Where Stories go to Die...

I'm going to tell you something that your other writer friends won't:

(Sometimes you have to let a story die.)

GASP!!!

This is NOT the same as giving up. And it's NOT the same as expecting perfection with the first draft. I'm not telling you to stop writing. 

The truth is, though, sometimes we as writers get in the way of our own stories. Sometimes all we can see is our own expectations of what we think the story SHOULD BE rather than what it NEEDS TO BE. And sometimes the story we WANT to write isn't the story we NEED to write.

FUCK what you want to write. Throw that shit away. Delete it. Burn it. Get quiet, banish your demons (or learn to dance with them), and MAKE ROOM FOR THE STORY YOU NEED TO WRITE.

And tell me about it! Does this sound familiar to you? Have you ever wrestled with the stories in your head? Leave me a comment here and tell me about it! Or follow me on twitter and talk to me there. That's where I live anyway.

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE: The Story Begins Here...

PRE-ORDER BEGINS TODAY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND READERS OF ALL AGES!!

The Road to Nowhere launches October 15 for the Amazon Kindle but if you're smart and click my link before then you can pre-order this groundbreaking Young Adult novel for just $2.99!!

Click my link! Pre-order today!

But what if you don't have a Kindle?? NO WORRIES. Anyone can read a Kindle book, on ANY device, with the FREE Kindle app. This link will explain how.

 (Hint: look at the right side of the page, just under the pre-order button.)

The Road to Nowhere is about hope, and I DO sincerely hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Adventures in Self-Publishing!

That giddy feeling you get when click "publish" on the Kindle Direct Publishing page...

...Followed by hours of impatient checking and rechecking to see if your book is live yet. 

Goddammit Amazon! You make it so easy and yet! And yet!

Available VERY SOON to pre-order for your kindle:

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

Adventures in Self Publishing!

I don't like to follow the rules.

I don't like to do something just because it's convention, or because someone older and wiser than me says I should.

I'm kinda stupid that way.

All my life--well, at least since I figured out that books are things that people write--I've wanted to write books. And all my life I've been waiting for permission to do so. 

But I don't need anybody's fucking permission. I've just rediscovered that. So I'm going to stick with self-publishing. 

Adventures in Fiction Writing! Part Ten: Querying Your Frickin' Heart Out

You read my pathetic attempt at a first draft for my Query. And you didn't laugh TOO hard, which I totally appreciate. I wish that was all I had to do, but unfortunately it's not. That was just the beginning. Now I have to trim it down and tighten it up. And I'm going to share that process with you! (Feeling lucky?)

Edits in red. Text that is strike-through indicates I'm considering removing it.
Here goes: 

Second Draft

All hope is never lost. Not even in Nowhere. Good line. That stays. 

Cerulean and Amarillo Saffron are sisters separated by guilt, regret, and a secret the Ardor Laboratory Corporation will go to any lengths to protect. Only hope can reunite them and save the Lost Children of Nowhere. Amarillo hasn't seen her baby sister since the day she disappeared from their family home nine years ago. The older sister is plagued by guilt: if she hadn't left home, if she hadn't sought an exciting life in Somewhere, maybe she could have saved Cerulean. A chance assignment given to her by her boss, Mayor Naples Orange of Somewhere, proves to Amarillo that there was nothing she could have done all those years ago to protect Cerulean. It also gives the spunky young woman something else she sorely needs--hope that it is still possible to save her sister, and all the other Lost Children who are trapped in the neighboring city of Nowhere.

All Amarillo has to do is find a way to get inside Nowhere Rewrite! To save the Lost Children, Amarillo has to get inside Nowhere. That is no small feat. No one in Somewhere can remember anyone ever being able to get in or out of their sister city, except maybe Nowhere's mayor, the boogeyman Mayor Blue. But Amarillo knows she can do it, even if she has to do it alone. Mayor Orange is busy with his pet road project, the Roy G. Biv highway that will connect Somewhere and Nowhere and hopefully spur economic growth. Also there is the issue of the continued hope theft from the emotion recycling plant. At first Amarillo thinks she may be able to turn to Deputy Mayor Scarlet for help, but when she spots him inside Nowhere--on the other side of the seemingly impenetrable force field that seals that city off from the rest of the world--with an armload of stolen emotion actuators, she knows he is up to no good.

What is Somewhere's deputy mayor doing? Maybe it has something to do with The Outlawz, the elusive gang of saboteurs who have been attacking the road construction from the very beginning. Both Mayor Orange and the Somewhere Times have surmised that The Outlawz are probably a youth gang comprised of Lost Children. No one has any suggestions about what the saboteurs' motives might be, but when Amarillo sees Deputy Scarlet inside Nowhere with the pilfered hope, she gets an idea.

The more Amarillo digs into the problem of the Lost Children, the more she realizes it's not just a Nowhere issue. It's a Somewhere issue. The histories of Nowhere and Somewhere are inextricably connected, and they are tied to the secret that the Ardor Labs Corporation--the largest employer in Somewhere and the biggest supporter of the Roy G. Biv highway--will do anything to keep buried. Amarillo finds an ally in Somewhere Times reporter Fern Viridian, and together, they--along with Mayor Orange--fight to unravel that secret and free the Lost Children.

What Amarillo doesn't know is that the Lost Children have not been sitting passively by, waiting to be rescued. Led by her intrepid little sister Cerulean and former Outlawz members Azure and Denim, they have been fighting: against the other Outlawz, against Deputy Mayor Scarlet, and even against the evil Mayor Blue. When the battle finally unites the forces from Somewhere and the forces from Nowhere, they are ready to stand together and vanquish their foes with their strength and their hope restored.

ROAD TO NOWHERE, a young adult urban fantasy novel, is complete at just over 77,000 words.

Well...it's a start? I'm submitting this slightly-revised second draft to The Saturday Slash query critique because I really super-duper need help in knowing how to trim this sucker down.

Adventures in Fiction Writing! Part Nine: Query Writing the Hard Way

I was going to subtitle this post Query Writing for Dummies, because I'm a dummy and I'm embarking on the first draft of the query letter for my MS (that's manuscript for you non-writing types), but I was afraid that y'all would assume that I'm calling YOU dummies. Then I got all flustered and turned around and was all: what am I going to call this post, then? And I chased those anxieties down the rabbit hole for a bit. Eventually I made it out and remembered what I'm supposed to be doing here:

Writing the goddamned first draft of my goddamned query letter.

So let's get the fuck on with it!

The very best piece of advice I ever received concerning query writing comes from a query-writing help book my amazing and super supportive boyfriend Brandon bought me. It's called Make it Catchy: The Quintessential Guide to Writing Query Letters by Marta Acosta. It's available as an ebook and you can buy it here.

Acosta says:

I suggest that you write a first draft without worrying about the word count. Then revise your letter to make it as tight and as intriguing as possible.

If you're like me, you read that line and breathed a sigh of relief. Because I've been pretty much paralyzed by the thought of having to summarize my book in a catchy, unique way--while following all the rules of convention and without getting TOO unique--all in 750 words or less. But I think I can give it a pretty good go without being shackled by the word count.

Here it is, in all its lengthy glory:

Query Letter: First Draft

All hope is never lost. Not even in Nowhere.

Cerulean and Amarillo Saffron are sisters separated by guilt, regret, and a secret the Ardor Laboratory Corporation will go to any lengths to protect. Only hope can reunite them and save the Lost Children of Nowhere. Amarillo hasn't seen her baby sister since the day she disappeared from their family home nine years ago. The older sister is plagued by guilt: if she hadn't left home, if she hadn't sought an exciting life in Somewhere, maybe she could have saved Cerulean. A chance assignment given to her by her boss, Mayor Naples Orange of Somewhere, proves to Amarillo that there was nothing she could have done all those years ago to protect Cerulean. It also gives the spunky young woman something else she sorely needs--hope that it is still possible to save her sister, and all the other Lost Children who are trapped in the neighboring city of Nowhere.

All Amarillo has to do is find a way to get inside Nowhere, which is no small feat as no one in Somewhere can remember anyone ever being able to get in or out of their sister city, except maybe Nowhere's mayor, the boogeyman Mayor Blue. But Amarillo knows she can do it, even if she has to do it alone. Mayor Orange is busy with his pet road project, the Roy G. Biv highway that will connect Somewhere and Nowhere and hopefully spur economic growth. Also there is the issue of the continued hope theft from the emotion recycling plant. At first Amarillo thinks she may be able to turn to Deputy Mayor Scarlet for help, but when she spots him inside Nowhere--on the other side of the seemingly impenetrable force field that seals that city off from the rest of the world--with an armload of stolen emotion actuators, she knows he is up to no good.

But what, exactly, is Somewhere's deputy mayor doing? Maybe it has something to do with The Outlawz, the elusive gang of saboteurs who have been attacking the road construction from the very beginning. Both Mayor Orange and the Somewhere Times have surmised that The Outlawz are probably a youth gang comprised of Lost Children. No one has any suggestions about what the saboteurs' motives might be, but when Amarillo sees Deputy Scarlet inside Nowhere with the pilfered hope, she gets an idea.

The more Amarillo digs into the problem of the Lost Children, the more she realizes it's not just a Nowhere issue. It's a Somewhere issue. The histories of Nowhere and Somewhere are inextricably connected, and they are tied to the secret that the Ardor Labs Corporation--the largest employer in Somewhere and the biggest supporter of the Roy G. Biv highway--will do anything to keep buried. Amarillo finds an ally in Somewhere Times reporter Fern Viridian, and together, they--along with Mayor Orange--fight to unravel that secret and free the Lost Children.

What Amarillo doesn't know is that the Lost Children have not been sitting passively by, waiting to be rescued. Led by her intrepid little sister Cerulean and former Outlawz members Azure and Denim, they have been fighting: against the other Outlawz, against Deputy Mayor Scarlet, and even against the evil Mayor Blue. When the battle finally unites the forces from Somewhere and the forces from Nowhere, they are ready to stand together and vanquish their foes with their strength and their hope restored.

ROAD TO NOWHERE, a young adult urban fantasy novel, is complete at just over 77,000 words.

This is obviously waaaaaay too long. Also, it's very rough. But it's a start. Now I NEED your help. I am completely out of my element with this query writing business. I've read helpful books and helpful blogs on the subject, but what I really need is feedback. PLEASE LEAVE ME COMMENTS. Tell me, if anything, in this first draft works, and what doesn't. What should I cut? Should I add anything?

HELP ME!!

Reads of 2014...So Far...

I've read a lot of good books so far this year, and I'd like to share them with you.

(1) Dr. Sleep, Stephen King

(2) The Plot Against Hip Hop, Nelson George*

(3) The Basic Eight, Daniel Handler*

(4) The Silver Linings Playbook, Matthew Quick

(5) Twittering from the Circus of the Dead, Joe Hill

It probably needs to be said that this title is actually a short story. It also needs to be said that it's written entirely as a series of tweets. It MOST DEFINITELY needs to be said that the author, Joe Hill, does twitter better than probably everyone else on twitter. You should follow him. Even if you don't read horror. Even if you don't read. Even if you don't have eyes or opposable thumbs. 

(6) Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh* 

(7) Truth in Advertising, John Kenney*

(8) Looking for Alaska, John Green* 

(9) The Cutie, Donald Westlake*

Yes, I chose this last book purely based on its cover. And it was a damned good book.

(10) 12 Years a Slave, Solomon Northup* 

(11) Somebody Owes Me Money, Donald Westlake

(12) An Abundance of Katherines, John Green

(13) Beyond Hades, Luke Romyn

(14) The Charm School, Nelson Demille*

(15) Paper Towns, John Green*

(16) The Bank Shot, Donald Westlake 

Currently I'm reading Word of Honor by Nelson Demille:

What does this list say about me? I read a lot of books by men. This year I've sort of been having literary love affairs with Donald Westlake and John Green. I like books in which murders take place. I love political intrigue. 

All books denoted with * are contenders for my end-of-the-year top ten list

 But this is subject to change! 

I love books!!

Adventures in Fiction Writing! Part Eight: GRADE MY HOOKS!!

When you're attempting to have your novel traditionally published, your query letter is the most important part of your submission package. And your HOOK is the most important part of your query letter.

I know not everyone agrees with me but everyone else is full of shit and that's fine. My journey is my own, and your journey is yours. I don't have all the answers just most of them.  But I DO know this: the HOOK is the opening of your query letter, and it's how you suck potential agents and publishers into your story. 

In other words, the HOOK is how you reel 'em in. And remember, the agent or publisher you're courting will likely read 67 other query letters the day he/she reads yours, so you wanna make sure your HOOK is damn good.

And now I'm asking for your help. Before I throw my query letters out to the universe, I want to make sure I've dotted all my T's and crossed all my I's and written the hook-iest hooks possible. So I'm posting them here. Read them, love them, hate them, laugh at them, be intrigued by them. AND THEN TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF THEM. Leave me a comment or 2 or three. Which hook is the best? The worst? WHY? 

Then find me on twitter (right here!) and tell me there, too!

Remember when I wrote that it takes an army to publish a book? (Adventures in Fiction Writing! Part 7) Well now I'm asking you to enlist. Will you be my literary soldier?

Okay! Here we go....HOOKS:

(1) All hope is never lost. Not even in Nowhere.

(2) No one in Nowhere can exist without hope, even if that hope is stolen.

(3) When children go missing, it's assumed they're Somewhere. But what if they were Nowhere?

(4) The road to Nowhere cost several lives, but saves many more.

(5) More than the contested Roy G. Biv highway separates the free citizens of Somewhere from the Lost Children of Nowhere.

(6) To save an army of Lost Children, Amarillo Saffron uncovers hidden secrets and battles real and figurative demons, armed with nothing but her unwavering hope.*

(7) The road to Nowhere means freedom for the Lost Children, death for the evil Mayor Blue, and an unceremonious end to the nefarious goings-on at the Ardor Labs corporation.*

(8) Cerulean and Amarillo Saffron are sisters separated by guilt, regret, and a nine-year-old secret. Only hope can reunite them and save the Lost Children of Nowhere.*

Got wordy there at the end, didn't I? Hmmm... Wonder what that means. Now! GRADE MY HOOKS!!!

*This hook was shortened for twitter.

BOOK REVIEW: Paper Towns by John Green

Today I review Paper Towns by John Green.

Here's what I'm not doing:

1. I'm not reviewing The Fault in Our Stars
2. I'm not commenting on John Green as an individual
3. I'm not commenting on the so-called 'John Green Effect' in YA publishing (You can read about that here, among other places.)

Why am I not doing those things? Well, I'm not reviewing The Fault in Our Stars because I haven't read it. And to be honest, I haven't read it yet simply because everyone else in the world has. I discovered John Green through Looking for Alaska, and when I did I felt like I should give his other, not-fault-in-our-stars books some attention. Because they're probably jealous of how everyone dotes on that other book.

I'm not commenting on John Green either as an individual or as a force in publishing because, frankly, I feel like enough has already been said about how awesome/dangerous/well-meaning/privileged/white/male he is. And furthermore, although I love writers (I am one!) and I understand that books come from writers, it is my fervent belief that books should be judged on the basis of their own merits. A good book should never suffer because it was written by an asshole. On the same token, a horrible book should never be lauded just because the guy who wrote it is super cool and everyone's best friend. 

So, without further ado, here is my review of Paper Towns:

(Naturally, SPOILER ALERT)

Paper Towns might be one of the best books I have ever read. (Is that a fangirlish enough start to this review?) The plot is so simple: childhood friends and longtime neighbors Quentin and Margo enjoy a night of vengeful revelry in the last month of their senior year of high school and then Margo disappears and Quentin devotes the remainder of his high school career to finding her. That's really it. But it's also so not it. Because the story is about so much more than that. It's about:

• Margo's imagined relationship to her childhood memory of Quentin
• Quentin's imagined relationship to his childhood memory of Margo
• Margo and Quentin's actual relationship
• Margo's fractured relationship to her parents
• Margo's parents' idealized relationship to the daughter they wish they had
• Margo's relationship with her hometown of Orlando
• Quentin's relationships with his friends Ben and Radar
• Quentin's relationship with his parents, who are both therapists
• The image Quentin holds in his mind of Margo
• The image Quentin holds in his mind of himself
• The idea that how people imagine one another bears little resemblance to the way people actually are
• And so much more!!

I could go on for days about the intricate and hugely meaningful ideas that form the foundation for the story behind Paper Towns. I'm convinced that it is the simplicity of the plot that allows room for the rich character development in this novel. Paper Towns is the kind of book that I believe would make a horrible movie. Because not a whole hell of a lot happens. After Margo and Quentin's all-night life-changing vandalism spree there's just not a ton of action. But please don't confuse that lack of action with tedium, because if you did you would be so wrong.

Paper Towns is witty. Early in the book I came across this line: 

Both my parents are therapists, which means that I am really goddamned well adjusted. 

And I knew I was in for a treat. 

Here's the set-up:

The protaganist, Quentin, is the only child of therapists. He's not exactly a social outcast, but he is the kind of non-band-geek who only hangs out with band geeks. He grew up next to Margo Roth Spiegelman in a sprawling Orlando suburb that was mostly indistinguishable from all the other sprawling Orlando suburbs. And, Margo, well...I should let John Green tell you about Margo. Because whatever lame summary I come up with couldn't do her justice.

...She was the only legend who lived next door to me. Margo Roth Spiegelman, whose six-syllable name was often spoken in its entirety with a kind of quiet reverence. Margo Roth Spiegelman, whose stories of epic adventures would blow through school like a summer storm: an old guy living in Hot Coffee, Mississippi, taught Margo how to play the guitar. Margo Roth Spiegelman, who spent three days traveling with the circus--they thought she had potential on the trapeze. Margo Roth Spiegelman, who drank a cup f herbal tea with The Mallionaires backstage after a concert in St. Louis while they drank whiskey. Margo Roth Spiegelman, who got into that concert by telling the bouncer that she was the bassist's girlfriend, and didn't they recognize her, and come on guys seriously, my name is Margo Roth Spiegelman and if you go back there and ask the bassist to take one look at me, he will tell you that I either am his girlfriend or he wishes I was, and then the bouncer did so, and then the bassist said "yeah that's my girlfriend let her in the show," and then later the bassist wanted to hook up with her and she rejected the bassist from The Mallionaires.

The stories, when they were shared, inevitably ended with, I mean, can you believe it? We often could not, but they always proved true. 

Quiet Quentin, practical Quentin, smart Quentin, grew up in awe of Margo Roth Spiegelman. And he loved her in a sort of hero-worshipping way. But Margo always traveled in cooler circles. That is, until the day she found out her boyfriend had been cheating on her. Then Margo Roth Spiegelman had to have revenge, and she needed Quentin to help her exact that revenge. As she told her confused friend: "I have to do eleven things tonight, and at least five of them involve a getaway man."

There I go quoting the book again. But that's the problem with books that are as amazing and quotable as Paper Towns. When you read them they fill you with such evangelical excitement that all you want to do is quote their lyrical lines to everyone you know so they, too, can be filled with the same excitement.

Margo and Quentin's epic Night of Eleven Probably-Illegal Tasks was a wild success. And of course, when Quentin went to school the next day he harbored unspoken hopes that his relationship with Margo was changed. Maybe now they'd be more than neighbors and sometime-friends. Maybe she would actually talk to him in public, maybe in front of the cool kids. Maybe she would even kiss him. But that wouldn't happen, because Margo was gone. It wasn't the first time she had disappeared. But it would be the last, because Margo Roth Spiegelman wasn't coming back, and in the space that was created by her absence, everyone and everything changed.

About halfway through their Night of Revenge, Margo Took Quentin to what she said was one of her favorite places in town: the Sun Trust bank building downtown. Quentin thought it a weird choice, but of course followed her all the way up to the conference room on the top floor, from which they had a view of all of Orlando through the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined one wall. Quentin called the view beautiful, but Margo scoffed:

"Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is...It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs...all those houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail...I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters."

In the days following her disappearance, Quentin thought about this and other statements Margo made that night. They suggested a level of unhappiness within her that he would once have thought impossible. But now he was confronted with the truth of it and he took it upon himself to save her.

I'd like to take a break here, to share a few words not only about Margo Roth Spiegelman, but also Alaska from Looking for Alaska, and the eponymous Katherine from An Abundance of Katherines.

I won't lie. I have a full-on awkward teenage crush on ALL of the troubled heroines I have encountered in John Green novels. My crush started with Alaska Young, continued with the final Katherine in An Abundance of Katherines, and reached a climax when I was introduced to Margo Roth Spiegelman in Paper Towns. When I read John Green's selfish, reckless, devil-may-care heroines I become a goose-pimply, heart-fluttery, stammering teenager. I wrote a love letter to them. Read it here. 

So Margo disappeared, and partly because he couldn't imagine life without her, and partly because he didn't want to, and partly because of the sad-and-enigmatic things she had said during their night together, Quentin vowed to save her. And in so doing, Quentin grew beyond himself. He grew more into the person Margo had always imagined him to be. And in the end, he did find her, but he also found that she didn't need to be saved. Moreover, Quentin discovered that Margo Roth Spiegelman was both MORE and LESS than the image of her he had carried in his heart. 

At the end of Paper Towns, Quentin and Margo Roth Spiegelman say goodbye to each other and also to the paper images they had created of one another. And they prepared to go out into the Great Beyond that awaits after childhood's end.

I truly cherished this book, and I highly recommend it. Have you read it? Share your thoughts with me in the comments!

Adventures in Fiction Writing! Part Seven: AMASSING YOUR LITERARY ARMY

If it takes a village to raise a child, then it must take an army to publish a book. An army of dedicated, bespectacled, grammar-correcting nerds who come out under the cover of darkness to further their nefarious literary schemes.

...I wish.
That would be cool, wouldn't it? Sword-wielding publishers? But alas, the reality is much more mundane than that. It DOES take an army of dedicated folks to publish a book, but it's an army of regular (albeit bookish) people. There are no moonlit meetings or secret codes. Publishing folk connect through query letters, conventions, and the occasional twitter pitch party (see #pitmad, #askagent, and #twitterpitch among others).

Finding and reaching out to your literary army can be daunting. It's time-consuming and more than a little bit intimidating. But there really are no shortcuts. Well, at least not for regular people. There have been a few previously self-published authors who achieved such stunning success on their own that agents literally courted them. (Amanda Hocking is one, Ania Ahlborn is another.) But they are the exception. Most of us writerly types have no choice but to roll up our sleeves, swallow what's left of our pride, and query.

If you've been following my Adventures in Fiction Writing series from the beginning, you'll already know how I feel about query writing. I'm sure many of you feel the same. But we need to get over ourselves. Literary agents are not monsters. And believe it or not, they want us to succeed just as much as we do. It's true! Our success is their success. Without writers, there could be no literary agents.


So take a deep breath and get ready for the query-go-round. Here's how I'm doing it. This is just my way. There are a million others. And I'm new at this, for all I know, my way might suck. But I'm giving it a go.

(1) Research literary agents who accept submissions in your genre.
(2) Make a list of 20-30 of those agents, noting their contact info, websites, and social media reach (especially twitter!!)
(3) If you're not already on twitter, GET ON TWITTER.
(4) Follow all agents you plan to query on twitter. 
(5) Write your query letter.
(6) Write it again.
(7) Write it some more.
(8) Show query letter to beta readers.
(9) Rewrite query letter.
(10) Begin submitting.
(11) While you wait for responses, follow all the writerly types you can find on twitter. Follow all the writerly hashtags. (#writetip, #wordmongering, #NANOWRIMO, #JUNOWRIMO, #pubtip, #AmWriting, etc, etc). You WILL NEED the moral support, and you may learn of a twitter pitch party you can take part in.

A word on twitter pitch parties.

Think of these as the cyber version of an elevator pitch. It's your opportunity to grab the attention of a bunch of literary agents with one well-crafted tweet. Think it's hard to write a 140-character hook for your book? Hell fucking yeah it is! But it's not any easier to write a query and synopsis. And how often you can pitch a whole mess of agents at the same time? These are fun, low-pressure ways to query. DO IT.

Sometimes I think I sound like the PR department for twitter. Oh, well.

Anyone out there struggling through this stage of your adventure in fiction writing? Leave me a comment and tell me how you're dealing with it!

Adventures in Fiction Writing! Part Six: 20 Things to Do to Kill Time While Waiting for your Beta Readers

Originally this post was going to be an introspective look at how impatient I get while waiting for feedback on my #WIP. But then I said to myself:

"GRRRL, nobody wants to hear you whine."

And I was right. Nobody does. Especially not me. So instead I put together a list of things impatient bitches like me can do to distract ourselves while we wait for that all-important reader feedback. Hopefully it will help some of you. I'm pretty sure it prevented the untimely death of my lovely and infuriating teenage daughter.

(1) Bake a banana bread. It's widely regarded as impossible to be anxious or angry while mashing bananas.
(2) Read someone else's book. But nothing serious. Choose something light or fluffy or fantastical. You know what I mean: the sort of literary junk food you usually deny indulging in.
(3) Get all your friends together--NOT including any beta readers who also happen to be your friends--for a night of drinking and gaming.Cards Against Humanity is stupid fun. It's pee-your-pants-because-you're-laughing-so-hard funny.
(4) Go smurfing for pseudoephedrine. It worked for Walter White.
(5) Forget that. Spend a weekend binge-watching Breaking Bad instead.
(6) Try a new shade of nail polish. Try a different color on every finger. When people ask about it, respond with something completely irrelevant and judgemental, like:

"I hope one day you can grow beyond your racism."

(7) Spend an afternoon reconnecting with your younger self. Pull out that old box of toys from the attic. Play with your barbies. (Or GI Joes if you're a guy. Or a woman who played with masculine toys as a child.) Name one after that rumor-spreading bitch at work. Play through a scenario in which she develops cancer of the everything and then give her "treatments" that consist of you dousing her with gasoline and lighting her on fire.
(8) Research literary agents who represent books in your genre. Make a list of those who are currently accepting submissions.
(9) Stare at your list in despair. Cry a little.
(10) Tell yourself to man up. Expand your list to include details about what each of the agents likes to see in a query letter. Then pour over websites that offer advice on how to write winning query letters.
(11) Pour yourself a glass of red zinfandel. Take a sip. Then knock back the rest of the glass because no one could possibly write a query letter as well as the examples on the website.
(12) Pour yourself another glass. Wonder for a moment how good it would feel to write a different kind of letter to all those literary agents? One in which you tell them exactly where they should shove their submission guidelines.
(13) Throw your glass across the room. Drink the remaining wine straight from the bottle.
(14) Doodle ugly pictures of your Beta readers. Be creative with the details: give one boils and another an unfortunate facial scar.
(15) Ditch the wine. 3 am pity parties call for whiskey.
(16) Come to terms with the fact that each and every one of your Beta readers hates your guts. Or worse, hates your book.

Because that's why they haven't responded to your emails and calls. They hate your book so much that the mere though of talking to you sends them into fits of rage.

(17) Cry yourself to sleep. Wake up the next morning with a hangover. Call in sick to work.
(18) Spend the day in a bubble bath. Renew your promise to yourself that you will chill the FUCK out.
(19) Bake chocolate chip cookies. Eat the cookies in bed.
(20) DO NOT CHECK YOUR EMAIL.

It's Not Me, It's You

Once upon a time I had a kick-ass therapist.

She was wonderfully grandmotherly. Her hair was curly and gray, she had deep smile lines that framed her mouth, and the couch in her office was covered in doilies that I just knew she had knit herself.

My therapist understood me. She called me on my bullshit. And, because she knew that I process things better when I write about them, she encouraged me to journal our process together. I wrote her hundreds of pages of my overly-dramatic ramblings and she read them. ALL of them. And on her own time. At the end of each of our sessions I would hand her a new stack of pages and she read them over before we met again, and then we'd discuss them.

My therapist was with me before I broke up with my ex and after. When my friend Cari thought I needed a safe place to retreat for a few days, my therapist secured me a spot in the county--ahem!-- "resort" for a 5-day observation period. And she was there for me when I was released.

We worked together for YEARS, my therapist and I, until one day she decided to call it quits. She said I hadn't done anything wrong. She said she still liked me. She said she still believed that I could one day find peace. But she also said that there was nothing else SHE could do for me. She had tried everything she knew. She had provided me all the study material she had. But there was just no more. She knew I needed more help, but she didn't have any left to give.

I was devastated. I couldn't imagine my future without her. I wasn't ready to do it on my own. 

She said she had a friend. A smart friend. Someone who might better be able to reach me. She could arrange a meeting if I liked. I said yes, thank you, and we set things up. Her friend WAS smart, and nice, and she and I got along well...But it wasn't the same. I stopped seeing her after awhile.

That was a few years ago. I haven't tried a new therapist since. But I'm really feeling like I should. My head can be a dark place. It's easy to get lost in there. A good therapist is like a guide, shining light in the dark corners and offering a change in perspective.

But what if I can't find someone like her? Are good therapists like soul mates: only one per person??

God that would suck.

Adventures in Fiction Writing! Part Five: Queries

Whenever I think about querying I want
 to shoot myself in the eye.

There. I said it. It's out in the open. I'm a PUSSY when it comes to the topic of querying. And I know I'm not the only one. Who invented this shenanigans? It's horrible. It's a veritable creative rape of your mental processes. You write a book and then you're asked to justify its existence to people you hope will become champions for the book but in order to do that you have to strip yourself and your work down figuratively naked. 

And you're standing there, naked, begging these people to like you. 

"Tell me I'm clever," you say. 

It's GOD AWFUL. 

This is how I want to query: 



Adventures in Fiction Writing! Part Four: Now Let's REALLY Talk About Characters

Wait, what?
This blog series already has one post about characters. Why am I writing another? I have a couple of reasons:


(1) Characterization is just that important in fiction writing, and
(2) This blog series is a journey through my own revise/rewrite process, so the topics I hit on have been and will continue to be the topics that are pertinent to MY adventures in fiction writing.


But really, good characters are THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of good fiction. Period.


I just read an amazing YA (remember, YA means Young Adult) novel that I won't name because of the potential for spoilers (but the title is 3 words long and suggests that the protagonist is in search of an American state that begins with the letter A). If I wanted to distill the plot of this phenomenal novel down to its most simple, I could sum up the entire thing like this:


Socially awkward boy moves into boarding school and makes friends. One of his new friends dies.


That's it. That's really all that happens. Sound dull? It wasn't, because the characters are soooo gooood.




I recently asked my boyfriend Brandon and The Teen to read the second draft of my #WIP (that's work in progress for you non-literary folk). Here's my philosophy for who should see your drafts and when:




First Draft: Writer's eyes only, because this shit is embarrassing
Second Draft: Friends/family who can be counted on to tell you THE UGLY TRUTH about your #WIP without making you want to off yourself. You need this feedback to BOTH ground you in reality and bolster your confidence enough to move forward.
Third Draft: Writing instructor, critique group, friends who pride themselves on being grammar Nazis.
Fourth (and subsequent) Drafts: Have your friends and family who read the second draft revisit the manuscript now. Also: writing instructors, critique groups, and friends who pride themselves on being grammar Nazis.




So Brandon and The Teen recently read the second draft of ROAD TO NOWHERE. They both finished the read excited about the story. They said the plot was riveting, the pacing was good. They said they never felt bored. They said my plot twists were sneaky and fun. And then I asked them about the characters. And, well...*sigh.* I have some work to do.




Brandon could identify one stand-out character. The Teen couldn't. They agreed on one character who seemed to have no purpose. And, worse, they agreed that the character who I intended to be central to the storyline just wasn't living up to my expectations.






Here's how I introduce Cerulean in the book. I think this introductory scene is good. I think it works. But after getting some good feedback from my family, I'm going to be reworking the rest of her appearances:

Cerulean met the little girl at Gruesome Point. That was where she met all the newcomers. The girl wore fuzzy pink slippers, pink bows in her hair, and a cheery nightgown that looked out of place with her gray surroundings and was all quivering lips, trembling hands, and wide, staring eyes. She looked like she had woken up to discover her nightmare was real. Which was pretty much exactly what had happened.

Meeting kids like this always made Cerulean want to cry, but she couldn't, at least not now. Now she had to put on a smile and be brave for the girl—assure her that life goes on, even in Nowhere.

She had to lie, in other words.

Cerulean smiled and approached the terrified child. “Hi,” she said in her most soothing voice, “I'm Cerulean. What's your name?”

“Where am I?” The little girl asked.

“This place doesn't really have a name,” Cerulean said. “We call it Nowhere. What can I call you?”

“I'm Indigo,” the girl said. “This place is scary. I don't want to be here. Where's my mommy?”

“Your mom's at home,” Cerulean said, knowing what question came next, and hating herself for how she was going to have to answer it.

“Can I go home?”

“I'm afraid not. At least not yet. We haven't figured out a way to leave this place.”

Indigo burst into tears. Cerulean wrapped the girl's tiny body in a hug. She couldn't have been a day over six years old.

“Sshh,” she said. “You'll be OK. I'll take care of you. You can stay with me while you're here.”

Indigo just kept sobbing. “I...I want...my...mommy!”

“I'll be your mommy here,” Cerulean said. “I'll take care of you.”

She picked the distraught child up and walked toward home.

Adventures in Fiction Writing Part Three: Delusions of Grandeur, or How to Get Over Yourself

You're not writing the next Great American Novel.

There. You're welcome.
What? Oh stop your crying. That wasn't an insult.

You really ought to thank me, because now you're off the hook. You don't have to be brilliant. All you have to do is write your story. Your story might very well become the next Great American Novel. But it won't if that's what you're actively trying to produce. So relax. Breathe. And keep working.

If you're like me, you go through a stage during the revision process when you obsess over the meaning and importance of your novel. You forget about the important things (character and plot and flow) and focus instead on fluff and nonsense (subtext and universality).

You ask yourself questions like: Does my protaganist speak in intergenerational truths?

Gag me. Intergenerational truths? What the hell does that mean? Here's a truth:

It doesn't matter how smart your book is if it's boring.

There. Someone had to say it. Because unless you're writing a textbook on landscape architecture (and maybe not even then), no one who opens your novel will stick with the story all the way to the end unless they're entertained. That's your job. You, the writer, are here to entertain the reader. Not to educate or enlighten them.

So try having fun with it, won't ya?

Adventures in Fiction Writing! Part One: Characters

Afternoon Darlings!

If you follow me on twitter (and you should! Click here to join my adoring following) you probably already know that last year I wrote the first draft of a YA (that's Young Adult for you non-literary readers) novel called Road to Nowhere. I wrote the first words of the story on June 7th, and the last passage on Christmas Day. Romantic, huh?

The novel grew out of a writing prompt that my boyfriend Brandon picked out for me from a book that's literally FULL of them. He gave me the prompt: Newspaper headline ROAD TO NOWHERE SET FOR REPAVING and I sat down to write on it for 30 minutes. I reported on my initial efforts here. (Check it out!)

I've taken the month of January off from the WIP (that's Work-In_Progress for you non-literary readers. What a vocabulary lesson this is becoming for you!) to clear my head so I can dive into the dreaded Suicidal Second Draft with what I hope will be fresh eyes and a clear perspective. I've also decided, because I love you all so much and because misery loves company (mostly because misery loves company), that I will make the revise/rewrite/edit process a public one, here on my blog. So come along, friends! This should be an interesting ride!! 

My Adventures in Fiction Writing series kicks off with a post about CHARACTERS. What about  characters? We love characters, we hate characters. We write characters, we kill characters. Characters whisper scenes in our heads and yell at us when we write their voices wrong and sometimes change appearances halfway through a story.

Gah. I've turned into one of those annoying writers who talks about characters not only as if they're alive, but as if they're sentient and control me. ...
dsofjsdnfs;ljdkn;jdsgndjfsgn;dfjytuygbjhdbsjhbdfs
*Sounds of a scuffle*

This is Cobalt, star of ROAD TO NOWHERE. You will ignore everything Shana wrote about characters above.
poijojnlnljnibweASSDfzsfgfdbfdm   sd;fnsdlkfnsdljfnsfSd...../////
*Thud* *THUMP*

AHEM! This is me again. Cobalt's back where he belongs. Now where was I? Oh yeah: CHARACTERS.

Look, this isn't going to be a writing lesson. I'm not your fucking teacher. I don't have an MFA in creative writing. (That's Masters of Fine Arts. Pay attention please.) I am an educated woman, but everything I know about writing I've learned the hard way, and all of it is probably only true for me.

My truth is my truth and your truth is yours. But MY truth becomes clear when you share YOUR truth with me, and vice versa. That's equally true in fiction as in life. Entiende?

Here's a character chart I drew up when I was about halfway through my novel's first draft.

Notice how sparse it is. See how in the box for Mayor Orange there's only one descriptive term: FAT. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Mayor Orange is fat. Below him , in the box I intended to fill with adjectives that describe Cobalt (introduced above), is one phrase: TOO-LONG BANGS. So, Mayor Orange (first name Princeton) is fat and Cobalt has bangs that fall into his eyes.

What's the deal with this? The thing is, I'm not a visual reader. Therefore, I'm not a visual writer. When I read your characters I don't tend to pay much attention to your description of their appearances, because I almost never remember it, anyway. I'm way more interested in how your characters speak and what they say and especially how they behave.


Of course, there are exceptions. If your character's appearance is an integral part of his/her, well, character, and if you repeat descriptions of it enough times I will remember it. Or if there's an aspect of your character's physical appearance that is an integral part of his/her personhood I'll remember that. For example, Rose the Hat's jaunty top hat in King's Doctor Sleep. Nearly every single time he mentioned Rose he described her hat, perched saucily atop her head at a gravity-defying angle. But you know what? The description never felt overdone. Moreover, it served to describe Rose herself, perched as she was at the top of the True Knot's society, which in turn perched saucily on top of our own society, at a gravity-defying angle.

Pretty deep, huh?

What else did Mr. King say about Rose? She was hot. Was she blonde? Don't think so. What color were her eyes? Don't remember. Don't care. But I'll always remember the hat.

And really I'm that flaky with my own characters, as well. I remember who the badasses are, and the villains. I can tell you which characters start out meek and discover their own strength during the journey. But who's the redhead? Which of the boys has freckles? Are you seriously asking me? I'm supposed to remember? So I made a chart.

I try to give each of my characters some physical trait that describes who they are in the story. I don't know that I'll get around to everyone, but so far I think I've touched each of the main characters.

Mayor (Princeton) Orange is fat, because he represents comfort and plenty. I mean this in both a nice, homey way as well as a selfish way.

Mayor Blue is skeletal and has the parched skin of a mummy because he is Want, and the death of hope.

Fern Viridian has brilliant green eyes and spiky red hair because she is all go, go, go! She has so much curiosity and energy that no one can stop her.

Midnight wears a John Cena tee shirt because she, too, will never give up. She wears a sparkly beaded headband to bring some light into Nowhere. During the story, she is scarred in a very meaningful way.

Navy's head was once shaved. Now his hair is growing back in patches. He wears a hoodie that's way too big for him. His shoes maybe fit two years ago. He cut the toes of the shoes open so his own toes would have some more room. Clearly, this is a neglected young man.

Amarillo Saffron has big, bouncy blonde curls, yellow-green eyes, and a winning smile. She also has spent much of her life trying to please others at the expense of herself. She thinks of herself as a pretty, delicate figurine to be perched someplace: pleasing to the eye but without any inherent strength. She discovers her strength during the story.

Cerulean Saffron has waist-length two-toned hair that she wears in her trademark blonde-and-blue braid that typically hangs over her shoulder. Why the two-toned hair? Duality. She is both of Somewhere and Nowhere. Like her older sister Amarillo, Cerulean is pretty, but in a sturdier, more matronly way.

Azure has blue eyes and strawberry blonde curls and a tiny body. She's 14, but looks more like 11. And that's all I have for her right now. Actually, I don't think this physical description really matches her character. Hmmm...I think I have some work to do with this one.

Denim is large and muscular. DEFINITELY need to work on this guy's physical appearance.

Mr. Scarlet is a main character without much in the way of physical description in the WIP. He doesn't even appear on my character chart. WTF is up with that?

(Yeah, I have a looooong way to go with this WIP. That much is clear.)

There are, of course, more characters than that in ROAD TO NOWHERE. But I think you get the idea. Even better, I've learned some more about my characters during this exercise. So it's a win-win!

And this concludes part one of my ongoing series this year, Adventures in Fiction Writing! Be sure to tune in next time when I write all about the Suicidal Second Draft!

AND REMEMBER: