18 Things

The other day, I ran across an article called "18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently" on the Huffington Post.  It's an interesting article.  Written clearly.  Nicely organized.  Relevant Getty images.  Etc.  But it totally stressed me out.

I consider myself a fairly creative person.  I write books for a living.  Fantasy books with were-unicorns and gods in human bodies and creepy visions and so forth.  I live half in my imagination.  I've never ever been in an airplane without imagining unicorns hopping on the clouds.  (Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this!)

But this article listed out the 18 things creative people do... and I don't do them.  Not all of them.  So I wanted to write this blog post because I believe that you don't have to fit into a particular mold to be a creative person.

1. "They daydream."

Okay, yeah, totally do that all the time.  Skipping ahead...

2. "They observe everything."

Nope.  Definitely not.   Especially when I'm daydreaming (see #1).  I've actually failed to observe an earthquake.  (A couple years ago, we had a minor earthquake.  Very rare.  The next day, everyone was sharing all their where-were-you-when stories.  And I had no idea what they were talking about.)

3. "They work the hours that work for them."

Hah!  I wish.  It's a luxury to choose what hours you work.  I write in the hours that I have.  Or minutes.  If I only wrote when I was at peak freshness or when I felt inspired...  You don't have to wait until the perfect moment to be creative.

4. "They take time for solitude."

Quiet freaks me out.  I write to music because it distracts the critical side of my brain and allows the creative side to play.  But, sure, yeah, I guess I'm more productive when I'm alone?  I'm happiest, though, when I am both writing and have my family around me.

5. "They turn life's obstacles around."

Art can come from a place of pain.  There are many artists and writers who take their pain and transform it into art.  It can be part of the process of healing, or it can be a cry in the darkness.

But art can also come from a place of joy.

I think sometimes people forget that.

6. "They seek out new experiences."

In fiction, yes.  In real life, not so much.  I'm perfectly happy to not be the one to try the spiciest food or leap off a mountain or dive to the bottom of the ocean.  My characters can do that for me, thank you very much.

7. They "fail up."

Agree with this 100%.  You have to  be persistent.  In fact, if I had to choose one trait necessary for success in writing (and all art), it would be this: Don't give up.  Unless you're unhappy doing what you're doing.  Then give up and go do something that makes you happy.  There's no shame in discovering you don't love what you think you're supposed to love.

8. "They ask the big questions."

Hmm, define "big."  I ask things like "What would happen if a unicorn stabbed a vampire?"  Or "What fun things can you do with telekinesis?"  Does that count?

You can be the kind of creative type who asks the big questions and explores the mysteries of the human psyche.  Or you can be the kind of creative who studies the small moments and captures them in a perfect jewel of words.  Or you can be the one who wants only to entertain.  Or you can be some mix of all of those.

Personally, I am a big believer in "story first, theme later."  I've been known to write an entire 300 page first draft and then say, "Oh, so THAT'S what the story was about."

9. "They people-watch."

Ooh, I do this all time.  I wish it were socially acceptable to plop down next to someone and say, "Tell me your life story."  Only my grandmother can get away with that.

10. "They take risks."

Creatively, yes.  I intentionally broke writing rules right and left in Conjured.  In real life... not so much.  I hate when people are mad at me.  And I really don't ever want to break any bones.  So in real life, I'm rather risk-averse.

11. "They view all of life as an opportunity for self-expression."

Not really.  Sometimes I just like to eat tortilla chips and have no interest in making it into performance art.

12. "They follow their true passions."

Guess this is true.  I'd lump it in with #7.  Stubborn persistence is key to success in the arts.

13. "They get out of their own heads."

Yeah, this one is kind of a job requirement for me.  If I only wrote about myself, booooooorrrrrring.  (On the other hand, there are writers that can write brilliantly about themselves...)

14. "They lose track of the time."

True for me.  Especially when writing is going well.  Writing can be an immersive experience.

15. "They surround themselves with beauty."

*looks at crumbs on floor and teetering pile of junk mail next to kitchen table*  Um...

16. "They connect the dots."

Guess so.  But you don't have to see the connections when you start a story.  You just have to trust yourself that it will all connect someday.

17. "They constantly shake things up."

The article quotes someone who says (and I'm paraphrasing here) that habit is the killer of creativity.  Nonsense.  As with all of these, it might be true for some people.  But for others...  Habit can be the thing that makes you feel safe enough to take the mental and emotional risks that allow you to create.  Living in a safe environment, surrounding yourself with people who love and believe in you, avoiding unnecessary angst and drama... that's what gives you the strength to fly.  See #5.

18. "They make time for mindfulness."

Am I supposed to be meditating?  Oops.

The article does mention needing a "clear and focused mind," and I do think that can help.  But I would like to point out that "clear and focused" doesn't have to mean linear.  In other words, you don't need to know what you're doing to do something cool.  But you do have to sit down and do it.

So those are my thoughts.  What do you guys think?  Do you fit all 18?

Stuff I've Learned: Writing Log

Continuing on in my "Stuff I've Learned" series...  There's something else important that I've learned about writing that I want to tell you about:

Brains lie.

If writing is going well, my brain thinks that it's always gone well, will always go well, and I'll be done this novel by next Tuesday, even though I started it three hours ago. If writing is going poorly, my brain tells me that I'm doomed forever, I will never be able to form a sentence again, and furthermore I've never actually written a full paragraph and maybe the cat wrote all my prior novels.

To counteract this effect, I keep a daily writing log.

This is just a simple Word doc where I note the date and write down how many pages I worked on. No details. No value judgement. Just:

October 14, 2013, Monday
worked on The Found, pages 122-129
wrote blog entry
 
Doing this has several benefits:

1. It forces my brain to face reality. (Yes, I wrote yesterday. Yes, I'll write again tomorrow. And it will all be fine.)
2. It makes me accountable. (Here's proof of whether or not I've met my page goals. No fudging in either direction.)
3. It gives me a realistic idea of how long it takes me to write a book. (Very useful when agreeing to / setting deadlines.)

This is definitely one of those your-mileage-may-vary things. But for me, I love having the data. I find it comforting to know precisely where I am in a book and at what speed I'm moving through it. It helps keep my expectations realistic. And it helps me plan for the future. For example, because of this log, I realized that I'd started writing faster -- and that I could increase from one book a year to two books a year.

I know of other writers who keep much more elaborate records -- spreadsheets that include word counts and time-of-day and so forth -- and I know many, many others who don't keep any kind of records at all.  But I've been keeping my writing log since 2002, and it works for me.

Another method that I've heard about recently but never tried is the sticker trick.  You get a calendar, buy some stars or adorable whatever stickers, and put a sticker on the calendar every day that you reach your word count goal.  Author Victoria Schwab explains it in this video.  If I weren't already so attached to my log, I'd do this.  I may still try it someday.  I do like stickers... and I've learned not to trust my brain.

The Writer's Toolbox: Character Names

Welcome (again) to the Writer's Toolbox! In this blog series, I'm talking about nitty-gritty writing craft stuff. Today's subject is character names.

Juliet famously stood on her balcony and proclaimed that names are meaningless and a rose would smell as sweet if it were called "skunk cabbage" or "baboon." And then she died because she was totally wrong. Also, unable to use the postal service in an effective way, but that's beside the point.  Point is that names are an important tool in the Writer's Toolbox.

Name a character Ebenezer Scrooge or Darth Maul or Elizabeth Bennett or Her Majesty Queen Silverhoof of the Lakeside Unicorn Clan, and you set up certain reader expectations for their personality and their fate.  It's then your choice whether to fulfill or subvert those expectations.

So... how to name a character.

I decided when I was ten years old that I wanted to be a writer, and one of the first things I did was read the phone book.  (I'll pause for you to tilt your head in befuddlement and contemplate what an odd child I must have been.  I'll wait.  Done?  Good.  Let's move on.)  I did it to find character names, and I wrote each name down on its own index card and then assigned them magical powers and talking animal friends. And really, that's not a terrible way to find names. In fact I'm going to go with that as resource #1: the phone book.

Resource #2 didn't exist when I was ten years old, and it's the one I use most often when writing stories set in our world (or a variant of): the Social Security Administration website.  It has a database of all the first names in the United States, ranked by popularity and searchable by year of birth.  It allows you to find common names from a particular era. Very useful if you want to hint at a character's age without investing a lot of words describing them -- you can choose a name that was popular in a particular time period and not in others.

Resource #3 is baby name books.  There are tons of them out there, and they boast names ranging from common to obscure.  Often they list their origin and meaning.  Only downside of these is if you have them in the house, your relatives and friends will start wondering about what's coming in nine months.

If you wish to avoid questions about that, a better resource is #4: baby name websites.  There are TONS of them out there, nicely searchable, often including name origin and meaning. These let you find names whose meaning matches themes in your story or personality quirks you want your character to have (or not have). (For example, in Drink, Slay, Love, I named my vampire girl Pearl because she's the opposite of that name.)

And last but not least is resource #5: children.  If you're looking for exotic names for characters in a fantasy world, ask a little kid to invent some names.  They excel at stringing together nonsense syllables that sometimes end up sounding pretty darn good, and they aren't burdened by years of experience in what a name should be.

Next: when to name a character.

Really, whenever you want. Sometimes I choose the name first and then shape the personality to fit. Other times, I have a firm sense of the character's voice and need a name to match it. Usually, it's somewhere in the middle: I have a vague sense of the character but he/she doesn't gel until I have the "right" name. And then there was the one time when I wrote an entire novel and then changed the main character's name several drafts later.  (This was Lily in Enchanted Ivy.  She was Ivy until nearly the final draft, when I decided that Ivy wasn't exactly subtle for a girl who wants to go to an Ivy League school.)

How do you know when a name is the "right" name?

Um... I really don't know the answer to that.  When the name is right it just kind of clicks in your brain, like when a puzzle piece fits neatly into a puzzle.  Once you have the name, the rest of the picture should get a little clearer.  The name should, hopefully, lead to a clearer vision of the character's voice and/or lead to more revelations about the character. And by the end of writing about a character, it should feel like he or she never had any other name. 

Especially not Skunk Cabbage or Baboon.

Know of any other good resources for naming characters?  Where do you find your names?  Please share!

Stuff I've Learned: Just Finish It

Here's the second most important thing I've learned about writing (next to making bite-size goals): finish the story.

I started writing when I was ten years old, and I wrote tons and tons of story beginnings. I'd create lovely folders for each of them, using my beloved Lisa Frank unicorn folders for my favorites. Every year, I'd put "write a novel" on my New Year's Resolution list, and I'd plan out daily, weekly, and monthly goals to meet that resolution... and then ten pages into whatever story, I'd be disillusioned with it and skip off after another shiny idea. This continued pretty much until I graduated from college.

After college, I moved to England with my then-boyfriend, now-husband. I'd planned to stay for a year and work at a bookstore or library or something involving words... but I kind of forgot to check about whether that was legal or not. So when I discovered that my student work permit would expire after six months, I decided that THIS was when I would write my first novel.

I told myself that it didn't matter if it was horrible or not, all I had to do in that year was finish it. And so I dove in and wrote every day, even before my work permit expired. The story was based off one of those abandoned beginnings from one of my Lisa Frank folders, and it had talking wolves and other worlds and girls with swords and everything I ever wanted to throw into a book.

And I did it. Before we left England, I had a full manuscript, complete with a beginning, middle, and end. When I came back to the US, I started submitting it to various publishers and agents. It piled up some lovely rejections, and then it took up residence in my closet. In the meantime, I'd run across a beautiful picture book illustrated by P.J. Lynch called "East O' the Sun, West O' the Moon," and I started work on what would eventually become my third published novel, Ice.

But here's the amazing thing that happened after I finished that first novel that lives in my closet: it got easier.

Finishing that novel taught me that I could do it. And once both my conscious and subconscious mind knew that, everything changed in a profound way that I hadn't anticipated. It removed this massive psychological wall that I hadn't even fully realized was there, and I became a writer.

So that's my hard-won advice for this Stuff I've Learned post: just finish it. Finish the story. Finish the novel. Finish the play. Finish the script. It doesn't matter if it's good or not or if it sits in a closet forever. The key is to finish it... and then you can write the next one and the next one and the one after that.

JUST FINISH IT. After that, anything's possible.

The Writer's Toolbox: First Lines

Hi!  I'd like to introduce a new blog series today: the Writer's Toolbox.  In these posts, I want to talk about (and hear your thoughts on) nitty-gritty writing stuff, the tools and techniques of the craft of writing.

So let's dive right in...  First topic: first lines!

Everyone knows the opening line of a story or novel is important.  Every writer agonizes over it.  Some can't even start until they have it.

Okay, yes.  *raises hand*  That's me.  I have to be in love with my first line before I can write the rest of the book.  Sometimes it comes to me quickly; sometimes I have to write a bajillion openings until I find one that feels right.  But I need to have that sentence (or two or three) before I can proceed.

There are lots of great first lines out there.  And there are lots of different kinds of great first lines.  For me personally, the ones that work best do one of four things:

1. Establish what's normal
 
"Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife." -- L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
 
In this one sentence, we know instantly where we are and what kind of people we're with.  This is both an important and appropriate opening for this novel: We have to know what's normal for Dorothy, i.e. what her sepia-toned world is, so that we can appreciate the contrast when we're swept away into technicolor.

"Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen." -- Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
 
We may not know what a "daemon" is, but we know instantly that Lyra knows.  The simple word "her" does all the work here.  She's with "her daemon."  This establishes right away that what's normal for Lyra isn't normal for us.
 
2. Set up expectations

"Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.  If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now.  Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life." -- Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

Setting up the right expectations is crucial.  You can write the best mystery in the world, but if a reader thinks you're going to deliver a romance, then odds are he or she will be disappointed.  This opening sets us up to expect a dangerous, out-of-the-ordinary adventure.  And that's exactly what we get.

"Human girls cry when they're sad and laugh when they're happy.  They have a single fixed shape rather than shifting with their whims like wind-blown smoke.  They have their very own parents, whom they love.  They don't go around stealing other girls' mothers.  At least that's what Kaye thought human girls were like.  She wouldn't really know.  After all, she wasn't human." -- Holly Black, Ironside

With this opening, we expect magic in the real world.  We expect to see it (and us) through the eyes of a nonhuman.  Also, we expect some parent issues.

3. Start the action

"Alanna the Lioness, the King's Champion, could hardly contain her glee.  Baron Piers of Mindelan had written to King Jonathan to say that his daughter wished to be a page." -- Tamora Pierce, First Test (Protector of the Small)

This is a somewhat unusual opening because it isn't from the protagonist's point-of-view.  It's from the pov of the protagonist of Pierce's earlier series, essentially handing the story baton to the new lady-knight-to-be.  But I think it works as an opening because in the space of two sentences, you know the entire core conflict for the next four books: a girl wants to be trained openly as a knight.

"Gordon Edgley's sudden death came as a shock to everyone -- not least himself." -- Derek Landy, Skullduggery Pleasant

Every story has a catalyst -- the event that rocks the status quo and propels the protagonist into the adventure.  Some books establish normal first and shortly after turn it upside down.  Others, like this novel, begin right away with the catalyst.  The death in this first sentence is what leads to all the events in the rest of the book.

"On the day she was to die, Liyana walked out of her family's tent to see the dawn." -- Sarah Beth Durst, Vessel

This novel also begins with the day that changes everything, the day that the protagonist has been anticipating for years, the biggest moment in her life.  I believe a novel really should be about the most meaningful thing to happen to a character -- otherwise, there's no reason to tell the story.  With this sort of opening, we're diving directly in.

4. Set the tone

"There is a certain kind of girl the goblins crave.  You could walk across a high school campus and point them out: not her, not her, her.  The pert, lovely ones with butterfly tattoos in secret places, sitting on their boyfriends' laps? Yes.  Them.  The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood.  The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else.  Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls.  Like Kizzy." -- Laini Taylor, Lips Touch Three Times

This beginning does establish a character, but more than that, it sets a tone.  We expect this story to be poetic, like the Goblin Market poem it's based on.

"If Sarah hadn't put the monkey in the bathtub, we might never have had to help the monsters get big.  But she did, so we did, which, given the way things worked out, was probably just as well for everyone on the planet -- especially the dead people." -- Bruce Coville, The Monsters of Morley Manor

This one sets the tone for a madcap adventure.  It works for me because it both makes me smile and makes me ask why.  I think it's my favorite opening line of all-time.

What are some of your favorite opening lines?

Stuff I've Learned: Don't Wait for Inspiration

In my last post, I touched briefly on inspiration, and that inspired me to devote a whole post to it.  (See what I did there?  It inspired me.  Get it?  Okay.  Moving on...)

Here are two quotes that I like about inspiration:

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working." -- Pablo Picasso

"You can't wait for inspiration; you have to go after it with a club." -- Jack London

I'd like to point out that while Jack London probably had an actual club that he used to chase down his muse while riding bareback on a timber wolf, you don't need a club. 

Might help to have a wolf.

I have clear memories of myself as a teenager sitting someplace picturesque with a notebook and pen, waiting for inspiration and not writing a single word.  I remember quitting story after story because I didn't feel inspired to continue.  Or not writing for days and days because the muse wouldn't come, and I wasn't in the mood.

I wish I could borrow a time machine and smack myself on the back of the head.

Yes, there are writers who only write when they feel inspired.  And if that works for them, great.  But the vast majority of people who only write when they feel inspired probably won't finish their novel at all.  Ever.

Don't wait for inspiration.

Inspiration is a slippery minnow in a silt-saturated stream.  You see it once, and then it's gone.  But that's enough to know that this stream has life in it, and you should plop your fishing pole into it and see what comes up.

You don't need to feel inspired in order to write.  Really, you don't.  Your job is to string words together in sentences.  You can do that job whatever your mood.  The words don't care if you're feeling lightning-strike joy or humdrum malaise.

I can practically hear someone out there saying, "But the words won't be any good!  If I don't feel inspired, the story will feel flat."

So what?  Say you write five pages of complete garbage.  Say you know as you write it that you're going to toss the entire scene.  Nothing in it is worth keeping.  Except that one sentence in the middle of page four.  Yeah, that one's not bad.  In fact, if you built a scene around that sentence instead, then the story could really move!  And if that other character said that bit of dialogue...  Hello, inspiration, I didn't see you come in.  I was just here busy working.

In my experience, inspiration is far more likely to hit if you're already writing.

If you show up at your desk to write every day, odds are that the muse will wander by to see what you're doing.  And if you don't... she's going fishing without you.

Stuff I've Learned: Write Every Day

I know some writers who are binge writers.  Every few months, they drown themselves in their stories.  Sometimes they check into a hotel or go on an intensive writer's retreat.  More often, they shut themselves in their office or plant themselves in a cafe all day, every day.  For several weeks, they put the rest of their life on hold, and they hammer out a novel.  Then they return to the world, take a few months off from writing, and let their creative well refill until it's time to binge-write again.

That's a perfectly valid writing process, and if it works for you, yay!

It doesn't work for me.  I can't put the rest of my life on hold.  The rest of my life would FREAK OUT.  And besides, if I took a few months off writing, I'd be miserable.  In fact, if I take a few days off, I'm miserable.  So that brings us to one of the biggest things I've learned about my own writing process: I need to write every day.

I need to write in the same way that I need food, sleep, and shelter. 

You may think that sounds all cutesy and artsy.  "I need to write like I need to sleep."  Seriously?  Melodramatic much?

Seriously, yes.  And it's not so much "cutesy" as annoying.  Just ask my husband.  If I skip a night of sleep, I am as grumpy as a raccoon in daytime.  And if I skip a day of writing... exact same thing.  Whether I write or not directly affects my mood and my worldview.  It doesn't even matter if the writing goes well or not.  If I don't write, the world feels out of balance, and the glass looks half empty.

Stupid thing is that I often forget this.  Life will intrude, and I'll miss my chance to write, and there I'll be, feeling out-of-sorts, with no idea why.  My husband will come home from work and within ten minutes he can diagnose my problem.  And sure enough, as soon as I go string a few sentences together, I feel better and the world feels brighter and the birds are singing and tra-la-la-la-la.

So to maintain my own happiness level, I need to write every day.

The act of writing every day -- even if it's just for five minutes -- has several other great benefits:

1. It makes writing less scary.

It's easy to put "write a novel" up on a pedestal as this grand, lofty goal that can only be accomplished when everything is perfect (i.e. you have a lovely stretch of free time, solitude and silence, and lightning-bolt-level feelings of pure inspiration).  Thinking of it this way can lead you to push it off again and again.

But if you write every day, it makes the act of writing not such a big deal.  You don't have to write a novel today.  Really, you don't.  You just have to string a few sentences together.  Just like you did yesterday, and just like you'll do tomorrow. 

2. It decreases the throat-clearing time.

If you write every day, then writing becomes a habit like brushing your teeth.  You don't get nervous when you have to brush your teeth.  You don't wait to be in the right mood.  You don't play mood music or give yourself pep talks or take deep cleansing breaths.  You just walk into the bathroom and brush those pearly whites.

Writing is not so different.  When it becomes a habit, you will find that you need less prep time at the start of a writing session.  You won't need as many rituals to get in the mood.  Plus the story will be fresh in your mind, as will the character's voices, since you just worked on it yesterday.

3. It invites the muse.

If you write every day, instead of waiting for inspiration, you are inviting inspiration to come join you.  I believe that if you show up to your desk (or wherever you write) every day, then the muse will know where to find you.

Happy writing!

Stuff I've Learned: Bite-Size Goals

Someone once compared writing a novel to eating an elephant.  You do it bite by bite.  Wise words indeed, and the focus of this week's Stuff I've Learned post:

Set Bite-Size Goals

If I sit down and say, "Today I will make this book awesome," I'll freeze and get zero done.  But if I sit down and say, "In the next hour, I'll work on making the descriptions of the setting in scene two of chapter three more vivid," I can do that.

And if I do it again and again and again, eventually the book's done.

One of things that I've learned is to estimate how big a bite is for me.  I'm not always right.  It's not an exact science.  But I have a better idea of it now than I did when I started, and it's a huge help.

Your bite size is a personal thing.  Not everyone can accomplish the same amount in a day or a single writing session.  Some writers aim for 1,000 words a day.  I know a few (very few) who can achieve 10,000.  And I know plenty who celebrate after 100 (especially if they're the right one hundred).

It also depends on where you are in the novel.  First drafts take a different amount of time than second drafts.  Second drafts can be faster or slower than fifth.  End of the book can be faster than the middle.  First sentences can be incredibly slow.

For me, knowing my bite size clears a big psychological hurdle.  It means I can bypass the whole this-elephant-is-too-big drama at the start of writing sessions and dive into the actual work.

Disclaimer: No elephants were harmed in the writing of any of my books.

Stuff I've Learned: Lie to Yourself

Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird talks about Radio Station KFKD, that voice in your head that whispers (or sometimes shouts) an endless stream of self-doubt.  In order to be a writer, you have to at least temporarily shut that radio station off.  You have to trust yourself.

Easier said than done.

Sometimes it feels like that station is playing on a radio that runs with zero electricity, has a broken volume dial, and is hidden up in the neighbor's tallest tree.  And the neighbor has vicious dogs.

Here's one technique that I use for shutting off KFKD:
 
Lie to Yourself

I promise myself that no one will ever see the story that I'm working on.  It's only a draft -- my secret draft -- and none of the words I write will be in the final version.  The plot won't be the same.  The characters won't be the same.  All these words are merely placeholders until the real words can come along.  But I have to get the placeholders there so that the real words have a place to go.

In other words, I lie to myself.

Oh, to a certain extent it's true.  I will revise.  A lot will change.  But some of it won't, and I know that.  But promising myself that the words are secret is sometimes enough to trick my brain into cooperating.  It makes it okay to make mistakes because no one will ever see the horror of the secret draft.  It makes the draft safe.

I know writers who take it further and tell themselves that they're writing a secret book just for themselves.  They won't ever show it to their agent, their editor, or even their pet guinea pig Marbles.  And a part of them knows the entire time that that's not true and they'll try to publish it, but they lie to themselves to fool the radio station, to make the draft safe, to give themselves permission to experiment and play.

In other words, the lie can set you free.

Stuff I've Learned: Trust Yourself

One of my clearest childhood memories is of playing school with one of my babysitters.  I wrote a poem -- a beautiful poem, I thought, about summer and gardens and roses and... okay I don't actually remember what it was about but my memory says it was brilliant.  I painstakingly decorated the page with climbing roses and presented it to my babysitter.

She took it, read it, and used red pen to change the first letter of every line to a capital letter because, she said, every line in a poem has to start with a capital letter.  I was crushed.  And infuriated, since even then I knew she was TOTALLY WRONG.

Stuff I've Learned: Trust Yourself

You have to trust that you know what you're doing (even if you don't).  You have to believe in your vision, in your talent, in your skills, and in your own unique voice. 

Thanks to all the books you've read, you already have an innate grasp on dialogue, pacing, characters, and story.  Thanks to all the years you've lived, you've already developed your own worldview and preferences and opinions, even if you haven't consciously articulated them.  You are already a special snowflake.  Trust that.  Trust yourself.

Except when you're wrong.  But that's what revision is for.

One of the hardest things to do when you sit down to write is to take that leap of faith that it will all be okay.  Especially when there are people telling you that it won't be okay, you won't make it, you can't do it, you're not good enough, you're not smart enough or funny enough or whatever enough.  Especially when the person telling you all that crap is yourself.

But it will be okay.  You will figure out the ending and the main character's motivations and that funky little bit of pacing in the middle and the voice for that secondary character and what happens in that part of the outline where you wrote "something cool happens next."

Or maybe you won't and then you'll go on to write another story that's even better.  And that's okay too.  You can still trust that if you write enough and read enough and live enough, you will get better.

And you don't need to capitalize the lines in that poem.

Your Writing Process

Welcome to my new blog series!  In these posts, I plan to share what I've learned about writing in hopes that it will be useful to anyone who shares this crazy writing dream.  I'm calling this series: "Stuff I've Learned."

I know, I know, it's not the most original name.  Kind of like naming your cat Fluffy... which I did.  Twice.  (In my defense, I was three years old when I named the first cat, and the second cat was named in the first one's honor.)

Anyway, to start things off...  If I had to pick the one most important thing I've learned in the last six years as a writer, it would be: label your leftover pizza with the date you ordered it so that you don't accidentally eat too-old pizza.

Second to that, though, is: learn your own writing process.

Stuff I've Learned: Learn Your Writing Process
 
Before I was published, I had no idea about one of the coolest perks of being a writer: meeting other writers.  At bookstore signings, conferences, conventions, festivals, library events... I've met a lot of authors, and I love, love, LOVE hearing about their writing processes.

Everyone's process is different.  Some write a little every day; some binge-write for a few weeks then lie fallow.  Some write in long stretches of time; some write in short bursts.  Some outline; some don't.  Some revise as they go along; some do lots of drafts.  Some write at home; some write in cafes.  Some write standing up.  Some write nude...  Okay, I haven't personally met anyone who writes nude but there are anecdotes.

Point is: what works for one person might not work for another.  You have to find what works best for you and disregard the rest.

Once you do, I promise that it gets easier.  Not easy.  But easier.  You can write faster and be more efficient because you know what works for you and what doesn't.  You can do the latter and avoid the former.

I consider myself living proof of this.  It took me two years each to write my first two novels, Into the Wild and Ice.  The next few novels took one year a piece.  Now I'm writing a novel every six months.

This change isn't due to having more time to write.  (In fact, the opposite is true.)  It's due to figuring out how I write a novel.  Not how Joe or Sue or Fred writes a novel, but how I personally write a novel.

In future posts, I'll talk about (amongst other things!) what specifically works for me.  And I'd love to hear about what works for you!

All Dreamers Welcome, Again

In September 2006, I started this blog with a post called All Dreamers Welcome.  Welcome to my dream, I said.  Please come share it with me.

THIS is my dream.  (Imagine me waving my hands expansively at my desk, the manuscript next to me, the books behind me, the stone polar bear on my desk, the stacks of cryptic Post-Its, and the vampire Mickey Mouse.)  All of this.  Being a writer.  It's what I've wanted to do since I was ten years old.  Prior to that, I wanted to be Wonder Woman or a Unicorn Princess (either a human in charge of unicorns or an actual unicorn with a tiara).

When I wrote that first blog post, I wanted this blog to be a blog about the craft of writing.  After all, it's what I do every day.  It's what I think about, obsess over, even dream about (when I'm not dreaming about tiara-wearing unicorns, of course).  But I felt self-conscious about it.  After all, in 2006, my first book wasn't even out yet.  Who was I to give writing advice to anyone?

Now, in 2013, I am doing what I've always wanted to do.  I have six books out and am under contract for five more.  And I feel that I've learned a lot over the past seven years.  So I've decided that it's okay for me to talk about what I've learned.  After all, I know there are a lot of people out there who share my dream.  (The writing dream, I mean, not the unicorn princess dream.)

So I'd like to reintroduce this blog and re-welcome you to it.  I plan to start a few different new blog series, including Stuff I've Learned, the Writer's Toolbox, and Reading About Writing.  If you dream about being a writer (or a unicorn princess) or if you're just curious, I hope you'll join me.

As one of my favorite poets says:

“If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic-bean-buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!”
-- Shel Silverstein, "Introduction" from Where the Sidewalk Ends

More to come.....

What Writing Is Like

This is what I think writing is like:



And this is what I feel like while I'm writing:



Going back to chapter fourteen...

Lots of Links about Writing

I am going to a writing retreat in Vermont called Kindling Words this weekend. An entire weekend of nothing but writing and talking about writing! I am so so so excited. For one thing, the people are fantastic. For another, this retreat comes at the perfect time for me with my work-in-progress. I'm in the produce-as-much-as-possible stage, and I intend to write a stunningly tremendous amount this weekend.

Since I'm about to head off to think, talk, and do writing, I thought I'd share with you some writing-related links that I recently bookmarked. (Note: I don't agree with everything in all of these, but I did find them all interesting.)

Just-Do-It General Advice:

"25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing" by Chuck Wendig

"25 Things Writers Should Start Doing" by Chuck Wendig

"So You Want to Be a Writer... Advice to a 10 Year Old" by Ron Marz

Finding Inspiration:

"What Inspires" by Sara Zarr

"Where Do You Get Your Ideas?" by Neil Gaiman

Avoiding Pitfalls:

"Measuring Success" by Mette Ivie Harrison

"Oh, the Internet" by Kiersten White

Personal Experiences:

"Turning Points" by Gayle Forman

"You Have Mentioned Several Times..." by Sarah Rees Brennan

"Starting a New Book" by Kate Messner

"What's Your Favorite Anecdote About Learning How to Write?" by S.C. Butler

"Writing for Writing's Sake" by Rhonda Stapleton

Techniques of Super-Fast Writers:

"How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day" by Rachel Aaron

"The 10,000 Word Day" by Zoe Winters

"Kicking Out a Fast First Draft" by Anne Greenwood Brown

Sites with Lots of Great Writing-Related Posts:

Nova Ren Suma's distraction no. 99

John Scalzi's Whatever

Chuck Wendig's Terrible Minds


For a list of older links to writing-related posts and articles, please click here and here.

Happy writing!

My New Muse

"I want to be your muse!" Annie announces.

Annie is a fictional character without a story. She visits me sometimes while I'm trying to write.

"I think I would be an awesome muse," she says. "Whenever you're stuck, I'd sing to you to comfort you. Or perform interpretive dance." She lifts her leg in the air and waves her arms like a deranged chicken.

I try to think of a delicate way to say "no." "I always pictured my muse as more like Tim Gunn," I say. "You know, 'That sentence doesn't speak to me. I'm concerned. Make it work!'"

She pouts. "But I've always wanted to be a muse!"

"Really?" I hate to crush her hopes and dreams. She might be a disruption but she's otherwise harmless. Plus she brings snacks. I can see a bag of yogurt-covered pretzels stuffed in her pocket.

"Actually, no," she said. She hops onto my desk, crinkling the latest print-out of my work-in-progress. "I wanted to be a hero. But it didn't work out."

Despite knowing better, I ask, "What happened?"

She beams at me, hands me a yogurt-covered pretzel, and says, "Well, if you really must know... I was born to be a hero, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. There were prophecies about me and everything. Some of them even rhymed. One involved an interpretive dance..." She flaps her arms in the air again.

"What were you supposed to do?" I ask.

"Find the Lost Acorn of Eternal Peace."

"So what went wrong?"

She shrugged. "A squirrel ate it."

"Seriously?"

"Would I lie to you?" Annie asks. She points to my computer screen. "You know, that sentence doesn't speak to me. I'm concerned..."

Annie Tells Me About Squirrels

Annie is a fictional character who visits me sometimes. She lives in a deadly forest with killer squirrels. I made the critical error of asking her about the squirrels. You should never ask an imaginary person to tell you about anything, especially if you are trying to concentrate on writing a chapter that has absolutely nothing to do with rodents, homicidal or otherwise.

So far, after half an hour, all I've written is two sentences of my work-in-progress, and all I've learned is that the squirrels make cute, chittering sounds before they drop out of the trees on their victims' heads. She demonstrated this sound for a solid twenty minutes before I finally convinced her to stop.

"That's why I have antlers," Annie says. "Any killer squirrel that drops on me will find itself impaled." Annie has a pair of deer antlers growing out of the top of her head. She wears her hair in pig tails around them. Very stylish.

"So you're telling me your horns--"

"Antlers," she says primly.

"Your antlers are natural selection to protect against killer squirrels?" I know I shouldn't be encouraging her, but I can't help myself.

"Yep," she says. She crunches on a tortilla chip. "Hey, do you have any salsa? These would go great with salsa. Maybe some guacamole. I loooove avocado."

"I don't have any," I say. "What happens to people without antlers?" I self-consciously touch the top of my own head and imagine it has a squirrel-size bullseye on top.

"Oh, the squirrels horde human heads for the winter."

On that note, she hops off my desk and heads off in search of salsa and guacamole. And I am left with a new fear of squirrels. Luckily, I haven't completed my writing quota for the day, so I won't have to go outside and face the vile creatures. I am safe... at least until she returns.

A Visit from Annie

Annie is visiting. She's a fictional character, but I haven't written her story yet. This makes her impatient.

She stands behind me and points at the screen. "What's that?"

"Chapter six," I say. I keep typing. I have learned that you can keep the distractions away if you keep your fingers moving over the keyboard. It's the second that you pause that you're tempted to click on the Internet, fetch a snack, clean the linen closet, or talk with an imaginary girl with antlers on her head.

It's slightly more difficult to maintain focus when the imaginary character brings chips.

Crunching in my ear, she squints at the screen. "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

"First drafts are supposed to be rough," I say.

"Then congratulations," she says. "You've succeeded. I've seen white water rapids that run smoother than your prose."

"Thanks," I say. I don't look at her as I type.

"I've seen dirt roads that are smoother."

"Thanks," I say.

"I've seen mountain ranges...

"Got it. Thanks. Can you... Be somewhere else for a while?"

"Nope," she says. She hops up onto my desk. Her antlers scrape the ceiling. Flecks of plaster rain down on my keyboard. "I don't have a 'somewhere else.'"

I pause typing. "Well, where are you from?"

She grins at me, as if aware that she has won. "A forest. A forest of endless night."

"Stupid," I say. "Can't have a forest without sunlight. Chlorophyll."

"Fine." She pouts. "It's a forest where the trees are alive..."

"Trees are alive."

"These talk. And sing. And kill."

"Huh," I say. "Killer trees?"

Annie grins at me. "You don't know the half of it. You think the trees are bad? You should see the squirrels." She holds out a tortilla chip. "Wanna chip?"

I take it. "Tell me about the squirrels..."

A Conversation with a Character

A character sits on a chair. She swings her legs back and forth, scuffing the tips of her sneakers on the floor. They squeak like Styrofoam, and I wince. I hate that sound.

"Are you planning to sit there all day?" I ask her.

"Could be," she says. She sticks a lollipop in her mouth. I have no idea where she got the lollipop. "Are you planning to write my story yet?"

"Could be," I say. "Have you developed a personality?"

"Nope. You?"

"Ouch," I say. "Harsh."

She shrugs and looks around my writing room. "This place is a wreck. You should clean it. And your books are not alphabetized."

I look at her suspiciously. "You want me to write, don't you?"

"I want you to write MY story. Not that." She pokes the lollipop at my computer screen.

"But I don't know your story yet," I say.

"That's because you haven't written it yet."

I can't argue with that logic.

She offers me the lollipop. It has some cat fur stuck to it, but it's green apple flavor. So I take it, stick it in my mouth, and start typing.

When I look back, the character's hair has turned brown, and she has antlers. She says her name is Annie...

My Muse

I don't believe in waiting for the muse.

Left to her own devices, the muse is easily distracted by shiny things and will waste an entire day in the contemplation of a butterfly. Or a leaf. Or a piece of cheese. I have it on good authority that the muse of writing really likes cheese.

I believe that if you show up to your desk every day and write, then the muse will see you there, be curious about what you're typing without her, and come along to join you (usually munching on a wedge of cheese).

At which point, you can seize her by the throat and insist she stay.

Eventually, she'll start showing up earlier, knowing that she can depend on you to be there. Sometimes the two of you will arrive at the door to your writing room simultaneously, and there's an awkward, "You go first." "No, after you." "Really, I insist. You first."

This awkwardness is compounded by the fact that the muse has no corporeal form and is therefore incapable of holding open the door, though she thinks she can because the muse is an eternal optimist.

I like to give the muse a corporeal form to inhabit while she's visiting. This form varies from book to book. For DRINK, SLAY, LOVE, here is what she looked like:


My muse and I find this form hilarious. What a lucky coincidence that she and I share the same sense of humor. And a fondness for cheese.

4 days until DRINK, SLAY, LOVE!

The Shape of Stories

I think about story shape a lot.

Apparently, I am not the only one. I found this video on the SFWA website of author Kurt Vonnegut talking about the shape of stories:



Sometimes I describe my writing process as building a creature from the inside out. In the first draft, I'm constructing the skeleton. Then I add muscles so it can move. Lungs so it can breathe. Heart so it can feel. And then last, I layer on the skin so that the reader doesn't see all the goop underneath.

But it's that first draft, the skeleton draft, where I am discovering the shape of the story.

My personal favorite story structure goes a little like this:

La-la-la. AHHHHH!!!! Oh, no. Oh, no. OH, NO!!! Yay? Yikes, yikes, YIKES! Phew. AHHHH!!!! Go, go, go! Wheeee!!! Ahhhh.... Smooch.

I wonder sometimes if my preference for story shape has been determined by the kind of books I read, OR if the kind of books I read (and write) is determined by my preference for a particular story shape...

What do you guys think? Is story shape something you notice as you read/write? Do you have a favorite story shape?