Tag: wfmad

Source: Britannica 

 

When people find out how busy the last fifteen years have been for me, they are often confused.

“How did you find time to write all those books?” is the common question.

The answer is simple.

I turned off the television.

I’m not an anti-TV vigilante. I’ve always had a television.  I got cable when they started televising professional women’s basketball. Every once in a while I’ll be hooked by a series (Game of Thrones) and Beloved Husband and I will make the time to watch it, though rarely when it is first aired.

We have one television in our house. It’s in the basement, in the man cave. We mostly use it to watch sports.

If you love television, that’s awesome. I don’t judge. Maybe it works for you. Maybe it feeds your Muse. Maybe you are one of those people who can pound out three pages an hour watching Dancing With The Stars. 

But….

If you are one of those people who is always bummed out because you don’t have enough time to write, then count up how many hours of television you watched last week. Did you love each one? Were they all worth an hour of your life? If you could go back and unwatch them, and use those hours for writing, how much time would you get back?

 

Today’s Quote

“The days you work are the best days.”

Georgia O’Keeffe

Today’s prompt: Write out an estimate of how you spend the 24 hours of each day. How much do you sleep? Spend with family? Work the day job? Errands, laundry, organizing your sock drawer, etc.? How much time do you spend writing? How many hours do you watch television or movies? How much time to you spend goofing around on the Internet?

 

Scribble…scribble…scribble…

I adore Dr. Maya Angelou. She is my hero.

::Sighs in contentment::

::Pauses to gather self::

Yesterday a reader wrote:  “How do you plot for characters that don’t really have an outward goal or problem they can solve? I’ve relied on yearning for this, but I’m curious how books like Speak and Twisted came about plotwise.”

It’s pretty hard, if not impossible, to complete a novel without knowing what your character wants out of her life. I guess maybe you could write an experimental book that way, but I’m probably not the person to ask about that, because I doubt I’d read it.

Whether we realize it or not, our lives are all about quests. Good word, “quests.” From the Latin, quærere “seek, gain, ask.” See also: query.  Clearly a word that carries a lot of weight for writers.

Sometimes the quests are small, like finding a pair of jeans that fit.

Sometimes they are larger, like reconnecting with a child given up for adoption or figuring out the meaning of your life before you die. To fall in love. To trust yourself. To craft a life that is balanced. We are all on quests all the time.

The trick to good fiction writing is for the writer to be aware of the main character’s quest (sometimes when the character is not aware of it) and to construct the world of the novel so the interior and exterior lives of the character, and sometimes the lives of other characters, drive relentlessly through the ups and downs of the story in pursuit of those quests.

When I started SPEAK, I did not know what Melinda’s quest was. I just had the voice of a depressed, isolated teenage girl in my head. So I listened to her and I wrote. Eventually I figured out what happened to her and the plot of the book took shape. More or less. She wanted to find her voice. She wanted to be able to tell people what had happened to her, to tell them what she was feeling. But she had to reclaim herself before she could reclaim her voice.

TWISTED was different. I knew I wanted to write about the experience of a teen-age boy. After talking to guys for a couple of years, I knew that my character’s father, his peer group, and the girl of his dreams all had to play a role in the story. I started that book and wrote the first fifty or so pages about six times; each draft was completely different than the one before it. I struggled until the voice of the character came to me clearly, and I understood his quest: he wanted to be a man, but nobody would show him how. Once I knew that piece, the writing flowed easily.

 

Today’s Quote

 “Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing—and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.”

Sharon Creech

 

Today’s prompt: What does your character thinks she wants in the course of your story. What does she really want, but is not yet aware of? What obstacles prevent her from attainting what she wants? Whose world changes when she gets what she wants?

Scribble… scribble… scribble…

Question: How do I get an agent or editor to give me feedback on my manscript?

Answer: With one exception*, the only way you’re going to get feedback from an agent is to be signed up by one. Not all agents offer feedback. Mine doesn’t.

An editor who likes your manuscript but feels it isn’t quite good enough to be published yet may offer to buy it “on spec.” That means that publication is not guaranteed, but the editor is willing to work with you on a revision and give some feedback. This is how SPEAK was published; the editor bought it on spec, gave me feedback, I revised and then it was published. If I had not done a good job on the revision, it would not have been published.

BTW, I didn’t have an agent when I sold SPEAK. I didn’t have an agent for my first seven books.

*The exception is that SCBWI conferences often have manuscript critique services. You send in a specified number of pages ahead of time and at the conference, you get a face-to-face meeting with the published author, editor, or agent who critiques the manuscript. I got very helpful feedback from Harold Underdown about FEVER 1793 this way.

Question: Have you ever not listened to a story idea or a character in your head?

Answer: Nope. If they speak, I scribble. Not every idea or character is solid enough to be turned into a full-length novel, but at the very least, it’s good writing practice.

We’re almost to the end of this year’s writing challenge. What questions would you like me to answer, or topics to tackle in the next few days?

Today’s Quote

“Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write more entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind, and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page.”

Eudora Welty

Today’s prompt: Dig a little deeper into your character so you can understand her better. Where do her family’s roots like? What were her great-grandparent’s lives like? What would she do if she found a bag with $500 on the street? What about $5000? Who in her ife is likely to die in the next year? What would she do if that happened in front of her? Ask the unasked question and you’ll find riches.

Scribble… scribble… scribble…

 

I spoke to more than a thousand kids a day at the Youngstown State University English Festival for three days at the end of March. I saw them in “smaller” groups throughout the day, then gave a final presentation to everyone before they went home. It was a life-changing experience to be in a room with a thousand kids who were completely stoked about books and reading and writing. I adored all of them… and their teachers who worked very hard to prepare them for the experience.

I signed books for about three hours each day. Several times the organizers had to cut the line short so that I could give my next presentation. A girl named Faith was crushed when she made it to the front of the line (after waiting an hour) only to be told that she would have to wait until after the presentation. (I had already snuck several kids past the organizers and was pushing the limit in a big way.) The look on her face  slayed me, so I wrote her name on my arm and swore a holy oath that as soon as I was done talking, I would find her and sign her books.

Which I did.

Faith was patient and mature and responded beautifully to a situation that she was not happy with. I will always remember her. Having the word “Faith” written on my arm at the end of the three-day festival summarized perfectly my relationship to my work and to my readers. (The photo above was taken shortly after I signed Faith’s book.)

 

Today’s Quote

“Art glows with faith even in its weakest parts. At every moment, writing is an act of self-confidence – the sheerest, most determined, most stubborn self-belief. You CAN have faith and doubt at the same time; the most insecure writer on the planet has faith that shines just as bright as her doubt, and she deserves props for that. It might be hidden deep, she might not feel it and you might not see it, but it’s in there, or she wouldn’t be able to write.”

Kristin Cashore

Today’s prompt: What is it about your writing that you want to give up on? What causes you to think of quitting? Who would be happier if you stopped writing? Who would be crushed? How will your life change if you quit? Make a promise to that scared part of yourself that is having doubts. Write down that promise and put it where you can see it daily.

Scribble… scribble… scribble…

 

I woke up at 3am today in a total allergy meltdown. Medicine, shower, tea. It was clear I wasn’t going to get back to sleep so I sat outside and watched the Milky Way overhead. All in all, it was not a bad way to start the day.

Which is why I am feeling brave enough to say a few things about revision.

The concept of Revision is one of the hardest for new writers (and a few not-so-new) to wrap their heads around. You’ve put years into your story, you understand the lives of your characters, you’ve been polishing that climatic scenes in chapter 37 until it glows in the dark and by the gods, you are not going to change anything. You can’t. You shouldn’t, because it is perfect.

I get it.

I totally get it, because writing is hard. Writing can be a real bitch sometimes, and after a while, you can’t see the forest for the trees, or, more precisely, the story for the words. In a dark corner of your mind, you recognize that there are aspects to your story that don’t make total sense, or perhaps a few inconsistencies of character, or unmotivated plot twists, but it’s hard, and  you really don’t want to… change… anything.

Let me give a few quick tips (I can talk about this for days on end, but it’s the weekend and I’m sure you have other things to do.)

1. Revision is your friend. Trust me on this. The mindset that you have about this is critical. If you dread and disparage revision, you won’t do great work. You changed the universe by writing the drafts that you have already written. Change it again by refining the story. Revision is not punishment for a life of sin; it is how you breathe life into your story.

2. Early drafts are created with the passion of a new love affair. Revision is undertaken with the trust and commitment of a good marriage. There is still a lot of love there, but it is a love that seeks the truth and what is best for the book.

3. Make sure that every scene has a purpose; it must move the plot forward, give us critical insights into a character, or both. You will find scenes that are little more than a bunch of people standing around and talking. Either take whatever dialog is important (assuming there is some) and weave it into a different scene, or change the setting so that there is action and growth.

4. That last point is super important, so I will yell it loudly. BE WILLING TO CHANGE THE SETTING. This hit me upside the head when I was revising Part Two of my novel this week. I was cranky because so many scenes were set in the same places – school, home, bus, blah, blah. What was missing were settings that would  give the reader more information about the life of my main character. And then my brain went a little fuzzy and drifted off to that place between thinking and daydreaming and suddenly it hit me: LAUNDROMAT! When I finish this post I’m going to make coffee, grab some breakfast and go work on a Laundromat scene. (I’m very excited about this!!)

Did you see what I did there at the end of Point #4? I said I am excited about revising Part Two. I am going to insert a new scene in a Laundromat. I am probably going to the condense the activity that is currently in Chapters 34-38 into two chapters, because really? There’s a whole lot of silly drama in those chapters that is useless. But the point about the deepening relationship between my main character and her friend Gracie, that is critical, so critical that I want to slow down the unfolding of it. So I will keep that big, scary thing that happens at Gracie’s house in the about-to-be-remade Chapters 34 and 35, then I’ll cut to Chapter 39. The Laundromat scene will probably become the new chapter 41.

The sun is up now and I can’t see the stars anymore. But I know they are there, patiently shining and wait for the dark. The great potential of your story is waiting, too.  You must take a risk, walk into the night. Be willing to look at your story honestly. Listen carefully to comments from your early readers. Accept that inspiration and revision are the inhale and exhale of writing. Breathe deeply and get to work.

 

Today’s Quote

 “A writer, like an athlete, must ‘train’ every day. What did I do today to keep in ‘form’?”

Susan Sontag

 

Today’s prompt: Spend some time on the CCBC’s The Westing Game Manuscript website. It shows Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game (1979 Newbery Medal winner) as a work-in-progress, including pages of her story notes, and crossed-out, marked-up pages of the manuscript. Then brainstorm a list of scenes in your work-in-progress that could be cut, moved or added.

 

 

  Scribble… scribble… scribble…