All posts by Amber

Pregnant with Book? Write it!

Antics

I’d been saying I wanted to write for twenty years.  I’d said it so often and for so long that people who knew me didn’t even hear it anymore…  Even though I said it all the time and no one listened anymore when I did, the secreat was, I meant it.  I’d always meant it.  Actually, the real secret was stranger than wanting to write a book.  The real secret was that I already thought of myself as a writer.  I’d hardly written a word and I couldn’t think of a single idea for a book, but in my mind, I was a writer.  I’d been a writer since I was seven…  I was pregnant with book.  I could feel it kicking to get out.

From “Chosen by a Horse” by Susan Richards

When the @^&$ hits the fan… What I worry about as I write

Antics, Writing,

I’ll be honest.  I’m complicated.  I worry about a lot of things.  I over-analyze.  I dissect.  (Nod your head sympathetically toward my husband.  He’ll appreciate the gesture.)

Sometimes I feel like I’ve got a whole universe jammed inside my skin.  I’m stretched tight like a sausage with all the stuff I think about.  (Bonus points if you know why I selected that image.)

I’m not going to tell you what I worry about.  Mostly it’s boring, cliche, or embarrassing.  But I will tell you that the worrying is analogous to my writing process.  In the same way I might  fret about my kids’ future, I turn the elements of my story around and around.  I twist and tangle and ultimately untangle the narrative threads.  Because I’m complicated, I write complex characters in shifting universes.  I like to think that the personal anxiety has a purpose that is made manifest in the writing.

But the curious thing (and the point of this post) is that I never feel anxious about writing the book.  Isn’t that weird?  I worry about all these things, but there’s a deep down secure knowledge that I can write the book.  I will serve the story.  And I’m always learning how to do it better.  Cool, huh?

 

Jam on biscuits, jam on toast, jam is the thing that I like most

My Reads

Jam on biscuits, jam on toast,
Jam is the thing that I like most.
Jam is sticky, jam is sweet,
Jam is tasty, jam’s a treat–
Raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, I’m very
FOND… OF… JAM!

From BREAD AND JAM FOR FRANCES by Russell Hoban

I’m home sick today, eating jam and toast and drinking tea and thinking how very, very much I love Frances.  I especially love that she’s a badger.  Don’t see enough badgers in kid lit these days!  Lots of bears and rabbits and pigeons but a dearth of badgers who jump rope.  Alas!

Writing–like archery–requires a target, constant adjustments to your aim, and lots of practice

Antics, Writing, ,

As I type, my back, shoulders, and arms are very sore from archery practice.  The bow in the picture is a compound bow with a 30 lb draw, which means it takes 30 lbs of force to pull the string past the point of highest resistance.  After that, it is relatively easy to hold, allowing the archer time to aim with care.  It’s a very different technique than with a long bow, which is generally a fast draw and shoot affair.  In either case, however, it takes a lot of practice to become a consistent shot.  And if I switch bows or arrows or move back or if there’s wind, I have to make many adjustments in order to continue to hit the target.

A writing career is very similar.  We have to constantly adjust to changing conditions and always re-focus on the target.  In January of every year, my critique group, Viva Scriva, has a goal-setting meeting.  We review the preceding year and set our sites anew for the coming one.

Here’s what my 2011 goal list looked like:

  1. Spend Jan-May finishing the first draft of my new YA novel.
  2. Focus on building my relationship with my agent.
  3. Build the VivaScriva website.
  4. Spend June-August researching new nonfiction book.
  5. Spend Sept-Dec drafting aforementioned nonfiction book.
  6. Rebuild my website.
  7. Write those two magazine articles I didn’t get to in 2010.
  8. Keep up with my newsletters.
  9. Book 4-6 school visits or conference talks.
  10. Build a solid marketing resource book for myself and the Scrivas.

So how did I do?

Pretty darn well on 2, 3, 6, 8, and 9.  (I’m especially proud of both my website and the Scriva site).  The “new YA” novel (1) is at about 50K words (2/3 done probably).  I had to set it aside in July when I signed on to write a YA novel for Angel Punk (I know there are worse problems to have!), but it’s far enough along that I’m confident that I can finish it up when I have some time.  Plus I’m about 55K words into Angel Punk so I do deserve a self-congratulatory pat on the back for writing well over 100K words in 2011. 4, 5 and 7  were scuttled, and 10 is a jumbled pile of papers in a corner of my office.

Looking over the last year, I see that the target I was aiming at changed dramatically with the contract for Angel Punk.  All my goals had to be readjusted, but my core direction remained and remains the same: to write for kids and teens about heros, adventurers, and scientists.

I’ll leave you with a great TED video in which Richard St. John answers the question: “What Leads to Success?”  In it, he talks about the eight secrets of successful people include focus and hard work – keys to archery as well as writing.

What were your goals for 2011?  How was your aim?

When writing inflicts collateral damage on real life

Writing, ,

Garth Nix gave a fabulous speech a few years back about how writers take kernels of reality — images, emotions, events, people — and spin them into fiction.  No longer recognizable (usually) because they are  both more vivid and raw than reality was and also deeply interwoven into the narrative, these kernels take on a life of their own.  But they retain the smells and sounds of truth and that is what enables a skilled writer to evoke an emotional response in a reader.

An example:  Last week I worked on a fight scene that is built around a fight I narrowly avoided when I tried to intervene in a domestic dispute between two strangers.  There were lots of reasons I should have walked away from that situation, but I didn’t partly because I wanted to help and partly because I was an angry young woman with something to prove. I drew on those feelings to write the scene, and I hope that it makes the reader believe in my character’s reasons for getting involved.  I want them to feel like her choices were inevitable and if they had been in her shoes, they would have done the same things.

Cool, right?

What’s not so cool is when there is blow-back.

Sometimes the fiction bleeds back into real life.  Last year, I was working on a young adult novel that centers around the unlikely friendship of a fifteen-year-old boy and an eleven-year-old girl brought together by shared tragedy.  Their tragedy is one I’ve lived.  When I showed the first chapters to my critique group, Nicole asked me if I was really ready to write that book.  Was I ready, she pushed, to feel what I would have to feel?  Could I take going back to that place of broken-ness day after day after day?  What about critique on something so dear and so raw?  Would I be able to handle it?  Ultimately I decided that I was ready for it, but I definitely spent much of the year draped in a touch of depression.

Now I’m writing an impulsive, reckless, limit-pushing heroine.  To get Mara right, I’m drawing on what good, responsible kids would call their “gap” year between high school and college.  For me, it was twelve transgression-filled months, which I’m damn lucky to have survived at all.  (Not getting my ass-kicked in the aforementioned fight being one example of many dangerous situations I landed myself in.)

Now I’ve grown up and made good and am generally a respectable citizen, but writing Mara means digging up the dirt and drawing on it.  I’ve abandoned the indie folk rock I usually listen to and have switched to much more hard-charging, punk inspired music.  I’m reading edgier fiction and watching edgier movies.  It’s all supposed to make my writing better and more real, but Mara’s impulsiveness is rubbing off on me.  I’m pushing more limits than I usually would.  I’m taking more risks.

So far, there’s been no serious collateral damage…  except the blue hair.  Thanks, Mara!

Looking at things we can’t have – a good idea or not?

Antics, My Reads

From my own dog-eared, oft-read copy of THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER (one of my all-time favorite books):

It was a picture of a ship–a ship sailing nearly straight towards you.  Her prow was gilded and shaped like the head of a dragon with wide open mouth. She had only one mast and one large, square sail which was a rich purple. The sides of the ship–what you could see of them where the gilded wings of the dragon ended–were green.  She had just run up to the top of one glorious blue wave, and the nearer slope of that wave came down towards you, with streaks and bubbles on it. She was obviously running fast before a gay wind, listing over a little on her port side…  And the sunlight fell on her from that side, and the water on that side was full of greens and purples. On the other, it was darker blue from the shadow fo the ship.

“The question is,” said Edmund, “whether it doesn’t make things worse, looking at a Narnian ship when you can’t get there.”

“Even looking is better than nothing,” said Lucy. “And she is such a very Narnian ship.”

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve done myself a great disservice by reading fantasy novel after novel about sword fighting, dragon riding, prince kissing, and other exciting things unlikely to ever happen in my real life.  What about you? Are there things, characters, or experiences you obsess over?  Are there “six impossible things” you really, really want?

UNWIND by Neal Shusterman kept me up way too late last night. Disturbed my dreams.

My Reads, ,

Wow.

Scriva Michelle suggested that I read UNWIND because Neal Shusterman uses multiple third person POVs and I’m working on a similar approach for Angel Punk.  (For more on Scriva assigned reading, click here.)

Wow.  I had to say it again.

First, reading it made me feel good about my POV decisions in Angel Punk.

Second, I have never read a dystopian novel with such a novel premise (not class warfare, not zombie virus, not environmental collapse).

Third, kudos to a writer who’s willing to take on an explicitly political (and explosive) topic (prolife/choice) in a young adult novel.

Fourth, double kudos to him for never, ever taking the easy/expected way for his characters.  How brilliantly he puts them in the vise and squeezes them tight.

I’m impressed.  I’m inspired.  And yes, I’m deeply disturbed.

P.S.  The Bookshelves of Doom were also overwhelmed with wows upon reading UNWIND.  Bet you will be too.

Why writers need empty spaces

Travel,

For those of you who follow me on Twitter or are my Facebook friends, I know I’ve been annoying you with pictures and pithy quips from the sandy, sunny beaches of Hawaii.  I’m back to the doom and gloom of a Portland winter so I’ll stop being an irritant.  However, I hope you’ll bear with me for one parting thought about my vacation.

Vacations are important and amazing for all the normal reasons. We don’t work or clean our houses or do our laundry.  We don’t set alarm clocks or exercise or make grocery lists.  We play.  And there was lots of serious play on my trip to Hawaii, but there was also something else–EMPTY SPACE.

During the last week, I had chunks of time with nothing to do.  I didn’t reach for a book or a pen and paper.  I didn’t even let my mind turn toward the next scenes I need to write in the Angel Punk novel.  Honestly, I didn’t think about writing at all.

Instead, I watched people.  I got lost in movements, gestures, voices.  I stared at the sea and sky and sand and twisted lava.  I got drunk on textures and swooping lines, the way stillness and motion merge at the horizon.  I dove into my senses: the feel of wind and blowing sand, the scent of wet earth and papaya.

A whole universe was born inside a 1987 Westphalia Pop-Up.  My family of four lived for a week in the lovely Hula Wahini, cruising the islands and inventing new phrases for our own personal family dialect.  “Going Pahoa” and “Ghetto Wahini” and “Happy Camper” will forever be part of our shared story.  I rolled around in the new-oldness of my little team.  I revisited myself (because she’s been too busy to even grab coffee lately.)

Evolutionary biologists like to say that “Nature abhors a vacuum.”  (Variously attributed to Aristotle, Spinoza, and Parmenides, but I’m too lazy to track down the real source.  Sorry.)  What we mean is that any empty ecological niche will eventually be filled by the adaptation of some species.  There are no empty places because life is cramped and crowded on this planet and any chance of freedom from competition will be exploited.

My mind is often a cramped and crowded planet.  It’s jammed with to-do lists and calendars and works-in-progress and family needs.  We keep a wicked pace.

Yet, empty spaces enveloped me last week.   And, as the philosophers promised, the empty spaces proffered by Hawaii were filled–and filled with riches that I’ll draw on for a long time.  Now if I can just remember to go Pahoa, I’ll be fine.

 

Exposed by Narrative

Writing

When we meet someone new, the storytelling begins.  We deliver the cleaned-up, well-practiced narrative of our lives with the smooth proficiency of a pitchman.  We spin it to impress, to entertain, to woo.  If—after time—that someone seems a likely lover or a potential friend, we flesh out the plot with all its nuances of regret and loss, its pains and unfulfilled desires.  We are revealed.

As a novelist, I traffic in these blemished, yearning narratives that show the beating hearts of made-up people.  My characters suffer at my hand.  Unless I let them triumph.  And I watch, at the ready to strike them down again, or maybe to extend a peace-offering.

It has been a long time since I’ve told my own tale like that.  I am surrounded day-by-day with those dear ones who know my story in all its wrenching detail.  Or with those who do not need or want to know it.

Upon breaking that long quiet over lunch in a deserted restaurant, I feel flayed, exposed, and slightly dangerous.  It’s like my story could wrest itself away from the restraints I’ve placed upon it.  Perhaps it could swell into something unexpected, something worse.

And I shake my fist at the Novelist, who knows a story without trouble is no story at all.

Love LOST? Adore THE OFFICE? Immerse yourself in THE ART OF IMMERSION by @Frank Rose

My Reads,

I’ve been book-talking this fabulous book by Frank Rose to anyone who will listen.  If you are interested in the psychology of story-telling, the creative genius behind LOST, THE OFFICE, or THE DARK KNIGHT, or the way media is rapidly changing– read this!

A few tidbits:

“People don’t passively ingest a marketing mesage, or any type of message.  They greet it with an emotional response, usually unconscious, that can vary wildly depending on their own experiences and predispositions.  They don’t just imbibe a story; they imbue it with meaning.”

“Dickens fashioned tales with cliff-hanger endings to keep readers coming back. … More significant, however, was the way he improvised in response to readers’ reactions. … On occasions when a story was faltering, he paid much closer attention to what his readers were saying.  … Scholars have come to see such give-and-take as crucial to Dickens’s method. … In Dickens’s own time, serialized novels were hugely controversial. … The format seemed dangerously immersive.”

“In a mid-sixties discussion with Jean-Luc Godard at Cannes, the idiosyncratic director Georges Franju became thoroughly exasperated with [his] unconvential techniques.  ‘But surely, Monsieur Godard,’ he blurted out, ‘you do at least acknowledge the necessity of having a beginning, a middle, and end in your films.’  To which Godard famously replied, ‘Certainly.  But not necessarily in that order.'”

“For a whole generation of Hollywood writers in their thirties and forties, Horowitz [executive producer on LOST] quipped, ‘Star Wars was a gateway drug.'”

“The most dependable way to forge a link, whether to a colleague in a new job or to strangers on Twitter, is by relating information–a process that often involves telling a story. … Storytelling is a simple act of sharing. We share information. We share experience. Sometimes we overshare. But why do we share at all?”

OK – if those snippets, all from the same book, haven’t convinced you to read THE ART OF IMMERSION by Frank Rose, you’re on your own!