth sharing.

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Conquering My Comfort Zone Constraints

I am often grateful that I married a fellow introvert. I have an accomplice who is just as uncomfortable as I am in social situations, who gives me an easy out when I don’t want to do something – because he doesn’t want to, either. Nowadays, of course, having kids is a good excuse, too. Kids aren’t invited? Darn, well then I guess I won’t go.

But then there are times when I have no excuse. Like my husband is working, and I have to take my kids somewhere. After having two boys, I told Thomas that he was in charge of getting them into sports and whatnot. And then you know what? He got a job working nights, so who has to take the kids to their events? Me. I’m the mom that no one else knows. Part of it is because I’m chasing my toddler and don’t have time to socialize, but even if I didn’t have him, I would likely be sitting in my chair, reading a book.

It’s always a fight for me. I try to be polite; I really do. And when I get to know you, you might not guess that I’m an introvert because I can come out of my shell and be friendly. But talk in front of a group of people? Make a phone call to someone I don’t know? Stand at the front of the church and sing a solo? This is the stuff of nightmares for me.

“You know why that is, right?” a friend said to me. “It’s because you don’t do it enough.”

Uh-uh. Nope. I played in plenty of piano recitals. I daydreamed about getting up there and wowing everyone with my talents. But in reality, my stomach churned, my hands trembled, and my mind became a blank. It’s always been a battle. But it’s one that I’m glad I’ve fought. Otherwise, I might still be sitting on my parents’ couch, lonely and wondering where I’d gone wrong.

Thank goodness for the people in my life who have intervened. In high school, when I was overweight and sensitive and recovering from a number of friendships that ended in backstabbing and typical teenage ugliness, I spent a year homeschooling and avoiding my peers. My family finally forced me to get involved with musical theatre, promising me that I would love it once I tried it.

You could not imagine a more awkward or shy girl as I went to that first rehearsal. I knew no one and had no idea how to strike up a conversation with total strangers. But it turns out that new people aren’t completely evil and scary. Not only did I make some life-long friends, but I even met my husband.

Time and again, I’ve had to fight myself to get ahead in life. I was embarrassed to start college just after I turned seventeen; I felt like I had a flashing red sign reading “Minor” over my head. But I kept a low profile and made it through – even helped found Fiction Fix, a literary journal that’s still going strong today.

Then I was scared to pursue any kind of job aside from the one I already had. When my son’s school sent a plea for substitute teachers, I could safely ignore it because I had a new baby. But when they were still looking for subs months later, I didn’t have an excuse anymore. I know it sounds silly, but it took a lot of courage for me to contact the educational staffing service that hires and assigns subs. But I did, and it turns out that I love teaching.

So this week, a week full of late nights and meetings and obligations, my elder son started bugging me about his school’s family fun night. It was at a skating rink, and a lot of his friends were going, and as I told another parent, my only excuse was that I didn’t want to go.

After fighting with myself for a couple days, I decided to take the kids. You’re not doing this for yourself but for Peter, I kept thinking.

We stayed up late, and the kids were worn out, and they played with friends, and they fell all over the place on roller skates, and it was some of the best people-watching I’ve ever experienced. When Peter asked me if we could go back next year, my immediate answer was yes. Like refusing to eat a new food because you think you won’t like it, sometimes you just have to try something before you find out you’re wrong.

Of course, there are still plenty of things, like piano recitals and college presentations, I am glad to have behind me. Good riddance. But I can’t say I wished I’d never done them. I have to remind myself that even when I’m uncomfortable, I learn a lot (even if just for future book fodder). Other times – like meeting my husband in musical theatre – I am thankful that I didn’t dig my heels in so much that I missed great opportunities. It’s baby steps, man.

It’s funny that I can send query letters and receive rejections all day without being bothered too much. I mean, sometimes I can get ticked off (like after this rejection), but I don’t get nervous. But making a phone call to a bookstore to ask if they’ll sell my book? Good Lord, that’s hard. Sometimes it ends negatively, but other times, I make great new connections.

While I like my introverted self and being the girl on the couch with a book, there are times when it’s worth it to push past my usual limits. I still don’t like social events, would rather be in the comfort in my home, but I am also interested to see what kind of opportunities could pop up in any given week; there’s no telling when one might change my life again.

Just let me read in peace!

Just let me read in peace!

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Did October Come out of Nowhere or What?


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With so many big projects from late May through early July, I almost felt like the summer months didn’t happen. I was busy enough that I always felt like I was on the brink of falling behind. And although this has been a great school year for my first grader, I feel the press of responsibilities and obligations getting ready to pull me under again.

Whenever I see my grandmother, she asks how I’m doing, and the inevitable reply is, “Busy.” I recount to her my projects – currently, a memoir for one client, an eBook for another, and a book I’m co-writing with a friend – and she asks me how I’ve gotten myself into this. “Well, I’m getting paid,” I tell her. It’s not like I’m giving my time away.

Finishing my first set of three big projects at the end of June wasn’t good enough; I immediately picked up a bunch more. It was great for the summer because the number of paying projects I took on more than made up for the substitute teaching jobs that I only get during the school year. My days were full, but I didn’t have to get up hours before dawn, didn’t have as many pressing deadlines, and could block off time for myself and still get things done.

When school started back, though, the early alarm clock became part of my routine again, as well as lots of substitute teaching, karate and t-ball practices for my elder son, preschool Sunday school, my Education for Ministry class (which comes with a 1000-page history book this year), and my recent move to assistant editor for Fiction Fix. I warned all of my clients that, while I would have plenty of time during the summer, everything would slow down once school started again. “Does that mean that I need to find someone else?” one of these clients asked. Of course not! I need the work, and I can’t leave her with her project half-done.

Even so, I’ve had less time than I thought I would. Whole weeks have slipped by without me touching some of my work, and when it was August, it was all well and good, but somehow October snuck up on me.

It comes down to time management, as usual. There are only so many hours in a day, and sometimes I don’t have more than five or ten minutes to devote to one person, in order to give time to everyone. A few days ago, I started to feel the pressure when I realized that the book I’m co-writing needs to go to the printer the last week of the month, and I still don’t have all of the material. The memoir needs to be finished before Christmas, and the eBook is set to publish in mid-December, but we’re having all kinds of technical issues with the conversion for e-devices. To get all of these things done, the only solution that I can think of is to give up some of the weekend time that I’ve tried to set aside to read and edit for myself – you know, for my sanity.

And I made this decision on a weekend when we were going out of town for a mini vacation, naturally.

On Friday afternoon, I spent an hour hunched over my MacBook, bound and determined to finish the latest chunk of the memoir. My husband took care of all the last minute details, as well as our two-year-old. I finished and called my client from the car, promising to get the material to her next week.

One of the wonderful things about freelance work is that you can do things like this – type from your house right before leaving town – but if you don’t have the discipline to do it, you could easily get sucked into your favorite TV show or lose an hour on Facebook. There’s no boss looking over your shoulder to tell you off or remind you that October, in fact, started four days ago.

And if you’re married and working freelance, it also takes an understanding spouse. Sure, it looks like I’m having a great time, sitting in my comfy glider and typing away in my bedroom slippers, but I really am working, and there is a client who is counting on me to give my best. But that understanding only stretches so far. The free time that I afford myself on weekends needs to include my husband and kids.

Cinderella's Palace at Disney World

Cinderella’s Palace at Disney World

As I write, I'm out of town with my family. My in-laws offered to take us to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Disney World. The kids knew we were going to visit their grandparents for the weekend, but Disney was a surprise. And so worth it. It's what I consider the last hurrah before I knuckle down and get serious.

 

And, of course, I have another motivating factor (aside from keeping my clients happy): NaNoWriMo starts in less than a month, and I can’t wait to write the sequel to last year’s NaNo book. I can’t do that with all these looming projects, so October, look out! There’s going to be a whole lot of productivity going on around here.

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Does the Genre Really Matter?

All seven books in the Harry Potter series in ...

All seven books in the Harry Potter series. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wanted: Good fiction.

To be more specific, fiction that draws me in right from the start. Fiction in which the characters are believable, in which I can hear the dialogue in my mind. Fiction that makes me think, raises tough questions, makes me cry, makes me emote. Fiction that makes me want to talk to someone else about it. Fiction that saddens me when it’s over.

I like to think that if I were a literary agent, that’s what I would list under my “interests.” Because, try as I might, I can’t pin down a favorite style or genre. Now, there are certain things that I definitely don’t like. Mediocre writing, inconsistency, lack of craft. Like I said, I want the characters to be believable. If the debutante protagonist has never scrambled an egg in her life, I won’t believe it when she whips a six-course meal out of thin air. (Unless she’s magic, of course – and if she is, I better have a hint of it first.) I don’t want adverbs trying to tell me how desperately someone says something. Show me the desperation with a sweaty brow and shaking hands. I don’t want plots that are so insubstantial they can be knocked over by a sneeze.  I don’t want endings that are unrealistically happy or tragedies that are unnecessary, the only point being to make the reader cry.

I really just want a good story, one in which I can forget that I’m reading at all.

This is why labels kind of bother me. Romances, for instance. Label it like that, and I don’t want to read it. Why? Because all the romance novels I saw growing up had half-naked men massaging busty women’s shoulders on their front covers, and I really don’t want to read a novel that’s connected by one sex scene after another. So I was shocked to discover a truly excellent book that is sold in the romance section. Although the story revolves around a love story (or stories, really), it’s so much more than that. I’m speaking of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander.

Or take the case of my friend who told me that he could not stand to read fantasy. Wouldn’t give Harry Potter the time of day because of how it’s categorized. I’ve known other people who won’t read these wonderful books, not because of the fantasy and magic, but because they’re so-called “kids’ stuff.” Well, if kids’ stuff comes with a side of good beating the crap out of evil, I’m on board with it.

How about Stephen King? He’s known as the king of horror, yet while he started that way, his more recent books (and my favorites) are much more sci-fi, fantasy, and I-don’t-know-what. They’re just good stories. Not to mention that the guy knows how to write and how to instruct writers how to write. Chances are, if you call him a hack, you haven’t read much beyond Cujo or Pet Sematary.

When I looked for beta readers for my novel RIP, I decided to go the vague route. People asked, “What’s it about?” or “What genre is it?” I told them that it was young adult, and fortunately, my beta readers were kind enough to read because they know me. One actually told me he wouldn’t have usually read that kind of book, but he was glad that he did. Good thing I kept my mouth shut, right?

But, as I posted a couple weeks ago, I was able to workshop a portion of my novel with an agent, and in my introduction, I told her it was young adult. It was almost as if, by giving that tiny bit of a description, it put blinders on her. My book was much too long. She was unwilling to consider almost anything about the content until I addressed the length. Young adult novels generally have a word count, and mine exceeded it by double. (Nevermind that books like Twilight are half again as long as mine.) Now, she is right: there are many thousands of words that I can cut, but shouldn’t she be trying to sell a story, not a word count? (That’s an issue for another blog.)

This whole issue has gotten me thinking: does labeling novels with a genre help or hinder? If I had just told the agent: here’s the beginning of my novel, would she have judged me for not nailing down a genre?

I don’t go through bookstores and read book jackets or first pages until I find something I think I want, but many other people find their books by following this practice. (Or if not in a bookstore, online.) What about someone who only picks books from the Christian lit shelves? This person might never consider reading Veronica Roth’s Divergent series because it’s sold as young adult and dystopian – would completely miss the way that Roth’s Christianity colors her novels.

While talking books with a friend recently, we got onto young adult lit, specifically John Green‘s books (which are awesome, by the way – do yourself a favor, and read them). My friend said, in a semi-surprised tone, that he’d gone on a young adult lit binge lately. And he’s in his forties with no kids. I find this wonderful – that a book written “for” an audience in their teens can speak to such a wider audience.

Of course, I totally get that if there were no classifications, I could very well mistakenly shop my novel with agents who are only interested in political thrillers or erotica. And marketing is another issue. No matter what, there are people who will refuse to read anything except X, even though they would really enjoy Y, if only they would give it a chance.

But it seems, in the effort to makes genres more attractive to more people, sub-genres have to be added. You ought to check out this list from Writer’s Digest. And it’s not even complete! I just heard of a new genre called New Adult. Each genre and sub-genre has its own little specifications, and if you hope to publish, you have to try to fit the mold. Well, what if I don’t want to? What if I just want to write or read a good book? What if I want to mull it over afterward and then say, “I think I just read a really good Western. Who knew? I never thought I would enjoy a book like that.”

All I’m asking for is a little bit more of an open mind. From agents, publishers, and readers, alike. Hey, I’ll try to have one, too.

I suppose this is why I’m not a big publishing executive. The bottom line is important, I know. Believe me, I want to make a living in this business, too. But at the end of the day, piles of money aren’t going to captivate me. But a great story will every time.

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Step One: Write Without Barriers; Step Two: Cut, Cut, Cut!

The Editing Pen

The Editing Pen

Last week I mentioned that this week’s topic would be about “the last time you could write about whatever you wanted and not care a bit what anyone else thought about it.”

Now, unless you keep a diary that’s locked and hidden somewhere very secure – or, I suppose, if you do the same with a manuscript that you never plan to see the light of day – it is nearly impossible to write without worrying about anyone else’s opinion. I have to admit, it was a bit of a trick question.

Of course, I have attended workshops with so-called writers who were arrogant enough to think that they could write whatever and however they wanted, and any criticism from their fellow workshoppers was not worth heeding. Which made me wonder why these people signed up to begin with. To bestow their writerly beneficence on other, less gifted souls? Or to receive lots of praise and pats on the back?

As you can likely imagine, these writers got a rude awakening when they found out that their prose, in fact, was not a gift from God to the rest of us. And they had a very difficult time ever taking the well-meant critiques and applying them to the manuscripts that they thought were already perfect.

Most writers (or those of us who are realistic about our chances of publishing and actually being read) know that we have to quit thinking about ourselves at some point and consider the readers. Of course, these audiences are varied. Some may be very narrow, others broad, even all-encompassing. And though we may hate the idea of “selling out” or writing to be marketable, the fact is that if you write a young adult novel with a 60-year-old narrator – and a cast full of geriatrics with not an adolescent in sight – you likely won’t have many young adult readers. Sure, write that book if it floats your boat, but don’t expect it to find a publisher.

Now, there are always rule breakers, many of them quite famous. Elmore Leonard’s number one rule for good writing is to never open a book with the weather. So what did he do in his novel, Get Shorty? He opened with the weather (read that opening and others here.)

There are writers who break the rules because they know what they’re doing, and people applaud them for having the guts to do it – and do it well. There are others who don’t know the rules or ignore them, thinking that rules are for those unfortunate writers who don’t have “it” – you know, that mysterious something that puts some writers on bestseller lists.

These others – the ones who think that the golden prose that flows from their fingertips should never be sullied by an editor’s red pen – hamper themselves by not moving (or not moving very far, anyway) beyond the first draft. And if you read my post last November about first drafts, you know that they’re necessary, of course, in the writing process, but there is a reason they’re called “first” – you’re supposed to move on to a second and a third and however many it takes to get the job done right.

When I wrote my first drafts post, I was a little over a week into NaNoWriMo. (And if you don’t know what that is, read all about it at www.nanowrimo.org – and then participate this November!) During November, I wrote over 80,000 words and edited very little, except for those few times when I needed to go back and re-read something, and I caught an error.

I continued writing through December and January and into the first part of February, when I finally wrapped up my novel – at about 148,000 words. I knew it was on the wordy side. With a first draft, you write without barriers; it’s just you and the manuscript. I liken it to writing an email that you never plan to send. If you want to let someone know a piece of your mind, compose an email full of all the vitriol it will hold, but instead of sending it, sleep on it, and you will often find that your original email doesn’t need to be sent at all or can be toned down. The same goes for manuscripts. Much of what authors include in a first draft is backstory or info-dumping that is more for the author’s benefit than any use to the readers. When you start to edit, save your first draft in case you need to go and use some of that info later, but likely, a good portion of it will get cut.

In my first draft, my first person narrator contributed all kinds of thoughts and snarky asides that do not belong in the final version. Since the style is largely conversational, I let quite a bit of it pass, even after a couple rounds of edits. I did cut almost 20,000 words, after all, so I felt like my novel was ready to move to the next stage and be dispersed to some beta readers.

Then, last weekend, I had an unexpected opportunity. Writer’s Digest was offering what they called a bootcamp with a literary agency, focusing on the first 10 pages of a novel. All I had to do was really polish those first 10 pages and get some professional advice on how to make them even better.

When I posted my excuse of a blog last week, I had just sent off the final, revised-again 10 pages to the agent I was working with, and I felt like I had been somewhat mentally flogged. Her first assessment had been short, with one positive: I had a good handle on the language. The negatives: too much dialogue, too long (I had given her the word count for the whole novel), and too much telling instead of showing.

Well, crap, I thought. My beta readers haven’t give me any complaints like that (yet). They helped me with pacing and big content issues, but then again, they weren’t pulling a magnifying glass out on the first 10 pages only. My beta readers went in knowing that they were going to finish the book. While I can tell agents all day long that they’ll like it if they just read to the end, they know that prospective readers will likely only read a page or a paragraph or even just the opening line before they decide to buy the book – or not.

I won’t say the agent’s comments were a blow, but they were a wake up call. After getting clarification on the negatives, I saw my book through new eyes – someone’s else’s – and realized that there is a lot more work to be done. And since I love a challenge, I’m having a fun time editing – again.

So to address my own topic that I presented last week and again at the beginning of this post, the last time I wrote something without caring about what anyone else thinks was when I wrote that first draft – and every time I write a first draft. What a relief to get it all off my chest (or out of my head, as the case may be).

And, yes, I need to be true to myself and write the book that I want to write, but sometimes the book that wants to be written needs me to move out of the way a little. I need to quit thinking about what an impact the end of Part One will make and weigh every word up to that point. Maybe some (or a few thousand) of those words need to go.

And to paraphrase another agent who was so right (although it’s hard advice to swallow): sometimes that line you keep coming back to – you know, your favorite – is the line that you absolutely must cut.

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Writer at Work

It has been a busy weekend. Of course, it’s my mom’s birthday, and I’m copy editing the sixteenth volume of Fiction Fix, and I’m taking a Writer’s Digest bootcamp all at once. Life is full and wonderful like that sometimes.

I have a lot to say about my writing experience this weekend, but I’m too wiped out right now to even put together a coherent thought.

So while I leave you in suspense, talk amongst yourselves about the last time you could write about whatever you wanted and not care a bit what anyone else thought about it. That’s next week’s topic.

Oh, and of course, happy birthday to the best mama in the world. Better to celebrate with her than worry about deadlines, anyway.

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So You Want to Write a Book – Well, Now What?

William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portabl...

William Faulkner’s Underwood Universal Portable (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


Has this ever happened to you? You’re with a group of people – let’s say a moms’ group, with everyone exchanging tips and anecdotes – and someone says, “We could write a book.”

“We really could!” someone else chimes in.

Another mom even throws in a title: “Temper Tantrum on Aisle Four – How to Survive the Toddler Years!”

Everyone laughs, and they go about their lives and forget about it. But you linger on the thought that maybe you could write a book. Then again, the idea that you don’t know how to start – and what would make your book any more special than any other, any more worthy of the New York Times Bestseller List? – is intimidating, so your idea stays an idea and no more.

On the one hand, you might be right. Everyone does have a story (or three), and some of them aren’t worth telling (and those are the ones that seem to be repeated the most). But any time you impart a nugget of knowledge to someone else who seems to get something out of it, you feel that I-should-really-write-this tug.

Nowadays, blogs (much like this one) pick up the slack. A mom blogs about potty-training her strong-willed toddler, and other moms unite behind her or take comfort that they aren’t alone in the struggle. A man loses his job but figures out how to make a living from home – and writes a great how-to post. Someone with an incredible weight-loss story posts a menu and workout routine online to help others in the same situation. Blogs are great resources, and the topics they cover are endless.

But still, there are those for whom blogging and swapping stories around the water cooler aren’t enough. The problem is that they aren’t necessarily writers and don’t know what to do. The idea persists, won’t let them go.

Sometimes for decades.

I get all kinds of mixed reactions when people find out that I’m a writer. They want to know what I write. (“Novels? How can you write so much?”) They want to know how much freelance work I can handle. (“How do you manage it with two kids?”) They marvel that I’ve actually made an occupation out of this – you know, it’s not just a cute hobby. (“You mean you edit and write for a living?”)

And sometimes they ask me, kind of sheepishly, if I can help them with something they’ve been wanting to do for years.

One such person is a client of my parents’ business and happened to mention to my mom that she had a writing project. My mother said that I’m a writer, and the next time the woman came in, I was there. I gave her my business card and promptly forgot about it. I talk to a lot of people about my services, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to hire me.

A few weeks later, to my surprise, she called. She went into great detail about this project, one that she started over ten years ago. Her kids have been encouraging her to write a memoir because she’s led such an interesting life, but she doesn’t use computers, and the woman who helped her start it has been too busy to continue.

As I talked to this woman and learned her story, I realized that there are so many people who lead amazing lives, but some of the best details will die with them. They may not have a great command of the English language, but they have stories worth passing on. It would be a shame for this woman to never see her dream fulfilled just because she’s not a “writer.” I feel privileged to help her share her bit of history with her family.

Another opportunity arose in late May. I had just published my children’s book Hero (shameless plug – buy it here!), and Peter shared it with his kindergarten class. Afterward, one of his teachers mentioned that she has always wanted to write a book but needs help.

“Sure, let’s do it,” I said before I even knew what she wanted. Hey, I had just illustrated and published my first children’s book – I was flying high and felt like I could do anything.

Her face lit up as she described her 20-year dream. She used to take her children for bike rides around Amelia Island. They would stop at interesting trees, and she would make them create stories about how those trees came to look like that. Combining her love of nature with her interest in developing writing skills in children, she wants to create a book with photos of interesting trees and writing prompts. As with her own children, kids will “Look at this tree” and be encouraged to write a story about it.

It’s right up my alley. Although I’ve never created a book like this, I must admit that I love writing prompts. I love anything that starts with a tiny seed and blossoms into a beautiful story.

I really feel that I could give her a push – much like with a child on a bike with the training wheels removed for the first time – and watch her go, but I also understand that I’ve been in the publishing world for a while now, and it’s no longer mysterious to me. If you’re not right in the middle of it, though, you might think writing a book is unattainable.

I was there once. I’ve talked about my college fiction workshop before, and the second time I signed up, our instructor Ari pulled a group of us together (the ones who were serious about getting published) and gave us the low-down on publishing. 1) It’s a competitive market that’s difficult to break into, and 2) it’s still not guaranteed to be everything you hoped and dreamed even if you do get published. What Ari suggested was that we pull our best stories together and create our own publication. And so Fiction Fix was born. With his direction, we figured out what we were supposed to do, and more than 11 years later, Fiction Fix is going strong as an online fiction journal. We’ve grown quite a bit from that group of desperate writers who just wanted to see our stories in print; now we receive submissions from all over the world.

We were lucky in that we had someone who saw our desire to write and be read and who knew just when to push us. But for those out there with the desire but no direction, no help, no idea except THE IDEA for a story or book, the task can seem daunting. But here’s the thing: if you have a book that you want to write, the only thing in your way is your own indecision. Instead of dreaming or joking about maybe writing a book some day, you need to take action.

Indie (self-published) authors are more prevalent than ever. The internet has done many wonderful things for writers, on-demand and e-publishing being two of them. And even if you don’t write, these tools and their practitioners have made publishing a much more attainable reality than it used to be.

An internet search can give you everything you need, from writers’ support groups and social networks to online book publishing to lists of freelance editors (like me!). Don’t ever assume that the person you’ve just looked up is the real deal until you’ve done some research. (I learned this the hard way, regarding literary agents – read my story here.) Also don’t assume that the big companies are your only choice. Everywhere you look, you will find writers and editors with different levels of expertise. You’ll even find local printing companies, graphic designers, and illustrators who can all help bring your book to life. These are real people with whom you can share a cup of coffee – and your dream.

But if you’d like some resources, here are some websites to check out:

  • Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace (Amazon.com’s answers to e-publishing and on demand publishing)
  • Smashwords.com (distributor of eBooks to every conceivable e-format)
  • Writer’s Digest and Writer’s Market (tips for writing and publishing)
  • LinkedIn (where professionals go to network – Facebook and Twitter are great, but if you want to connect with writers who can help you get started, I can’t think of a better place)
  • NaNoWriMo.org (Ever wonder if you could write a novel in a month? If you’re serious about this, I promise that you will have the writing experience of a lifetime.

So… do you have a story to tell?

Want to help with the writing prompt book?

Look at This Tree

Look at This Tree

The writing prompt book I mentioned is the brain-child of my friend Karen Saltmarsh. We’re going to title it Look at This Tree, and we’re looking for high-quality photos of interesting trees that could tell a story. To the left is an example from a park that I visited in Washington State. (Don’t you think there could be a secret hideout for some mythical, woodland creature under the roots?) If you have something you’d like to submit, please fill out the contact form on my Writing Services page, and Karen and I will consider your photo for her book.

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Adding to My Personal Soundtrack

Quarta gregoriano

Quarta gregoriano (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I don’t talk enough about the musical influences in my life. I know it’s all books-this and writing-that, but I really wouldn’t be the well-rounded individual that I am (ha) without the music in my life.

There are times when music surprises me; a song that I’ve heard many times will suddenly awaken a creative something within me. Since I’m a writer, that “something” is usually a scene in a book I’m writing. Sometimes it’s the “aha!” moment I’ve been waiting for. Other times (like what I posted about most recently), a novel almost gets derailed by a new scene that I never would have imagined, were it not for hearing the right song at the right time.

Then there are other times that music doesn’t necessarily evoke a specific image or scene, yet it fulfills some emotional (and I would go as far as to say spiritual) hole and leaves me pleasantly full and happy, even energized.

What brings all this up? Well, I’m kind of riding a high from attending an evening of uplifting, choral music. A boring way to spend a Friday night, right? Well, not if I got chills during the first song (I did) and can’t stop thinking about the sound and the joy on the faces of the singers (I can’t).

You see, that’s how it is in this relationship I have with music. Many songs or musical events become a part of what I think of as the soundtrack of my life. (Don’t worry, as a writer, I sometimes narrate my life, too, but today it’s all about the music.)

Alanis Morissette

Cover of Alanis Morissette

For instance, any time I hear “The Sign” (Ace of Base), I’m overcome with nostalgia – it’s the title song of my first CD. The same goes for Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill; I bought that CD in the seventh grade, and so did my husband. It’s part of our middle school soundtrack.

And so it continues: musicals I participated in as a teenager, such as Annie and Fiddler on the Roof; Metallica’s S&M CD (one of the best Christmas presents Thomas ever bought); our first System of a Down CD, which we bought and listened to when we drove to a Gator football game; the mix CD Thomas’s brother burned for us a couple days before we got married, so we listened to it everywhere we drove on our honeymoon. And our wedding itself contained a mini-concert. Some people told me it was a long ceremony because of all the music. But we’re musical people. Thomas’s grandfather was in a band. My mom’s mom and dad’s dad were both organists. It’s in our DNA.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I’m raising my kids right, making them listen to “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Thriller” wherever we go. (Hey, I also downloaded “Let It Go” – don’t worry.) I’m helping them create their own soundtracks.

Most recently, I’ve discovered Rachael Sage; her single “Happiness (Maddie’s Song)” just came out on iTunes. I heard it once and couldn’t stop humming it for a couple days. And then there’s Pentatonix. I love it when someone posts one of their new songs on Facebook – which I’ll watch over and over, to my children’s chagrin. And Bastille – who doesn’t dig a rocker with a cool British accent?

Rachael Sage

Cover of Rachael Sage

Every new song, every concert, is a possible source for inspiration, but it goes deeper than potential best-selling novel ideas (as nice as they are). Songs are little triggers. I can hear one in the grocery store and be transported back to the fourth grade. Or remember the last concert I attended with a friend before she passed away. They’re pieces that may not always seem to go together – discordant, you might say – yet they make up the puzzle of me. And as strange as it may seem to hum classic rock in the store, listen to folk songs in the car, and spend an evening listening to choral music, I totally dig the big picture.

And it just keeps getting bigger. But I wouldn’t call that a bad thing.