Some advice on taking advice from the overly advised

Want to know how to write? Google it. Seriously. There are thousands (at least) of sites out there with lists of advice for getting published. Do this. Don't do this. Make an outline. Just write. Don't let anyone read it right away. Have reading partners as you go. Write every day. Feel free to take a day off. Write in the morning when you first get up. Write at night. Write until you are out of ideas. Stop when you want to keep going. Start your story in the thick of the action. But not too much action. 25 ways to be a better writer. 50 tips from published writers on writing. 72 fail-proof ways to get a crappy first draft done. And the books. Oh, you can buy books upon books on how to write a book. And probably on how to write a book about how to write a book. It's like bookception. Also, how not to write a book, which is a whole new form of mind blowingness.

(I'm totally making up a lot of words today. It's because I'm a writer, which is synonymous with "wordsmith," which I'm pretty sure means the smithing of words, which I'm pretty sure gives me permission to make up whatever words I want. But I digress...)

I am guilty of trying to consume every bit of writing "advice" out there. Twitter is bursting with these lists, posted by agents and literary agencies and my favorite authors, and if they say the lists are good, they must be good, right? RIGHT???

And then I get sucked into that black hole. You know the one. Where there is no possible way to follow every bit of advice, so you follow none of it, trash your work in progress, throw your laptop across the room, and set fire to it. (The fire setting thing was much easier when writing was done on paper, but that's a story for another time.)

There comes a point where you really have to stop listening to what everyone else says and listen to what works for you. One of the "rules" of writing I have learned is that there are no rules. There are suggestions, that it may be in your best interest to follow, but for every "rule," there are a hundred (or more) exceptions.

So don't be like me, fellow writers, reading list after list on your iPhone, curled into a ball, gently rocking to the melody only you can hear. Consider instead the words of Anne Enright: "The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page."

Break the rules. Go against all the advice. Be deliberately oppositional towards every suggestion you've ever heard. Just as long as you are writing.

That's my advice. Take it or leave it. ;)

But seriously, you should probably take it.

Focus group(ish)

It has been a few weeks since I finished the first draft of my second novel. Honestly, after I finished, I kind of deflated a bit. I wanted to keep going, keep up the momentum, but I really needed to take a step back. After I sent it off to beta readers, I also had a big move to a temporary summer office, and the stress of figuring out a summer schedule and stalking calling to convince parents to bring their children in throughout the summer. Also, paperwork. Mountains of it. Hours of extra work. My brain has been pretty much wrung dry by the time I get home, and most evenings that I am actually home are spent staring at the computer screen as I play game after game of Mah-jong. And think.

I think about what I wrote, if it makes sense, how it can be made better. I think about what project I want to work on next, if it's presumptuous to work on a sequel to the one I just finished, or if I should be focusing on something else for a while. I think about what it would be like to be married to Chris Pine. All sorts of things.

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with a 12 year old who was one of the first to finish my book. Since I'm writing for 12-17ish year olds (and those 12-17 year olds at heart, like myself), I was super excited to talk with her. Plus, this girl is like the little sister I never had, and one of my favorite book buddies. She has very strong opinions. We talked for three hours. Not completely about my book, but a lot of the time was spent on that topic. She had really great things to say, and I'm not kidding when I say this girl is hard to please. She is very honest too. The Hunger Games is her favorite series, and she said it wasn't as good as that. Honestly, that's a good thing, because if she had said it was, then I would have worried that she wasn't being honest with me!

I have complained before about how I am horrible at endings, and that was her one main problem with the book. Her exact words (regarding the ending) were, "It's not terrible. I've read worse." Not exactly a ringing endorsement, though I joked that would be the quote I use on the cover of the book. She had really insightful things to say about why the ending wasn't quite "long-dramatic-sigh" worthy. She is someone who memorizes first and last lines of books and quoted me several of her favorites.

So I went home and stacked a small portion of my YA book collection together and read the last several paragraphs of each book, comparing them and the way I felt about the ending. I don't think I'm quite an ending connoisseur like my young friend, but I sat down and rewrote/added to the ending. And she loved it! "It was definitely long-dramatic-sigh worthy," was her actual response. Of course, she still had more thoughts, which I love. I am seeing her again tonight, so we'll see what she comes up with!

I am really looking forward to hearing from more of my beta readers. I am also going to work on finding a writing group in the area. I think having more eyes on it, especially those who can look at it critically, will be extremely important. Until then...I have decided to work on the sequel. If the first one never gets published, I still need to finish out the series for myself, and for the few readers that are already asking what happens next. Maybe I can finish book two before the snow flies again! Here's hoping...

The end is only the beginning

About 24 hours ago I typed the last sentence of the first draft of my second novel. That makes sense, right? It took about 8 months for me to finish this one, which is a vast improvement over my first one, which took three years. This new one is also 10,000 words longer, which I'm not sure is a good thing, but since it's the first draft, it may not stay quite that long.

Of course, I was excited. I am pretty passionate about this book, moreso than I ever was about my first one. Not that I didn't enjoy my first novel, there was just a lot less excitement in that one. It was more reflective, and probably what my first novel needed to be. It will probably remain shelved forever, as most first attempts do. But I digress.

The ending was as ridiculous as I knew it would be. I am reading a book called "How Not to Write a Novel," by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman, and tonight I opened it to see that I was on a chapter called "Endings." As much as I enjoy reading the book and realizing that I avoided many of the common mistakes novice novelists make, I also recognized myself in some of the descriptions, especially in the section on backstory overpowering what is currently going on. I need to cut my ending by half. I know that already. More about that later though. 

I am forcing myself to take a short break before I begin my first round of revisions. See, for me, the easy part is the writing. I can do what I want the first time around. It just spills out. I hate revisions. With a passion. Now, every time I read through, which I have done several times already just to make sure things are making sense, I change things. Phrasing here, a character there. But usually small changes. This first round of revisions will be major surgery. Cutting my baby apart to make a better baby. Okay. Ew. Perhaps I should try a different analogy next time.

I know that making Frankenbook is necessary, but ugh. I also know I should be taking time to celebrate the accomplishment of writing another book, but it's hard when I know the road ahead of me. It's like I'm Dorothy, and I'm following the yellow brick road, and I've just finished this part of my journey and I look up to find I've only barely reached the edge of Munchkinland. There's a whole lotta yellow brick road ahead of me, and many obstacles before I can reach the Wizard, who will, of course, grant me whatever I wish as long as I kill the witch. Or something like that. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It's kind of late to be writing an entry, but I wanted to write before I head out of town for the weekend.

So really, I am excited to be finished, but the road is long, and my journey is just beginning. First comes revisions, then beta readers and critique partners, then more revisions, and some revisions, then querying and rejection and crying and eating my feelings and maybe, just maybe, something amazing will happen after all of that. I have hope. Regardless, I will continue to write. It's what I do ;)

Let's end this!

I don't pretend to be an expert writer. Okay, maybe sometimes I pretend, but I do realize that blog posts, Facebook statuses, and 1.75 novels does not an expert make. But, in my (not so) vast experience, I decided that figuring out the perfect ending is almost the most difficult part of writing. Which is why I tend to stall out right before those last climactic pages.

The perfect ending is essential to making writing really work. This is where you tie everything up in a big bow, give explanations for any foreshadowing you gleefully injected into earlier chapters, and try to really give your story meaning. If you write an entire crime novel and there is little to no explanation, no reasoning, too many unanswered questions...the reader will close the book feeling unsatisfied and kind of icky. (I think "kind of icky" is actually the technical term.) I don't want people feeling icky about my books. A bad ending can overshadow even a fabulous first 3/4. There are books I have read that I wished I had closed before I reached that last crucial point, because it would have remained more pleasant in my mind.

That's a lot of pressure.

I am at that point once again in my second novel. Trying to pull the pieces together in a way that makes sense...it's insane. Now, perhaps if I were a *better* writer, I would have been taking notes and making sure to keep track of what I needed to answer. But...I'm not that kind of writer. I'm a word vomiter. So hopefully if there are issues, I can clear them up in revisions, with help from a few trusted beta readers.

Still, I have been agonizing over how to end this thing. How to close things up in a way that makes sense, that is "realistic." If things are too pretty, it can throw a reader out of the story too. "You mean...they were involved in a major firefight, half of the bad guys died, and none of the main characters were even injured? What are they, superheroes?" (To those who write about superheroes, my apologies, that's totally realistic.) How "nice" do I make my ending? How many casualties? How angry will readers get if this happens, and have I hooked them enough to keep them reading if I make it to a sequel?

Thankfully, I have a great friend reading and giving me a chance to bounce ideas off of her...although I believe she may be even more emotionally invested in my characters than I am at times, which might taint her opinion just a bit ;)

I have also been dealing with that "I suck-itis" lately. Keeping up with agents and other blog posts and articles about writing is a good idea, but, as I've mentioned, it can also contribute to that hopeless feeling that I'll be stuck in the slush pile trenches forever. Lately I have been dealing with the fact that my YA novel is already much longer than it is *supposed* to be, but I still have story to tell, and don't want to sacrifice it yet. I know the cutting will come, but I need to tell the story first.

So, hopefully I will finish this week. I said that two weeks ago. One of these weeks it's bound to happen. I am so close. I just need a bigger bow...

In the meantime, watch this video of a recently signed author talking about her journey to finding an agent. She compares querying to dating, and it's really pretty entertaining. It can happen!

 

 

 

 



Dear Publishers

Dear publishers, agents, reviewers, etc,

I think we need to talk. I had hoped that this wasn't a conversation that we would ever need to have, but I'm not sure it can wait anymore. It's the elephant in the room, publishing industry. Something that must be addressed before another day passes.

I have yet to see my name on those book shelves. I go to Barnes and Noble. Nothing. Amazon search? Turns up zero results. Not even the public library has any record of me.

I thought it was pretty simple, publishing industry. I write something brilliant, you publish it. We both win. Where is this disconnect happening? How can we fix this?

Don't you remember how I won that contest in the third grade? I won best story in the entire state of Iowa. For third graders, anyway. There are a lot of people in Iowa. More corn, but still a respectable number of people. I just looked up the population of Iowa, and there are over three million of us. And lots of those are third graders. I mean, it's a pretty big deal. The story was about an anthropomorphic tooth named Jenny that fell out of her host's mouth and went on an epic adventure. That's what the cartoon tagline would be: Small tooth, epic adventure. I don't think I knew the word epic when I was in third grade, but that's beside the point.

The point is that twenty years ago, the public was introduced to a promising young author, and they are still waiting. Waiting for ME, publishing industry. I think that together we can put together a story that will outshine even the planned (and never completed) sequel to Jenny the Tooth, where Jenny ends up in a museum. It was to be called Jenny the Tooth in the Museum. Third graders are not very creative in titling things.

So let's work together and make this happen. Querying will start again in the next few months, and I'll need you all on your best game. We can do it. Go team!

Love, Rena

Pushing through

So the problem with creativity is that it doesn't work on a schedule. Certainly not any sort of schedule a normal human being should be keeping, anyway. For example, my creative impulses hit around 10pm. Not when it's light out. Not even in those twilight hours of half darkness. If I'm lucky, I might get the juices flowing between 9 and 9:30pm. But before that, pretty much anything I write is drivel, and unusable. This week I have been exceptionally creative, logging in total over 11.5K words in the course of a few nights. This translates into around 36 Word document pages, which would be almost 100 book pages. And remember, I don't start until after 10pm.

Now you can imagine that this has put a bit of a strain on my day job. My sleep self has been playing tricks on me, turning off or resetting my primary alarm. Thank goodness for the backup! Still, I have walked into work later than planned, which means staying later than planned, which means paperwork and a quiet(ish) building, which is not always helpful when tired.

As always, the self-doubt plagues. I was doing some research tonight, and on a whim I looked up the typical length for a YA novel. Most places are saying 50K-65K or 75K tops. Mine is already 81.5K, and I have a little ways to go. What does that mean for my chances of scoring an agent? Hopefully nothing. The sites were also saying that in the end, it's the content that matters. And right now, longer YA is hot. Of course, a couple years down the road, who knows? And that's the most optimistic outlook for when my book might end up being published, IF I get an agent this year and IF it is sold to a publisher. And those are huge IFs. Those are dreaming IFs.

So as I was reading this, and thinking about other blogs I read about what not to write and what not to do and the difficulty of breaking into the publishing industry in any real way, I came across the website of author Alyson Noel. Now, I actually have never heard of her, but I was reading her advice on writing/publishing, and it's actually really awesome. This was my favorite part:

What is "I-suck-itis" and how do I make sure I don't get infected?

I-suck-itis is that feeling you get when you're happily engrossed in your writing, everything's going great, and then, smack out of nowhere, that horrible, annoying, little voice in your head pipes in with all sorts of judging, and snarking, and horrible little comments—determined to convince you that you'll never be as good as so and so. 

When that happens, the only cure is to tell that little voice to mind it's own business, thankyouverymuch. That you are just trying to get the first draft written and have every intention to go back and revise later. Because the truth is, writing is all about re-writing, and to paraphrase Nora Roberts: You can't fix a blank page! 

 Why do I love this? Because it's normal. It's completely NORMAL to have days when you decide you suck. It's completely NORMAL to compare yourself to others. I read it time and again, and I just thought this was a fabulous way of explaining it, and then swatting it away. If you're interested in her other advice, check out the page on her website here. 

So, in the end, I really am excited with where my book is heading. At this point, I need to finish, and worry about revisions later. I don't want to think about slashing my baby to cut the word count back, but I refuse to worry about it now. For now, Eden and Kalon have an adventure to finish. The sooner the better, so I can start getting some sleep!

Inspiration

Taking a break from writing a lesson plan, I stumbled across this photo gallery on weather.com It's a bunch of pictures of abandoned amusement/theme parks. Some have been abandoned longer than others, and all closed for different reasons.

As I looked through the pictures, I was struck with all sorts of inspiration. The book I'm working on now is set at an undetermined point in the future. The world has changed, and nature has taken over. These pictures inspired me to think more concretely about how things might look. I love things like this. Perhaps my characters will even encounter an old theme park. The story takes place in Minnesota, in the (what used to be) Minneapolis area. So maybe Valley Fair? What if people actually lived there now? I don't know, but it could be interesting. By looking through pictures like these and comparing them with what Valley Fair looks like, I can create in my mind a decent idea of what a derelict version of the park might look like. Theme park ruins have been used in some of my favorite books, such as Uglies and Divergent. Of course, I don't want to copy those authors, but the concept is so great. Just another way something completely random can add another facet to a storyline. 

I highly encourage you to check out the link. Beautiful pictures. In case you decide to skip it, I'll leave you with a few of my favorites before heading back to lesson planning.

Keep an eye out for what inspires you, and keep writing!

UPDATE: Before I went back to work, I checked Facebook, because, of course, and someone had posted this link.
Some more eye candy of beautiful abandoned places. I could look at this stuff all day. But I won't. Today.