My current work in progress is about a young man who runs away with a group of Freegans. This recent article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine features a group of self-identified Freegans squatting in an abandoned mansion in Buffalo, New York.
Category: Writing
Gush, gush, gush!
She does it again! I just finished Sara Zarr’s third novel; Once Was Lost. I loved the first two I read; Sweethearts and Story of a Girl, but this one might be her best. Zarr does a masterful job of combining an interesting and page-turning plot with authentic teenage voices, real and complex adult characters. This latest book exemplifies what I wrote about in an earlier post about layers of conflict. There is a mystery which is central to the story, but also family conflict, love interests and quarrels between friends.
On her website I read that Story of a Girl was her fifth novel written but first published. It gives me hope.
Happy Mother’s Day to Me!
Yesterday for Mother’s Day I asked my husband for some writing time. I’ve certainly had blocks of time before this when I could have sat down at the computer, but I’ve just been too dang tired.
By asking him specifically for a couple hours I knew I was committing to really getting back to my w.i.p. In fact he looked at me sternly as I walked toward my desk and said, “No email!”
And I did it! I reread and revised the chapters I was working on before E was born and even started on a new chapter. And guess what? Writing is still the same frustrating, exciting, revelatory, hair-tearing process it was before I had a baby. And I’m glad I’m back.
Premise or Plot?
I really like this post on Kidlit.com about the difference between an interesting situation and an interesting story. This quote in particular stuck with me:
“Keep this in mind when you’re thinking about your book. In today’s market, where editors like to see layers upon layers of conflict, having just a situation in your story, not a plot, isn’t enough. It’s a very important distinction.”
Layers and layers and layers and layers of conflict….screams revision to me!
Check out the whole post here.
Teacher and writer
Being 9 months pregnant is not necessarily a great time to evaluate and judge one’s life choices. However, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing life and my teaching life. They intersect in some wonderful ways. Teaching adolescents definitely gives me an ear for how they speak and what’s interesting to them. On the other hand teaching is also incredibly draining and often leaves me too pooped to write at the end of the day.
I’ve often said/thought that if I won the lottery I still wouldn’t want to write full time. I’m definitely a social animal and I enjoy the structure and community that school creates. I don’t really want to see teaching as my “day” job and writing as my dream, mostly because it’s just not true for me. They’re both fulfilling to different parts of me.
Perhaps this is coming up as I think about the time and energy that this new person is going to require from me, and I’m wondering how my writing life will survive and emerge? It doesn’t help that everyone loves to tell pregnant people to enjoy their alone time because it’s the LAST TIME THEY’LL EVER HAVE ANY! People just love to have something to say.
Day job or dream job? How do you negotiate it all?
Music?
So I’m counting down to the arrival of my latest work in progress; that would be our baby, due to arrive sometime around the end of this month, beginning of next. I’ve been working on a “birth plan”, a kind of wish list for how I would ideally like this labor to go. There are templates for this sort of thing on-line that ask you to consider everything from whether or not you want mood lighting to whether or not you want an epidural.
Music has come up as a topic because at first I was adamantly opposed to having any during labor. I’ve never been a person who could focus if there was music in the background. When I’m riding in the car with someone I have to choose between conversation or music. I simply can’t do both. This is odd, because in most other parts of my life I am an incredibly competent multi-tasker.
I’m always interested to read about writers who have playlists for their novels; songs or albums that they listened to incessantly while revising or grinding out that first draft. I know that if I tried to listen to music while writing the lyrics would end up interspersed between the sentences and nothing would make sense.
Lately though I’ve been thinking that music might be just what I want during labor. It could be that I don’t want to be so present in my mind, so focused on exactly what I’m experiencing, and music could be just the thing to distract me.
Music while you work? Does it work for you?
Writing Life
I’m always interested to read on blogs and in interviews about other writer’s writing processes. I’m always a little wide-eyed at the people who bang out 2,000+ words a day. I tend to go by the two pages rule. Two pages is my minimum. I don’t get to write every day. But when I do, I try and go by the two page minimum. Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes, sometimes 2 hours. But I try not to get up and move on with my day until that’s accomplished.
I think it was Stephen King in his terrific book called On Writing who emphasized the importance of sitting in the damn chair. As in, you’re never going to do any writing if you’re thinking about writing, or planning on writing….or blogging about writing for that matter.
First Drafts; Listening to my gut
I really learned a lot from writing and revising my first YA novel. Therefore I’m trying really hard not to make the same mistakes I made before…yeah, I want to make new mistakes. Well mistakes are inevitable but I am trying to avoid too many of the same pitfalls.
One of these pitfalls has to do with listening to your gut. My new WIP has a first person teenage boy as the narrator. When I started writing I heard his voice very clearly and brightly in the present tense. This seemed like a weird way to write, but when I reread what I wrote, it worked. When I stepped away from the project and came back to it I started writing in the past tense. But when I did a side by side comparison I found that the writing in the present tense was definitely stronger. So I’ve continued with that, trying to avoid the voice in my head that says “You can’t write a novel in the present tense. It’s too weird.”
Last night I made the mistake of googling “writing in the present tense” and reading all these people’s comments about how weird it is and what a turn off to the reader. The one who stuck in my mind was the woman who compared reading something written in the present tense to being continually tapped on the head with a teaspoon. Ugh. I don’t want that.
I’m sticking with it for now and hoping I don’t regret the decision later. Gut, you better be right! 🙂
First Draft Map
This is a map of the first draft of my new writing project. It’s a realistic fiction story with a first person male narrator. I’m really excited about it. I’ve written various chunks of it over the course of the last 9 months, with large lapses of time in between due to revision on other writing projects. I decided I needed a way to keep track of what parts were written and what parts were just in my head.
Here is my very low-tech solution. Each pink sticky has a brief synopsis of what happens in that chapter. In the bottom left hand corner of the sticky is a series of initials that tells me which file I can find it in on my computer (due to serious computer failures, I have files all over the place in various word formats). I also put whether the chapter is in past or present tense. I went back and forth a little bit on this initially and now I need to correct it so it’s all the same. Each orange sticky is an idea I have for a future chapter or a place that the story needs to go, even if I’m not sure how it’s going to get there.
I really should call it my “no excuses” map. As in, I can no longer put off writing because I need to make the map. And now that I’ve blogged about it….
Reflections on 2009…better late than never.
2009 was an incredible year of writing for me. Even though it makes me feel a little weird and self-conscious, I think it’s important to reflect on what I accomplished before 2010 really gets rolling.
I finished a first draft of my first YA novel
I queried and successfully acquired a literary agent
I revised my YA novel, not once, not twice, but really and truly about five times. It needed it. And in the process I was reminded of what a sucker I am for my own first drafts….always have been
I helped start and became part of a group of YA writers who live in Maine
I read a lot of great books and blogs; some writing related, some not
I started my second YA novel and have written about a third of the first draft
Finally, I’ve learned a lot about myself as a writer, about the publishing business and most importantly the patience required for all aspects of a fulfilling writing life.
Ideas In Things 