the road to book 2

I am having a moment.

Later this morning, I will be sweating over my laptop, stressing about new words in a new manuscript. This afternoon, I will be hosing off my car after a very muddy trip to the mountains. And tonight, I will be cleaning up a scrapbooking mess I made in the living room.

But right now... right this second... I am having a moment -- a good one. I have the day off work, and I'm starting it off on the back patio watching the sun shine on the yard and drinking a cup of coffee (iced. This is Arizona after all. It's only 8:30am, and my temperature gauge already reads 90 degrees.)
This sunny caffeinated moment is how I am celebrating the launch of my second book, DEAD ENDS. (out today!)

I remember, after selling BUTTER, thinking the 2 year wait to publication would feel like a lifetime. In hindsight, it went by in a flash. But that flash was nothing compared to how fast it seems DEAD ENDS was published. We sold this book in the spring of 2012, so it's been a little under 18 months from sale to pub. For all but 1 of those 18 months, I was also planning my wedding, so I had very little time to obsess about this launch the way I did the first time around.
In fact, this quiet moment right now may be the very first time I've actually reflected on the road to book 2 at all.

I wrote the first draft of DEAD ENDS the month after we sold BUTTER, in part to keep myself from clicking on my email inbox every two seconds. *Best advice ever, by the way! There is a lot of waiting around on the path to publishing. Use that down time to write something new! Once edit letters and blog requests and cover comps start rolling in, you may find your writing time is being eaten away!

After my speed-drafting, I sent the manuscript (then-titled Billy D. & the Bully) off to one of my crit partners, who told me what I already suspected - I had a good start, some great characters... and not much plot.
So I spent the next 9 months or so rearranging, revising and rewriting. By the end of the year, with more help from crit partners, I had something worth submitting.
It was another few months before we sold it, and then I hit a wall of "now what?"

See, the first time around, every moment is a milestone.
book sale? champagne dinner out on the town!
cover reveal? splatter the internet!
launch party? everyone you know is coming!

It's a two-year-long party to celebrate a dream come true. But if book 1 is the dream, what is book 2?
It took me some time to figure out BUTTER wasn't the end of a journey but the start of a new one. And DEAD ENDS is the first step down that new path - a path that forks off in many directions, like a "choose your own adventure" book.
Do you want to write full time?
Do you want to explore a new genre?
Do you dream of longevity as an author?

It's a path of nothing but possibility, and it's a little intimidating, because once your biggest dream comes true... do you dare dream bigger?

For today, my dream is this: that readers who pick up DEAD ENDS will meet Dane, Billy D. and Seely... share their journey... and find something to love.

introducing...

i interrupt this holiday hiatus to bring you a bit of news!

if you cruise around this blog, you'll find many a mention about a little book called Billy D. & the Bully.
like BUTTER, this is a book i named after my main characters. what can i say? i'm a little lazy when it comes to titles.

fortunately, there is a great team of pros at Bloomsbury to help me come up with something just as fitting for the story but not quite such a mouthful.

so i'm super excited to announce next year's book is now titled....

DEAD ENDS

and the cover is awesome!!!! i can't wait to show it to you! stay tuned.

before and after

okay, i'm going to tell you a secret.
or i'm going to make a confession.
or maybe it's both.

writing is harder after you sell a book.

not for everyone, i'm sure. and not forever, i hope.
but for me, it's been a difficult year for writing.

when i wrote BUTTER, i had no idea obesity and suicide were risky topics. no one had told me yet that "boy books don't sell." i didn't know my grammar wasn't perfect (truly, i thought it was. silly, silly me.) and i was still clueless about the "rules" in general.
i just wanted to tell a story. and it all worked out.

when i wrote BILLY D & THE BULLY, i knew a few more rules, but i had just sold BUTTER, and i wasn't yet fully initiated. i didn't know anyone would call what i was writing "disabilities YA," because i had never even heard of such a thing. i certainly didn't know that i had a year of revisions ahead of me, because i didn't know what i was doing wrong in that first draft. again, it all worked out anyway.

but by the time those revisions were done, i was in a different place as a writer. somewhere along the path to publishing, i had stopped thinking of writing as a hobby and started thinking of it as a job. suddenly, i couldn't just explore any old idea that delighted me. first i had to make sure the idea hadn't been done. then i had to rewrite every paragraph 40 times to make sure it was as polished as my other books are in their final drafts. then i had to outline the story to assure myself i had a direction and wasn't wasting my time, y'know... just having fun. because who has time for fun when you're writing for work?

the joy is still there. i still love love love writing. but the joy got a little buried under something else... pressure.
i was chatting with some of my fellow 2012 debut authors tonight, and i asked them if they found it harder to write now. i was comforted by a chorus of "yes!" followed by that word... pressure. i think a lot of new authors must feel that - a sense that everything you write has to have the potential to be published.
for me, it was paralyzing. i took weeks off writing. then, after a few false starts on new projects, the weeks turned into months, until finally i'd forgotten how i ever made time for this at all.

i'm getting my feet wet again - revisiting some of the ideas and pages i abandoned this past year out of fear - and i'm rediscovering the joy.
but i wanted to share the struggle here in case anyone else can relate. and i also wanted to share this much that i've figured out:
the only one putting that pressure on me was ME. and the only person i need to please when i'm writing is ME... because i'm writing for the joy of it.

BOOK NEWS !!!

pssst!!!!!!

can you keep a secret?
me neither.

that's why i'm SO glad i didn't have to sit on this news for very long.

what news?
this news:

I SOLD ANOTHER BOOK !!!

here is the official announcement:

BUTTER author Erin Lange's BILLY D. & THE BULLY, about two very different boys who reluctantly team up to find somebody who doesn't want to be found; their only clue is an atlas full of riddles, again to Caroline Abbey at Bloomsbury Children's, for publication in Fall 2013, by Jennifer Laughran at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (NA).

i want to tell you i'm excited, but that word doesn't begin to describe how i feel. i am over the moon.
this book started with two characters i just could not get out of my head. i wrote scene after scene for them before i ever really knew their story, because i liked them so much and just wanted to hang out with them. actually finding their story and getting it all down on paper was one of the biggest challenges i've ever faced as a writer, but the struggle was worth it to be able to introduce them to all of you.

Happy Day !!!
:D :D :D :D :D :D

resolutions in review

i don't really do resolutions, but i did start this year with some loose goals in mind, and i blogged about those goals in this post.
and because i'm masochistic, i thought i'd review those goals and share how i failed or succeeded.

Reading:

*i will read more adult books this year.
-- okay, i didn't exactly rock this goal, but i DID just finish the adult book, World War Z, so i'm giving myself a pass on this one.

*i will read outside my favorite genres.
-- score! i read a lot more contemporary YA this year and took a dive into the world of zombies (currently reading my 3rd zombie tale of 2011 right now) and also picked up a few contemp books with magical realism or paranormal twists.

*i will read more ...period.
-- it was not looking good for this resolution for the first 3/4 of the year, but thanks to some NaNo-Fail, i cleared out an entire month to go on a reading spree, and i definitely made a dent in the TBR pile.

Writing:

*i will try writing something outside of my comfort zone.
-- well... i tried. i guess i'm still trying, but i haven't gotten very far. the NaNo project is definitely outside of my comfort zone, and it's not totally abandoned... yet. we'll see what comes in the new year.

*i will write something without curse words...
-- again, i point to the manuscript in limbo. it's F-bomb free. also, i spent a decent amount of time editing curse words out of BUTTER while working with my editor.

*i will edit edit edit! ...without sacrificing writing.
-- hmm. 50% success on this one. i certainly finished all of my edits, but i did not spend as much time writing something new as i had hoped. however, it did take months and months to basically REWRITE all of Billy D, so i suppose that counts.

i thought of writing a new blog with new resolutions, but looking at this list, i see the goals would be exactly the same. read more. write more. try to break out of my own box.

what about you? did your resolutions stick?

let's get loud

you know what you should do when you just finished revisions for your editor and probably have another round coming soon? when the next item on your list is to polish up your newest manuscript so your agent can submit that baby? when you're way behind on chores and have been neglecting your boyfriend and your dog and your friends and especially neglecting that alleged "next" book idea that you've been sitting on for over a year? YOU KNOW WHAT YOU SHOULD DO THEN??

you should totally start writing something new.

...and by should, i mean absolutely definitely should NOT!
but inspiration is a pain in the ass like that. it comes up at the most inconvenient times, and for me, it usually comes in screaming.

there's an idea that's been cooking in the back of my brain for awhile, but i've been ignoring it, because it wasn't part of the plan. (the plan being to dutifully edit BUTTER, then revise and submit BILLY D, then hopefully spend my beloved NaNo month drafting GRIM and then pay attention to the voices in my head.)

i like things to be linear, see. i like to be on a schedule.

but the left and right side of my brains are always warring on this point, and sometimes the creative voice wins out over the logical one.

so despite my best efforts to ignore the voices... i somehow ended up with 20 minutes worth of voice recordings, 3 lined sheets of paper packed with notes, a scene-by-scene outline and a brand new book file on my laptop.

that seems to have silenced the cacophony in my brain for now, but i'm really looking forward to a time very soon when i can return to this story and say to my characters - let's Get LOUD!

the importance of distance

when i hear writers talk about discipline, the advice is usually some form of "BIC" (Butt in Chair): sit down and write, even when you'd rather watch TV or play outside. force yourself to write.

this is excellent advice IN GENERAL. (i think i've already both applauded and criticized the BIC method in this blog.)
but i've realized over the past month that sometimes discipline is forcing yourself to NOT write.
when i got my incredible first beta notes on BILLY D., i was eager to jump right in and start fixing things. that's how i did it with BUTTER - got right to work, and it turned out well - so that's how i should do it this time, right? well, the same method doesn't always yield the same results.

after tearing apart BD's plot (working every day, morning and night, for weeks), i grew so frustrated, i nearly considered trunking it. i was unable to let go of passages i loved, so i squished them into new scenes where they didn't belong. i shoved my characters into situations and conversations they wouldn't naturally be in, so their voices didn't ring true. basically, i was making the book worse, because i was trying to force the manuscript into shape under some crazy self-imposed deadline instead of slowing down to let the first draft speak to me.

finally, after weeks of stress, Handsome said to me: "I think you need to get off books for a few days."
just like that. like books/writing are a drug you can overdose on.

well, Handsome is very wise, so i followed his advice. i took a whole week to clean the house, catch up on TIVO, chat on twitter - anything but touch my writing files.

when i did return to writing, i still felt a knot in my stomach about BD, so i worked on SOMETHING ELSE. i fleshed out the outline for GRIM, wrote a couple scenes and let myself feel the freedom of first-drafting.

once the wheels were spinning, i returned to BD, and surprise! it didn't seem nearly so daunting. over the next 48 hours, i deleted like crazy and churned out about 5,000 new words. that got me to a point in the manuscript where i know what needs to be added and which upcoming scenes need to go. i'm back in the groove, because i forced myself to walk away and come back later with a fresh perspective.

so, yes, "Butt in Chair" is good advice.
but so is getting your butt OUT of the chair and walking around in the real world for a little while to clear your mind.

the thing about music

i love reading other writers' playlists.
i do.
i like to see which songs i know and try to guess at what they say about the writers' books.

and i, too, write to music. actually, i listen to music when i'm brainstorming, mulling, etc... then turn the music off when it's time to type, so i'm not distracted.
i only created an actual "playlist" in the ipod for a book once (and said book is trunked), but i do have certain songs i listened to over and over while writing different books - songs that will always make me think of those stories now.

but i can't share them.
not in a secret, "i-don't-want-you-in-my-head" kind of way... but because my playlists wouldn't make any sense!

i can only imagine:
- "um, ej? i thought your book was a bro-mance, and one of the bros has a disability."
- "yeah, so?"
- "so, this song is about a woman burying her husband after 40 long years of marriage."
- "yeah."
- "??"
- "well there's this one line... and the music..." *shrug*

i could come up with a reasonable playlist for BUTTER, i think, because music is such a big part of the story. i certainly listened to a lot of jazz while i was writing it, and many of those songs are even in the book. but i also listened to some angsty punk rock and weepy country tunes - songs that don't reflect my MC but that put me in the right mood for a scene or chapter. it would be the strangest mish-mash of songs ever to go on a playlist together.

so, alas, i don't share my music.
but i hope others continue to do so, because one of my favorite internet time killers is looking up playlists and making guesses about the book.

what about you? do you pick apart playlists and look for story clues, or do you just say "oh cool, i know that song!" and move on?
am i the only weirdo over-analyzing the music? :p

forest for the trees...

...or something like that.

i figure the post-NaNo glow is a good time to talk revision.

first, let me say - i suck at it.
that is, i suck at doing it on my own. last year at this time, i was finishing up the first draft of BUTTER, which - to tell the truth - didn't look that much different from the draft i sent to agents. i used a few suggestions from early beta readers and did a serious line-by-line edit, but i didn't make any big-picture changes... because all i'd heard was that people liked it, and hey, i liked it too, so what's to change? (ha.ha.ha.)

it wasn't until i got revision notes from agents that i could really see what needed to be changed. i also got a serious beta who wasn't afraid to tell me when those revisions weren't working and to give me big-picture critique like "cut this entire boring chapter." (i'm paraphrasing. Gem is honest but much more eloquent than that.)

anyway, as much as i loved the praise of my alpha readers, i found my motivation to edit came from publishing pros and other writers who basically said, "i loved x,y and z, but these other bits really suck."
it worked for me, because it made my stubborn little writer heart say, "oh YEAH? well watch this!"
and suddenly i learned how to revise. i found the courage to press the delete key on an entire chapter. i managed to shuffle up scenes, change the timeline of major plot events and still sew everything back together. what a breakthrough! now i'll be able to hack up my next book all on my own!

not so much.

it turns out i still need that feedback. i thrive on the criticism. a one-line crit comment can cause an entire new chapter to explode open in my brain. But without that input, i stare at my chapters all cozily knit together and can't see how to rip them apart.
so i'm settling for my line-by-line edits on BILLY D, then rushing this baby to betas, so they can tell me what sucks and inspire me to start hacking.

...and i suspect my biggest revisions may still be to come, when i get my editorial letter for BUTTER.

what about you? at which stage do you do your biggest revisions/rewrites? and how many do you do? as varied as the writing process is from person to person - i'll bet we're even more diverse when it comes to revisions.

word count wednesday - fifth and final

it is the morning of December 1st, and that means some of you may still be sleeping off your NaNoWriMo hangover.
some others of you may be pointing and laughing at the folks with the NaNo hangover, saying "see? glad i didn't do that this year."

as for me, i hit my 50K on Sunday.
finishing a few days early is like drinking a lot of water and taking advil before you go to bed. it helps prevent the hangover, so i'm feeling pretty good. ;)

my final word count in the NaNo validator was 50,950 !!!

since i had written nine chapters of this book prior to november and because i went on a writing spree monday on my day off to finish the whole darn thing, my total WC for the full manuscript is almost 72,000, including these two words: "THE END."

so yeah, of course i'm feeling all kinds of cheery about that, but here's what i really want to say:
whether you have 72,000 words or 7,200... YOU should be celebrating too!
i've mentioned before that BUTTER was a NaNo novel last year, and i didn't even get halfway to the goal before it got derailed. and as you know, that all worked out okay.

so if you didn't hit 50K, i hope you will continue to work on whatever projects you started in november. if you DID hit 50K, i hope you'll come back to your MS after a few days or weeks off and sit down to revise Revise REVISE. because as we writers all know, the first draft is just the beginning.
we also know that november may be a whole lot of fun, but writing is a year-round job and a lifelong passion.

take that momentum from NaNo and use it to propel you into the new year. however many words you wrote... you are that many words closer to making a dream come true. keep the momentum going!

best of luck. you are ALL AWESOME, regardless of word count.

for the win

research

i hear stories of writers who spend years researching a topic before starting a story - who interview experts, read text books, etc... to absorb all the facts they want to put into their fiction.

other writers i know make it all up as they go along in the first draft and save the fact-checking for revisions, which i imagine can mean lots and lots of rewriting, depending on which facts they got wrong.

i think i fall somewhere in the middle - researching as i go.

for my current WIP, i had to do quite a bit of preliminary work, because i knew before i started that one of my characters would have Down Syndrome. i had to compile medical notes, research family dynamics and do a lot of observing.
it's probably the most research i've done before actually putting fingers to keyboard.

what happens more often is a situation arises in the story that requires me to know what i'm talking about. if i can see this coming, i'll stop, do a day of research, then get back to writing.
(example: i had a quirky scene that required one of my characters to know a little something about small towns and geography. i decided to make that quirk a thread throughout the entire story, but i had already used up the limited facts i knew in one scene. so i had to stop writing and spend some time expanding my knowledge base in order to pull the thread through.)

occasionally, i'll fall into the pantser category, when the writing is just going too fast and smooth for me to stop. who can be bothered with research when the facts i'm making up work so well?!
i don't let myself get too far, though, because i don't want to rewrite thousands and thousands of words all based on a mistaken fact. what i'll do is stop at the end of the chapter and do some fact-checking. then, if i got anything wrong, i'll fix it. but sometimes even waiting a whole chapter is too long.
(example: i had an entire chapter and plot development that hinged on a certain type of government office being open at a certain time of night and operating a certain way. i did some vague research online, but it wasn't until the chapter was over that i actually contacted someone at this office to verify my facts. turns out not only is the office closed and its operations nothing like i described - but it doesn't even exist in the town where i put it! (*&$%$&^#). i couldn't bear to rewrite an entire chapter in the middle of NaNo, but you better believe i spent half an hour typing up a list of corrections and plot changes in my revision notes. the good news is, the changes will make this little piece of plot better anyway.)

since that incident, i've been very careful to check my facts every step of the way - whether it's placing a building on the correct street corner or confirming a state law. but i'm still doing the research as i go, letting the story tell me what it is i need to look up.

i'm curious what other writers do!
*if you do loads of research ahead of time, how much of it do you think goes unused - and do you think that time would have been better spent writing? or do you think having the knowledge still makes the work better/more informed in the long run?
*if you're a pantser and later find a factual error that requires changes in 23 chapters, does it make your revision process more stressful? or do you prefer rewriting later to stopping and starting while in the middle of a first draft?

word count wednesday 2

first of all, thanks to the cool people who posted BUTTER on goodreads! :D (and thanks to Susanne for letting me know about it!)
i signed up for the author program to "claim" the book, but i don't quite have GR all figured out yet, so we'll see how that goes. (i'm ejwriter, by the way, if any of you are looking for me on GR. i'm looking for you too!)

okay, on to word count wednesday! i am at... 17,230 words.

it's good, no? if you're following the suggested NaNo pace, you should be at about 15,000 words. so woohoo! i'm 2200 ahead!
however, i'm about 2K behind my own schedule.

see, at the start of the month, OCD EJ wrote out a chart/calendar for the month of november. i included all my appointments and plans that would keep me from writing and figured out about how much i could write on each day. since there are a few days coming up when i won't be able to write at all, i front-loaded my NaNo so i would be ahead and not playing catch-up later.
according to my little anal calendar, i should be at 25K by Saturday. yeah... not gonna happen.

a lot of folks thrive on the rush of catching up, but i am not the tortoise. i am the hare. i have to be the hare, or i'll get overwhelmed by how far there still is to go and give up.
also, i know how things can happen to derail your NaNo efforts entirely. i know - because this happened to me last year - that some really nasty stuff can go down that basically stops NaNo in its tracks. in fact, the anniversary of that nasty stuff is one week from today... so more on that next wednesday.
(in other words: ...to be continued.)

word count wednesday 1

happy first week of NaNoWriMo!

at least, i hope your week is happy. mine is fairly miserable, as i've started NaNo with a nasty cold. all of my words are alternately fueled by fever and cold meds. although, being home sick has its upside - like plenty of time to write. that's why my word count is already....

5,568 words!

i know some folks out there have already blown that word count out of the water, but that's pretty great for me - especially considering all of those words are from Monday. (yesterday's elections required me to work 13 hours). but i'm back on the couch with my tissues and my laptop today, so hopefully i can bang out another few thousand words and stay ahead of the game.

observations from week one:

- for me, writing fast = writing sloppy.
(lots of little typos and missing or misspelled words)

- i must break the "don't look back" rule.
i just can't confidently move forward on a book unless i look back at yesterday's chapters and at least do a cursory edit.

- my outline is a jail cell.
it's a lot easier to write fast and furious if i'm not bound by my outline. when i hit a scene i don't feel inspired to write or don't know how to transition into, i slow down. i may be in danger of veering off the outline just to keep pushing forward.

it remains to be seen whether NaNo will work for BILLY D. the way it worked for BUTTER, and i may end up having to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. (yikes! i hope not!) but i just don't know if NaNo is right for every book... just as it's not right for every writer.
Phoebe North wrote this great post on her blog: "NaNo No More." (link! click it!) she makes some good points about NaNo and why it might not help you accomplish what you really want to accomplish. (and she writes from experience, having done NaNo several times, both "winning" and "losing.")

if you're still committed to making NaNo work for you, check out the NaNo word sprints on twitter. (link! click it and follow!)

don't forget to share your word count in the comments, and tell me your own week one observations!

introducing...

...word count wednesday!

i'm going to do a little feature every wednesday during november for everyone participating in NaNoWriMo. if you're still deciding whether to do NaNo, please see the post i did here for encouragement. (link! click it!)

on wednesdays, i'll post my running word count and invite you to share yours. (don't worry. if last year is any indication, my WC is bound to be embarrassingly abysmal. we'll lament our failures together. or celebrate your success or whatever.)

so right now, our word counts are a big collective ZERO. but that doesn't mean you can't be gearing up. folks all over the world are getting a head start on NaNo by writing outlines, making notes on characters, stockpiling M&Ms and stretching out their typing fingers.

personally, i am cheating a little bit. i am going to use my 50,000 words of NaNo to finish BILLY D. this is a project already started and fully outlined, but about 50K words from completion, so it works out. (i promise not to count a single word written before November 1st in my NaNo tally.)

my prep also involves finishing up any books i'm currently reading, because i know i will not have time to read... clearing my calendar of November commitments, particularly on weekends when i do the most writing... and researching local write-ins.

so i want to know - how are you prepping for November? do you know what you're writing yet, or are you a pantser to the core who's just going to wing it?

head Wall BANG

i went on a tear writing yesterday. i mean, really - i nearly set my laptop on fire!

want to see what i wrote? here it is:

garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
aha! plot! there you are!

...about three thousand words of garbage before i got back to my plot thread. normally, that would make me want to bang my head against a wall and give up on the WIP - okay, actually i STILL wanted to bang my head against a wall - but i did not feel inclined to walk away from the book.

i am generally not of that clan of writers who say "it's okay to write crap." personally, if i'm writing crap, the story is probably crap too, and i get bored of my own crap and move on to something else.
but in this case, i feel deeply committed to the characters and the story. so even though i spent a whole day writing scenes that will probably not even make it to the beta stage of this MS, it doesn't feel like time wasted. in fact, i'm excited to finish and get into revisions, so i can go back and erase all that crap - or at least figure out how to condense it.

i think i've said this before, but for me, the only manuscripts that have any chance of going anywhere are the ones i know i'll be willing to go back and revise a thousand times.
garbage can be rewritten. crap can be erased. hell, plot line can be changed. as long as the story has heart and character, i know i'm still committed.

or maybe i just need to BE committed - because only a crazy person would spend an entire day of vacation writing crap and banging their head against a wall.

p.s. if this doesn't sound crazy to you at all... you are probably a writer too. ;)

move along

note to self:
if the writing's not moving, neither is the story.

my first completed manuscript took more than a year to write, largely because i would hit a patch of disinterest and walk away from it for a loooong time (one break lasted 3 months).

my next completed ms took less than three months, because i never got bored writing it. the story kept propelling itself forward, to the point where it was moving so fast i had to write every day, or i wouldn't be able to keep up.

guess which book is better?

i didn't really make the connection at first, but i think the parts where i walked away for awhile as a writer are the same parts where a reader would walk away forever. if you, as the writer, aren't interested enough in what happens next, you can bet most of your readers will lose interest too.
i mentioned in an earlier blog post that i deviated from the outline in my current WIP, because i needed some action for the characters. before this deviation, i found myself writing a couple hundred words then walking away for a day or two... because i was bored. but once i changed the direction, i sat down and BAM! - 1500 words in an hour.

it made me realize my writing pace matches the story pace.
i know a scene is working if i spend an hour or two writing in the morning and still can't turn off the words. i'll dictate the next paragraphs into a voice recorder on the way to work. if the words are still coming, then i'll email myself a couple more paragraphs from work during lunch. then i'll transcribe all of it into the manuscript that night and probably write another thousand words or so.

that doesn't mean it's always good writing or that the whole chapter won't get deleted later, but it does let me know the story is moving.

this might not be true for everyone, but if you hit a point in your book that has you wishing you were doing the dishes instead of writing, it's worth asking yourself what's happening in the story - the answer may be "nothing."

things are not always what they seem

stick with me. this post really is about writing.

so, about ten years ago, i took a whirlwind trip to Europe and was most excited to see Venice, Italy. it's the closest city to where my ancestors came from, and really - who can't fall in love from afar when they see pictures of a place like that?

but arriving in Venezia shattered my enthusiasm.
we got off the train late at night, and the first impressions to assault our senses were neon lights and a foul smell. that arrival was followed by more disappointment the next day. the maps we were using to get around were completely worthless. (i mean, i literally thought someone was playing a prank on us. there were streets on the map that didn't exist and streets in real life that didn't exist on the map.) that night, we were physically chased down the street by people grasping for our purses or pockets and were frightened to see police shouldering some extreme looking guns.

by the end of that day - and i will never forget this moment - i was sitting at a sidewalk table outside a pizzeria waiting for my parents to place an order and feeling like i might cry. i felt frightened by the heavily armed officers coming down one side of the street and the filthy homeless man shuffling up the other side. i was squinting my eyes, trying to block out the garish carnival lights that had lit up the streets with neon everywhere we'd been.

and that's when i heard it.
the most beautiful operatic voice i'd ever heard - a tenor and pitch perfect - singing something sweet and slow that echoed all the way down the stone street. i opened my eyes to look for the source of the sound, and the first thing i noticed is that the lights around me were not actually neon. in fact, there were few lights on this street at all. the only illumination came from the reflection of twinkling lights bouncing off the water across from me.
that water lapped over a set of stairs that descended mysteriously from the street right down under the surface - a path that once led somewhere no longer accessable - a history now buried under water.

the singing continued, grew stronger, taking advantage of the perfect acoustics on this street. i studied each passerby, but no one appeared to be singing. i checked the officers. no music there, but i did hear their laughter now, their friendly greetings to others on the road - including me.
i looked back to my magical stairs that disappeared into the water and saw the homeless man stop to rest there on those steps. and that's when i realized... he was the tenor.
the most beautiful sound i'd ever heard was coming from a man who sheltered, ugly, american me had automatically been afraid of. watching him effortlessly make music that filled every space around me, in a setting that i now saw as romantic, not garish at all, i suddenly felt my whole perspective shifting.
the story i'd been telling myself about this street wasn't the true story at all. i just wouldn't allow myself to step back and see the beauty that was really there, because i was already in the wrong mindset and trying to impose my negativity on everything.

after that, we tossed our maps in the trash and embraced Venice for what it is - a place to get lost in - because everywhere you go in that city feels like a secret discovery, and there is no ugly, really. there is only different lighting and different colorful characters to make every corner feel unique and special.
it is - and probably always will be - my most favorite city in the world.

nothing will ever compare to that revelation there outside the pizzeria, but i occassionally have similar breakthroughs that remind me of that moment. breakthroughs in which i realize i've been trying to mold the facts into my predisposed notions instead of letting the facts shape my ideas.
i had one of these moments last night with my WIP.

- i wrote an outline. i know where i'm going. so how can i possibly be this lost?
- ah! because i'm going the wrong way. i am following a map that doesn't accurately reflect the streets around me. i am trying to force a path that doesn't exist and failing to see the opportunities right in front of me.

so i deviated from the outline. i deviated in a way that changed the whole nut of the story. i deviated in a way that allowed my characters to breath and gave them something to do. and i heard that opera singer's voice in my head and knew i was really seeing my story properly for the first time.

and then, of course, because i am still OCD me - i rewrote the entire outline. ;)

every picture tells a story...

...don't it?

the folks over at wordle have come up with just what writers need - a new online distraction to help us procrastinate writing!

actually, i think this particular diversion has been around for awhile, but i've only just discovered what a time suck it can be.

here's how it works: you paste a large amount of text into a box, and wordle will create a collage of the most common words, showing you which ones feature most prominently in your manuscript (or blog or whatever you choose).

Here's my wordle for my WIP, Billy D. and the Bully:

(click to enlarge)

it's a fun toy, obviously, but it's also educational. notice two of the most prominent words in my jumble are "just" and "like." the same was true when i created a wordle for Butter.

i guess i just, like, can't help myself, y'know?

so you can use this as a tool to see which words you might be over-using, then do a search and destroy in your MS. or you can use it as a guide for which themes or characters are emerging in a significant way.

(i mean, whatever you have to tell yourself to rationalize the time wasted playing around on the site. that's what i'm doing. rationalization is my friend.)

now excuse me, i have to go wordle this blog post...

learn as you go

my dad (AKA the blogging police) pointed out i've been slacking here.

perhaps that's because i'm in a bit of a "path-to-publishing" lull. the agent search is over; the submission nail-biting has yet to begin. i just don't have a lot of insight to share during this brief limbo stage.

instead, i've been studying and learning. and by that - i mean writing.
i learn something new with every book, and i thought i'd share a few of those lessons here.

Sammy Vegas
the first real novel i ever attempted to write taught me:

• without an outline, my stories amble off course and never get finished.
• writing a book is time-consuming and requires some sacrifices to find that time.
• most important, it taught me: maybe i don't suck at this, and maybe i kind of love it... a lot.

Losers (Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah)
the first novel i ever finished taught me:

• a good hook/concept is nothing without a well-planned plot.
• third person with multiple MCs is not the right format for me.
• most important, it taught me: i can get to "The End," and even then the book might not be good enough... and that's actually okay, because i have this other idea...

Butter
the first novel i ever queried taught me:

• how to edit - really edit. cut scenes, re-order chapters, insert new story elements and completely rewrite multiple chapters from scratch... all after i thought i was "done."
• what kind of stories i want to write and what i really want to say.
• most important, it taught me: finishing a book is really just the beginning. and with any luck, this one's not done yet.

Billy D. & the Bully (working title)
the book i'm writing right now taught me:

• not every book gets written at the same pace; not every book is built via the same process (for me anyway).
• writing is the best distraction from all that "path-to-publishing" neurosis.
• most of all, it taught me: ....well, i don't know the "most of all" yet. i'll let ya know when i'm all done. ;)

one of the many things my agent and i talked about before signing was how every book you write is important. maybe it's not the book you query; maybe it's not the book that sells; but you had to write it for a reason. sometimes you just don't know what that reason is until you're done.

what about you? what have you learned from your own writing?