Hypotheticals

Heh, my 200th post was an apology! Well, my 201st will be questions:

1. Do you think it's easier to revise a manuscript or write an entirely new one?

2. Which would you rather have happen: one huge bestseller that you know will never be topped (by you) or a life-long career as a mid-list author?

3. Let's pretend that I can tell the future with 100% accuracy (ha!). I read your manuscript, and I can tell you whether it will ever be published, or whether it won't. Do you want to know? Do you want to work on it, or do you want to move on to a new manuscript to start? (in other words, how much value is in revising a work that is unpublishable? at what point does revision become counter-productive?)

...and speaking of questions, I'd just like to announce:

Coming Soon!
Author Interviews!

I've got two author interviews lined up now, but if any of you have suggestions on where to dig up more, please let me know! :)

Sorry

..about having something of a funny post just before something of a serious post. But I posted the funny first, and then read Maureen Johnson's blog, and I thought about Kim, the girl I was writing about and, well, I just had to say that. Didn't mean to be so jarring.

If you are a woman, know a woman, or have any interactions with women...

...in other words, YOU, go read this. It's got nothing to do with writing or reading or anything like that, but it's still very worthy of your time. It's not political, although it seems that way at first...it's just the way it is, and the way it could be.

...and after you read, here's why it matters to me:

I had the brightest child I ever taught four years ago. She was black, and she was poor, but I looked at her and thought, You, you can make it.

And then she got pregnant. And her life was no longer about rising above her poor home, but about staying in it, where the baby was, because that was all she had left. That happened my first year of teaching. I remember, I *remember* how I thought she could be anything, how I thought my teaching her grammar and literature would make a difference, how she'd use what I taught her in her doctoral thesis, how one day she might come to the school and visit me and show me, her teacher, her degree. I looked at this kid, and my dreams were her dreams, and I believed in her as much as I believed in anything, and I knew with all my soul she could be more than what she was.

She dropped out her senior year, when her baby was one. It had gotten to be too much.

I'll just say this: while it is wonderful and beautiful that she brought a life into the world, I cannot help but believe it was at the cost of her own.

The Premise Phase

Ok, so I've got this idea, right. It's cool, trust me. There's this space ship, and a kid, and some people in a cryogenic sleep, and it's set in outer space during an interstellar evacuation. Oh, and here's the kicker: it's a murder mystery. Oh! And there's a twist. A good 'un. Trust me. It's cool.

Gawd, I love the premise phase! I lurrve my little spawns of mind juice just before I start writing a new story :) I lurrve them.

'Course, I hates 'em during revision...but I lurrves 'em now!

Pitching Links

I am gearing up for the SCBWI-Carolina's fall conference (only 19 days away!). I've sent my pages for critique, I've signed up for red-eye crit sessions, and now I'm turning my attention to the pitch practice.

Some helpful links:

The SCBWI-C Pitch Practice Worksheet
(Not sure if this link will work if you're not signed in as a member of SCBWI-C)

Christy's Creative Space
On the importance of pitches (with a great analogy):

Lets play pretend. Look at each scenario. What would REALLY happen?

1. You are at the bookstore. You have no idea what book you want, but you want a book that will draw you in and captivate you. To make your decision you . . .

A. Take every book off the shelf, read the first chapter, maybe two, of every book. I mean hey! There's only thirty books in your pile and you've got all day. Right?

B. Place each book next to your ear to see if one "speaks" to you

C. Read that jacketflap, maybe the first page too.

Helene Boudreau
With some pretty good ideas of constructing a pitch (with some good examples):

So, it seems to me that when perfecting your pitch paragraph (pes-ghetti!) your goal is to distill your story in three to five sentences with these three things (character/conflict/hint of outcome) in mind while maintaining the personality of the story in the pitch.

I'm Turning Into my Mother...

...but there is something deeply satisfying about a clean house. Maybe it's because there comes a point where I'm done. Really and truly done. There aren't any clothes to wash except the ones the husband and I are wearing. There aren't any more dishes to wash. The furniture is dusted and the floors vacuumed. There is nothing else I can do to clean without acquiring an obsessive compulsive disorder.

In one profession where it may be years, if ever, before I find out if I made a difference to my students, and in another profession where I have to honestly face the fact that I might never achieve my goal of publication, it is nice to do something and be complete, know it's the best job I could do, and that there is nothing more to do. In teaching, there's always a better way to teach; in writing, there's always another revision.

At least I can clean the house!

PS--Keri Mikulski's sponsoring another Yay for YA giveaway. Go to her blog and sign up for free books!

I'm such a rat

You're Reepicheep
Take Which C.S.Lewis Character are you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

Writing Process

I'd never really before thought about the writing process, but between the creative writing assignment my students did and the fact that I'm revising a current manuscript (which means, of course, all I want to do is write another one), I've been thinking a bit about how my mind actually works when I write.

1. Premise: This is just the idea. It can be as simple in my mind as "talking cat," or "witch teacher," or "magic addiction." Right now, it's "ark spaceship." This is usually just an idea of a unique character or setting.

2. Twist: I try to think of what's the worst thing that could happen with the premise. In The Amnesia Door, I had a teacher who was a witch, but she was a prisoner. What could make the unique character or setting be put in a dire situation?

3. Plot: What's the story? How can I carry the premise and twist out the whole way through the book? For The Amnesia Door, I added a character, a student named Belle, who wanted magic. She's the narrator--she is the story: we follow her as she discovers her teacher is a witch, and we see all of that from her perspective. Which leads directly to...

4. Character: Belle is my main character. Her thoughts and wishes drive the story. So, I defined her character to fit the story: she is bored with life and wants magic of her own.

5. Conflict: This is the driving force of the story. Belle wants magic. Her teacher has magic but wants freedom. I threw in another teacher who was an alchemist and could offer Belle the magic she wanted...but at the cost of her magical teacher's freedom.

6. Resolution: This is the end, how the conflict will be resolved. I hardly ever know what the resolution will be before I start writing; it usually comes to me about half-way through the book. I like to make life difficult on my characters, so difficult that I can't figure out how to solve their problems for them...and then when I get to that point, I have to stop writing and figure out the ending.

In the end, this makes the book. I'm notorious for not liking outlines, but I will admit that this is what I do as pre-writing. I don't necessarily even write any of this down, but these five points are essential for me to have at least thought about before I write. Once I've got at least a vague idea of the first five points, I can write a story.

These usually change as the story develops, but I do maintain at least a semblance of the original idea for each of the points above, even resolution (although that one hardly ever stays the same while I write the book).

One thing I often add either early in the story, or as I go is:

7. Meaning: I don't like hit-you-over-the-head kind of themes, but I do usually have an idea of a deeper meaning that I want to add to my story. It can be as simple as "addiction is bad," but more often than not, it's a Bible verse or lesson, such as the power of love, or refusing temptation. It's not preachy, I hope, but it is usually there in my writing.

And now for something completely different*

*Please, someone, get title :)

So, you know that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the lady from Castle Anthrax just keeps going on, and everyone in the whole freaking movies screams GET ON WITH IT!!!

Yeah, Fly by Night is like that.

Which kinda sucks, because I was looking forward to reading it.

The Writing Process at Work

Whew. This first week of teaching has been rough. Too many changes--new room, new principal, new kids, new lesson plans!

I promise not to bore everyone with the details of teaching life, but I can't resist here. My mother found almost 100 art prints from around the world. I gave one to each kid (I teach sophomores), and after teaching them about common symbols and the basics of world geography and religion, I had them write a story based on the picture using the setting and culture of the area from which the painting originates.

Students today very rarely get the chance to write creatively. The focus, even in (especially in) English classes is analysis writing, not creative.

At first, the students just looked at me. They could write about anything? Anything, I confirmed. They could make up a story? Yes. Like out of their heads? Of course. And it didn't have to be real? Nope. Could they write about anything they wanted? Anything. Really? Yup.

Once they got the basic assignment, the creative-killing questions came. I told them that the five-paragraph standard was crap (imagine their shock). I told them that grammar counted--just because they were allowed to make a creative story didn't mean that grammar could be creative, too.

And, slowly, they started to write. The girls made fairy tales with pictures of Saint George and the Dragon. The boys wrote stories about war with the Greek statue photographs. And then they really started getting creative...

A girl with an illustration of a Babylonian garden wrote a story where the birds in the garden were competing for the love of the peacock. Another who had a photograph of an elaborate gold pocket watch wrote a story about a stolen family heirloom and the quest to recover it. One student wrote in the first person using diary entries.

It killed me that, even when they got started, they still felt like being creative wasn't "allowed." They asked if dialog was OK. They wanted assurance that they were allowed to have plot. They still didn't believe they could write about anything and make up the story.

This may be the only creative writing assignment we have time for in my class. There are state tests that have to be passed, whether they are worthwhile or not. But, for a few days at least, my students realized how creative creative writing could be.

Q&A With Agent Molly Friedrich

Poets and Writers has a great oft-linked article on veteran agent Molly Friedrich. I heard about it from many different sources, but when I saw a brief summary of it on PubRants, I decided that I needed to read the whole thing.

And wow.

Remember that scene in Harry Potter 4 when Fred and George are talking about Moody, and they're all like "He knows, man, he knows, he's been there." Yeah, she's like that.

She said it better than me:

[On starting out in publishing]
I honestly had nothing better to do than to be ferociously ambitious. And there was nothing stopping me.

How perfect is that? Whether you're an editor, an agent, a writer, a monkey-trainer, whatever...doing something with ferocious ambition...that's the way to be.

[On what's most important in a book]
First of all, is there anybody out there who doesn't know that the easiest thing to sell is plot? But the thing that everybody wants is an original voice. And the thing that's kind of stuck in the middle is character.

What a perfect summary. Sometimes, I think I focus too much on plot+character=story. The voice is the sticking point. This is just a brilliant line. And, of course, she goes on to explain just what voice is:

[On voice]
Now, what is an original voice? Well, think of it like this: Go to Bonfire of the Vanities and close your eyes and pick a page and have someone read you two paragraphs. If you can't identify those paragraphs as the rhythms and cadences that belong to Tom Wolfe, you're finished. I'm convinced that eight times out of ten, with Melissa Bank, you could do the same thing. Now that is saying something. ...

I fell in love with Terry's writing because she had an original voice. Go back and read the first page of Mama, when Mildred, the mother, is wielding an ax. It's like, "Whoa!" It springs off the page. That's why it happened. But Terry built a career by believing in herself more than anybody else did. She really worked hard.

Could you open your manuscript up right now, look at a random page, and hear a distinct voice coming from every word? Could you send your mom page 54 of your manuscript, page 54 of your friend's manuscript, page 54 of a published book someone else wrote, and know that your mom, who should know your voice and style better than anyone, could be able to pick out which page 54 is yours?

[On making it in publishing]
But when this person started sobbing and saying, "What can I do?" I was very gentle with her. I said, "The thing is, it's not easy."

Friedrich is talking about an editor/agent thing here, but it still applies to anyone in the writing business. The thing is, it's not easy.

[On determination]
I think that's how it works. You hang around long enough, and you insist, like Scarlett O'Hara just before the intermission, "As God as my witness...this book will sell!" And if it does sell, and you were right, and everyone else was wrong, then you build up credibility. But it takes time. Here I am, thirty years later. I'm old! I'm fifty-five years old! But seriously, it is a business of staying with it long enough to really build up credibility and respect and a reputation for honesty. Always for honesty. God, this is a small business.

I once had a professor who said that I reminded him of Scarlett O'Hara, and that really made me mad...I hated Scarlett! She's a self-obsessed b! But...she got her way. I'd be Scarlett for my books. I don't want to be Scarlett in life, but in books, yes, that's what I'd be. That's what I probably have to be.

[On what sells]
[Question] Tell me what you're looking for when you're reading a first novel or memoir.
[Answer] That's so easy. I'm looking for the first page to be good. Then I'm looking for the second page to also be good. Really! The first page has to be good so that I will go to the second page and the third and the fourth.

This is what it takes. A page turn. When I first heard about agents wanting only the first five pages with a query, I was mad. Recently, after a rejection, my husband was trying to console me: "They just read a few pages! How could they know how good you are by that?" But it's true. You can know whether a book is good or bad by whether you turn the page. Look at how many books you put down after the first page in the bookstore.

[On writers in the technology age]
Which was partly bad, obviously, but it was also a good thing because they really got to focus on their work and confront what was on the page. They weren't distracted and hyped up by too much information.

This hits close to home. If I had written my most recent manuscript without the Internet, I wouldn't be so worried about whether it's MG or YA. I'd just have written it and been done with it. How good is too much information? I've certainly spent hours--days--questioning my genre--questioning the label! ...but if questioning the label means questioning the writing means improving the writing...maybe it's not a bad thing. I'll compromise: as long as something done with writing, it's worth something.

The Positive Spin

I wasn't going to blog today. Today was the first day of school with kids, and I'm exhausted. Everything went wrong. Staples ate paper. Kids were lost. Faculty meeting was long. A projector blew up. Rain. Lots of a rain. Just a crummy day in general.

Then I come home...and the crummy day continues. Had a rejection waiting for me. Burned supper...and nearly burned the house down when I forgot to turn off the stove eye. The TV show I watch was a re-run...and a bad one, at that.

I'm way behind on critiques for my groups, so I sat down for two hours to work on them. The whole time, I'm thinking I'm not going to blog today. I have nothing positive to say. This day just sucks.

Then I finished with my critiques. And somewhere in reading my friends' works, and blogging on my crit group site about their work, and submitting my new book to one of the groups, and, in general, just immersing myself in the writing world (even though I wasn't writing for myself) made me feel calm and happy and that life isn't worthless and this writing thing is pretty cool. Just doing something with writing makes a bad day good...and makes me know that even when it sucks, this is still what I want to do.

A new YA and MG agent

Colleen Lindsay of FinePrint Literary Management announced on her blog that the agency is adding a new acquiring agent, Joanna Stampfel to their staff. As I know some of you (like myself) are actively searching for an agent, I thought I'd pass along the info and post part of it here:

Here's what Joanna's looking for, in her own words:

Childrens: Chapter books to middle grade - covering any and all topics. If fantasy, it had better be very unique. Love a good school story, and always looking for humorous boy reads.

YA: contemporary to sci-fi and everything in between...again, if full-out fantasy, it had better be different.

I was particularly interested in the fact that she enjoys Ancient Greek studies, since my latest book is based on Bellerophon. And, after the suggestion from the Ask Daphne site, I've decided to label my work as upper MG and know that ages might have to be revised later. I might change this after attending the workshop by Alan Gratz on the differences between MG and YA at the SCBWI-Carolinas conference next month.

An agent on MG/YA

I've been so out of it lately...starting school this year has been more hectic than usual due to a lot of changes at my school.

Anyway, I posted a question on the Daphne Unfeasible blog a while back, and the agent, Kate Testerman, responded! Here's some of her answer:

Now, there is a lot of crossover potential between these age ranges, and as we all know, we expect kids to read up, so a 12 year old may expect or want to read about a 14 year old.... Let an agent decide what your book is, and how she can market it to an editor. Yes, she may suggest a change in your protag's age -- so be ready to defend or consider if your story would still work if your MC was 14 -- or 16.

Which doesn't give me an easy answer for my dilemma, but does make me think that it might be OK for me to just let my book stand as is. I'm not entirely sure about her suggestion that I just leave off the age range in my query, but I am starting to be a little less obsessed with the question.

What, me work?

Plot vs. Story

This is a debate I've never heard of: plot vs. story. Sherwood Smith has a great post on her blog that details the difference. What I'm going to talk about, though, is her t-shirt.

During the three days a year it's cool enough hear to wear long sleeves, I have a beloved Writing Shirt...it says [on the back], Plot is a literary convention;story is a force of nature And it's signed by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. [ETA: For sale right here.]

I think that one sentence sums it up. Anyone can have a plot, just like anyone can have a metaphor or a simile or alliteration. It's just a literary convention: if you know what it is, you can recreate it. Story, however is more. If you have a series of events, you have a plot. But to have a story, then you actually have to be good.

To Prologue or not to Prologue

I've heard that agents/editors dislike prologues (usually, I think, in submissions as it doesn't show a true sense of the tone/style of the book).

I've gone back and written a prologue in my story because whether it becomes MG or YA, I think I've got to show at least a hint of how dark the novel will become. Now, usually even I hate prologues--I skimmed the ones in the Twilight series, I skip most of the ones in epic fantasy tomes (they're just going to reveal a prophecy or something anyway). So I guess I'm being a bit hypocritical, writing a prologue...

...but it is the perfect answer to my worry that the overall tone of the book is hidden by the mild opening, and it gives some insight to the villain's character.

What's y'all's opinion on prologues?


PS: My mother, who has no idea about my angsty-decision for MG or YA, just sent me an email in response to my question on whether or not my ms. was more for middle school kids or high school kids. Her words: Aren't they both the same??? :)

MG or YA?

Recap: I've written what I thought was a YA fantasy, but many felt the tone/writing would make the ms. better suited to be a MG fantasy. My characters are currently 15 years old. I've been entirely up in the air about whether to age-down my characters, or age-up my manuscript.

After hours of researching MG and YA literature on the net, a fervid email conversation on the SCBWI-Carolinas listserv with some helpful advice from YA author Alan Gratz, I realized it came down to this question:

Why are my characters the age they are now?

The answer has to be more than "because" no matter what I decide to do.

If it's an MG, then the answer MUST be MORE than

• because they aren't having sex
• because it's easier to write it that way
• because the action happens within a school
• because there's magic

If it's a YA, then the answer MUST be MORE than:

• because there is sex
• because they are 15 years old (age is nothing more than a number in writing--they have to act their age--they have to be 15, not just be 15 because I say they are)
• because they are in high school (again, as an author, I have to make the high school a character, much like how NY is a character in Sex in the City)

So, when I ask myself what should age my novel should be aimed at, the answers I come up with are:

• the lessons they learn in class are above the average middle schooler's head
• the ultimate battle they must fight is very dark, dealing with themes of temptation and redemption that might not be entirely appropriate for mid-grade
• the magic is school-based, which is a trope of mid-grade novels
• the story is focused more on self than on self's role in the world, which is a trope of mid-grade novels
• there is no romance, thoughts of romance, sex, or even infatuation in my novel. Anywhere. The characters are more focused on themselves and their discoveries than on the opposite sex and what can be discovered under their pants.

All in all, this means I've got some items definitely in the mid-grade camp, and some in the YA camp. So what does that mean? My novel cannot stand as is. I've got to go deeper into revisions and resolve these problems to fit into a specific age-range. And it's still half and half as to which I could do.

I think aging down the characters would be easy--but aging down the novel would be difficult. There are dark themes involved, and issues that I'd think would be easier for a high schooler to understand and identify with than a middle schooler.

I think making the tone of the novel closer to YA would be easy--but I can't lose the tropes that are more typical in MG (i.e. magic in school, witchy teacher). I can easily add in more realistic details to make the characters seem more their age, but the tropes of MG are essential to this novel.

The question still arises: whether to age-down my characters, or age-up my manuscript. There is no clear answer here, just a choice that I'm going to have to do one or the other.

Which Comes First, the Plot or the Characters?

Are you guys sick of posts about revisions yet? I know I am...but not as sick as revisions themselves!

So after reviewing Shannon Hale's The Goose Girl yesterday, I discovered that she has a blog. And the most recent post is about revisions. I particularly liked how she ended the post:

But know this--all writers, novice or professional, have to get our hands dirty. We have to cut things we love, break things and fix them, tear out scenes and fill the gaping holes, discover new subplots and make them work with the whole. Never, never say, "That's close enough." Fix it! Change it! Do the dirty work. Getting grimy is the only way to shine.

This is true. And while I whine incessantly about revisions, I do know that they are needed and that my book will get nowhere as is.

Hale also mentioned the writing process:

Every writer's process is different. Ann (A.E.) Cannon pointed out that most writers either start with character then find the plot, or start with plot then find the character (and of course it's the combination of those two, character and plot, that make story).

Which are you? Do you start with plot or character? For me, it depends on the novel I'm working on. I'd say that usually I'm a plot girl, though, and for The Amnesia Door, it was absolutely plot--I built the characters to fit the plot.

So, what about you?

Someone, please write a book based on one of these...

This site, which records actual conversations between workers and customers, is addicting. Also the reason I've not done any revisions today yet (that, and mowing the lawn). I would seriously love it if someone could include a situation like the ones listed in this website into a story. Only problem is: most of these prove the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction. Here's an example:

(I was ringing up a old lady when another old lady in my line recognized the first lady.)

Old Lady #1: “Oh hey! I didn’t see you there!”

Old Lady #2: “That’s okay… I didn’t recognize you with clothes on!”

Me: “What?!”

Also, I trolled around and found this blog, which comments on a recent article that found, aparently, the people who read fiction are, well, better that people who don't. This reviewer's comments were rich:

Toll through them [your friends] in your mind. I bet you a beer that the ones you like best are the ones who read for fun.