Category: Writing

Random musings, Whining, Writing

Climbers and danglers

sashikaufman

Yesterday morning I woke up and the place where my arms attach to my body was extremely sore. Naturally I panicked and immediately assumed I had contracted a rare form of acute pectoral arm cancer. I’m not a hypochondriac by nature but I am a bit of an alarmist. Woody Allen does a nice job at explaining the difference here.

Just as I was envisioning my demise, I remembered that the day before at school I’d been feeling rather punchy and attempted to demonstrate my meager athletic abilities by doing a push up.  Just one.  What I succeeded in doing was a face plant into industrial carpet –which I followed with three girly half-push ups for good measure. It followed that the likely cause of my arm pain was not a rare acute disease but rather 3 and a half failed push ups. It’s not my fault that I have the upper body strength of an ostrich, the arms and shoulders of a malnourished chicken. It’s genetics. Not that I’ve done anything about it. I learned very early on that there are those people who are rope climbers (think elementary school gym class) and those of us who are rope danglers  –spending entire gym periods  with our feet just inches above the blue mats waiting for the bell to ring.

I think about this sometimes when people ask how/when I find time to write. There isn’t time. Any more than there’s time for me to build up some killer biceps and conquer that damn rope once and for all.  I guess as life gets busier you have to prioritize the things you really care about. So for the time being I’ll have to get used to the taste of industrial carpet.

Writing

Passion Vs. Trends in YA Fiction

sashikaufman

It’s been a while since I posted. Long enough that I’ve looked back on my post on patience and balance, grimacing and wondering if I really have enough patience. A lot of work stuff has been adding to my daily stressors and squeezing out any hope of writing time. So patience is key.

I know others in the YA world have blogged on this topic. But I think, given the nature of trends in YA it’s an important one to address. Trends. I frequently get advice from my students about what sort of books I should write; vampires, apocalyptic battles to the death, love stories gone awry. I smile and nod. It’s tempting to write towards trends, or even just to try to write a book because you think it will sell. But it’s not very fun. At least I don’t think so. I don’t want to sit down at the end of a long day of teaching and family and life, and crank out something I’m not in love with.

I want to tell a story that I feel has to be told. I want to share characters that make me laugh or cry, or shake my head with exasperation. Because it’s a long way from my desk to the printed page. And sometimes it takes every last ounce of energy to sit down at my desk instead of a re-run of Storage Wars. So no matter how tempting it is to believe I could write that next big hit pixie, steampunk, transgender re-telling of The Three Little Pigs, I just don’t believe it’s worth it. Unless that Pigs thing sounds good to you? Wait does it?

Random musings, School, Writing

Patience and Balance

sashikaufman

Patience and balance are two things I actively seek in my life.  And at this point I think seek is an appropriate verb because though they are reached at different moments, the quest is on-going.  The only thing that has reinforced the importance of patience more than my experiences with the publishing world, is my experience as a mom.  No matter what I do, my daughter shows me again and again that she will do things in her own time. I can be supportive or throw temper tantrums of my own. I can try sleep interventions or potty interventions or picky eating interventions, but the only thing that is guaranteed to work consistently, is patience and time.

I’m thinking about balance because I’ve just declared myself done with my first round of revisions for my first ever editor of my first (soon to be) published book. Over the summer I completed a solid second draft of a new book. I’ve gotten feedback from beta readers and I’ve been sitting on that feedback while I worked on the revisions for Go West.  I could have jumped right in this weekend. I’ve had opportunities to begin. I’m blogging right now, when I could be revising my way to 2nd book greatness. But I’m not. In fact, I’m enjoying not writing for a few days. I’m taking a breath.

School is back in full swing, and by this I mean we’re done meeting and greeting and I have actual papers to grade and lessons to plan.  The days are shorter and my outside time is getting more and more limited. I’m taking a breath and it feels good. I know what I need to do on book two and I’ll get there in a reasonable amount of time.

I recently read parts of the NY Times magazine on inspiration. I especially liked the interview with Junot Diaz who, in addition to being a great writer, swears a lot. The interviewer compared Diaz’s writing process to trying to distill the ocean down to a glass of water. These things take time and patience.  Which reminds me of one of my favorite Rilke quotes.

“In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast.” (You can read the whole thing here)

So I’m trying to not force the sap, take a breath, be silent and vast.

Okay, maybe not silent and vast. It’s not really my style. But the rest sounds good.

Uncategorized, Writing

The Revision Conversation

sashikaufman

I have recently started revising Go West my soon to be published YA novel. I’ve been reading through my editor’s (Andrew from Carolrhoda Lab) notes. Which by the way are excellent. Each one could elicit an entire conversation and I feel thrilled and lucky to have such a smart set of eyes on this manuscript.

One thing I’m realizing as I read through something I haven’t read in about 9 months, is that I’m a different writer now. One small example is that when I wrote the first draft I wasn’t a parent. Go West is about a teenage boy who runs away and I’ve realized that in my writing I’ve been pretty unsympathetic to his mother -who has her own set of issues.  However, if I wrote this today I doubt very much I would write her character the same way.

I also think I’m a better writer than when I first wrote this -which is great because it’s always nice to feel like you’re improving on something you devote a lot of time to.  (Since I wrote Go West, I’ve completed a first and second draft of a new book. ) There are little things in Go West that make me cringe but are easy to fix. I guess it’s just nice to see a progression.

My freshman year in college I took an intro to lit course with a white-bearded professor who’s name now escapes me. Imagine Gandalf but with a love of Henry James.  One of his pet peeves was when people talked about whatever we were reading and referred to the author. “It’s not the author anymore,” he chided us. “What is the text telling you?” This emphasis on the text as separate from the author comes back to me now as I’m revising my own words. As I re-read Go West I make a lot of notes. These notes are a kind of conversation I’m having between myself, the text, and the person I was when I originally wrote it. Luckily we’re all good friends.

Writing

I was a Twitter Doubter

sashikaufman

It’s true. I was completely skeptical that any form of social media could improve any part of my life in any way. I wasn’t even on facebook (a big part of that was my fear of being stalked by my students).  So this post is a bit of an ode to my love for twitter. Make your face of disgust now ye doubters…then read on!

Reasons why I love twitter:

1. There is an incredible community of YA writers on twitter. And for the most part they are open and friendly even if they don’t know you. (Provided you don’t act like a total bonehead stalker -that could be another post.)

2. Twitter is communication without commitment. I’m sure not everyone feels this way about facebook, but to me facebook is much more showy. See how pretty my garden is. Look at how great my vacation was. Check out how cute my kid is. I’m sure I’m going to get push back on this, and I know not everyone is lucky enough to have family close by who can see their great vacation/garden/kid whenever they want…but my point is it’s very calculated and very staged. Twitter, in its 140 character glory, is very improvisational, silly, casual, cranky, and true to life.  Okay, not everyone on Twitter is like this, but the people I like to follow are.

3. Twitter helps me write. Really. Twitter keeps me sitting at my computer longer. It gives me short breaks; just enough time to recharge and go back to whatever I’m working on. The key word here is short. It’s not a long email, or 185 vacation photos. It’s just a quick thought, a great shared quote, maybe a link to save for later.

Back to facebook. I don’t post that frequently on fb. Maybe it’s my own hang up, but fb makes me feel like I’m in high school again and I might not be pretty or cool enough to say the right thing. But I do tweet quite a bit. So if you can’t get enough of my personal charm and wisdom feel free to follow @sashikaufman. You won’t regret it.

(And of course this will be linked to my fb page. Help, help, I’m drowning in irony and hypocrisy!)

Random musings, Writing

Never Do This Before Bed

sashikaufman

I’ve been wrestling with a bit of an insomnia monkey in the last month and as such I’ve been trying to keep my pre-bed routine fairly dull and screen-free. Last weekend when I was staying at my parents’ house I made the mistake of grabbing my high school yearbook off the shelf at around 10 pm. Big mistake. Huge.

Soon I was poring over the pages, trying to remember private jokes from…well…from a while ago and pondering the meaning of several very deep and heartfelt messages from people I didn’t even remember being friends with. It also got me thinking about this article.  The gist of it is that as we get older we’re less open to forming new friendships. I have three close friends I’ve held on to since high school and several more from college who are pretty critical to my existence. *smiles and waves *  The whole thing made me wonder about the ways we are more open to others when we’re adolescents.  This is of particular interest to me because I write about adolescents -and particularly ones who form unlikely friendships and relationships.

There was one message in my yearbook from someone who claimed a conversation we had (May 24th 1994 -yes he cited the date) changed his life. Yep, changed his life! And I have no memory of it, except a sneaking suspicion I might have told him I thought he was gay. Not so subtle in those days. Heck, still not very subtle.

There was another short message from someone who simply signed as “no future boy”. Now that was intriguing. No idea on that one either. So the bottom line is reading your high school yearbook is great fodder for writing, and very bad for sleeping.

Writing

Do you like what you’re writing?

sashikaufman

My husband meant it conversationally. He had no idea what a huge loaded writing question it was. It’s really hard to like something while you’re drafting. It’s much easier to convince yourself (at least for me) that it sucks and will always suck.

My Dad gave me this writing mantra which I try and remind myself of frequently; “I will not hate what I write.” I use it to remind myself that you can’t and shouldn’t judge what you’re writing -particularly not when writing a first draft. Other phases of the process do call for judgment and editing, but not first drafts.

Also, any kind of positive answer to the question feels like I might be jinxing myself. Like if I say yes, than I’ll never write another decent word. So when I say yes, I say it in the tiniest most secretly brave piglet of ways.

So what do I like about what I’m writing right now? I like certain characters. I like moments, I like certain scenes. In particular this one scene I wrote recently where a teenage girl falls on the boy she likes, knocking the wind out of him just when he’s about to kiss her for the first time.

What do you like about what you’re writing? (Answer if you dare!)

School, Writing

Dirty Monkeys

sashikaufman

This year I purchased a magnetic poetry set for my classroom. I set aside a corner of the white board thinking it would be a fun thing for students to do -make sentences and poems in between their assignments, during homeroom, etc.

Some magnetic poetry sets have themes but this one, which I purchased at a yardsale, seemed to be pretty general. I scanned for any blatantly inappropriate words and then let them have at it.

Quickly I developed a secret little corner of the board where the “bad words” were banished. Some were obvious. “Blow, Butt, and Breast,” quickly made their way to the corner. What I didn’t anticipate was the students’ diligence and creativity in finding ways to make ordinary words dirty.

The bad word list grew longer:

Blow

Butt

Breast

Sausage

Kiss

Hole

Sweat

Slam

Meat

Rocket

Brown

All these words are innocuous enough on their own, but put together they say things like “Blow my brown meat rocket.”

The words that are left are pretty much rated G. However, every once in a while they come up with something truly unique such as yesterday’s contribution.

“I remember tall wild monkeys tongue fiddling him.”

I left it up there. After all, it’s poetry.

Writing

Be a character not a camera

sashikaufman

Recently I cleared off my desk and disposed of quite a few little scraps of paper containing notes that at one time or another were vital to something I was writing. It could be Go West or my current, yet unnamed, wip.  These notes are usually scrawled on return address envelopes, the backs of receipts, or old grocery lists.  They usually contain the first few sentences of an important scene that’s floated into my brain when I’m driving or in the middle of teaching a genetics lesson at school.

One of these little gems I uncovered simply said, “Be a character, not a camera.” I have a tendency to write my main characters as observers. Too often it seems, they are the person the story happens around.  This makes my early readers wonder, who is this person? Is this really their story?

I think I have a tendency to do this for two related reasons. The first, is that regardless of age or gender, or even the point of view I’m writing from, I most closely associate myself with the main character.  Therefore I’m a little reluctant to make them too deeply flawed.  I’m oddly protective of them. I’m nervous about creating too much conflict around them.  I know, it’s a problem -since conflict is the essential heart of all good stories.

The second, very closely related reason, is just being the author in general. One criticism of my first completed novel (not the one that sold) was that the voice was too “authorial” in places. As with all criticism my first instinct was to reject it outright.Stupid criticism!  But with time and distance I saw what they were talking about. Sometimes my main character sounded like my main character, and sometimes she sounded like “THE AUTHOR”!  Just a bit too worldly, wise and omniscient to be a 14 year old girl living in a giant landfill.  Oops.

So as I’m currently drafting a new book, I’m trying to hold this in mind. I’m trying to let my main character be herself and not some idealized version of herself.  I’m working on lists of things I know about her, regardless of whether they ever make it into the actual writing.  (There are lots of lists like this available on the interwebs. Here’s one.) The more fully developed she is in my mind, the easier I think it will be to distinguish her voice from mine.