On Writing, Prison, and Sitting on a Plastic Chair in the Texas Heat

Was supposed to guest speak last night at a minimum security women’s prison facility where a friend is currently teaching creative writing. She’d gotten permission to bring in guest authors and so I was the first, but there was some snafu and when we arrived at five last night for the three hour class, I was somehow still not fully vetted. Some quiet drama ensued, although not on my part. Once you’ve taught a few decades in the public school system, you understand that sometimes, this is what happens in institutions and in this case, I really get it. You can’t just walk into a prison because you say you were invited. That kind of thing is no one’s friend.

Still. The education supervisor was called to attempt to sort things out. My friend went to teach her class. And I was instructed –okay, ordered actually—to sit on a hard plastic chair in the heat by Control and not move. And so I did until the supervisor eventually strode back. Honestly, it was relaxing: it’s a pretty place, more like a junior college campus if you ignore the barbed wire at the top of the fence—lots of trees and flowers and plants—and there was a breeze and I had my chair. I had left my cell in the car and so it was just me and nature and the guard behind the tinted glass and the occasional other contract worker checking in.

Mostly I thought about the questions the inmates had written for their instructor and which she had passed on to me—the things they wanted to know about writing and publishing and the act of creating art in this particular way—the ones I was going to talk about.

They were the usual sorts of things—questions about process and revision and what editors do, and how to find an agent and what if you’ve self-published and what to do about writer’s block and how you get paid.

But as I was on my plastic chair and they were in their classroom, I didn’t get to answer any of those. Instead, I sat and thought about how when my friend had received her training for this job she’d been reminded not to reveal any personal facts to her students. This makes sense in the setting and context. But how I wondered as I looked at the flowers and heard the traffic wooshing by on the road just outside the fence, do you talk about writing and inspiration without getting personal, other than in vague, general terms? It felt suspiciously like the time one of my former supervisors had informed the English department that it didn’t matter—not at all—what novels we taught or if we even taught just excerpts. We were there to teach skills. You could do that with anything.

Well, yeah. (And if that person is reading this, let me now say what was in my head during that department meeting: No. No. No. That’s kind of, um, bullshit. You know that, right?)

Anyway. It seemed that what was happening last night was a sort of metaphor for what they were collectively asking. Publishing is often, although not always, a series of amazing moments (when you get a story right; when someone acquires your book; when there’s a lovely review; when you type THE END) punctuated by frustration and dead ends and the occasional crushing disappointment. (Like wanting to hear a guest speaker who is stuck sitting on a plastic chair in the heat.)

If I had been in the room—and I know by now that you realize that matters were not sorted out last night and that eventually, the class ended early since the main attraction was not in attendance, the supervisor hugged me and said she was sorry, really sorry, and my friend and I went to the bar at the local Saltgrass for fried zucchini and a coke for her and a glass of cab for me—here is what I would have said about writing, the part that is in between the lines of my answers to all those many questions:

You can indeed save yourself through writing, but don’t expect writing to save you. There will be days when you get it right and still it doesn’t matter. There will be days when someone reads your story and really, really gets it and you feel there is nothing better in this world than having communicated your thoughts on what it means to be human—the good, the bad, the mundane, the glorious, the small, petty and awful and tragic (because that is what writing is about regardless of genre). By the next evening, you may equally feel that you are not quick enough, not smart enough, not talented in any way. You are too old or too young or not cool enough or too cool. (Is there such a thing?) You are too loud or too quiet. Your language is too rough or not rough enough.

You started too early. Or too late. Life intervened in a variety of ways. You are not the flavor of the week. Or you are and it’s overwhelming and you are afraid. Someone else has won the prize, gotten the golden ticket and there you are, fingers on the laptop keys, typing as fast as you can. You are trying to please the wrong people or the right people but in the wrong ways.

 You are stuck on a plastic chair in the heat.

Write anyway. Write the story only you can tell. Tell the truth on the page even if it’s hard and painful and scary. Treat it like a job not a hobby. Study. Read. Write some more. Your story has value. Tell it.

But don’t expect writing to give you anything in return. A thin, tricky line, that. Sometimes, you have to back away and let it go for a bit. Find a different way. Remind yourself to keep your eyes on your own paper.

Keep writing, I would have told them. Keep at it.

Revision Workshop 1: Building Tension

Sometimes I know a chapter is well-written but it still isn’t working as well as it needs to. For me, this often happens when the tension in the scene (or scenes) is primarily internal. It’s not that nothing is happening. It’s just that I’ve written a bunch of character ruminating and after awhile that gets tedious to read. It also tends to bring out a level of repetition in my writing that I’d prefer to avoid because really, how many new things can a character think about? I find myself writing the same loop of thoughts.

So what’s a writer to do?

Well, revise, of course!

And in this case, dig in and re-think how the scene needs to play out, how I can move out of the character’s head and ground the internal angst with external action. Author Sara Zarr, whose workshop I attended at The Writing Barn a few years ago, calls these Emotional Turnings. She taught us that every emotional turning of a character needs to be rooted in some action perceivable by the senses. It is grand and wise advice.

Yesterday, I used this advice to turn around a set of scenes that had devolved into too much thinking. In this case, the key was a phone call the MC makes to her best friend, a friend she hasn’t seen much since the MC moved to the city, and has in fact been ignoring, mostly because the MC’s life has been turned upside down by the death of her brother and the ensuing breakup of her family. And then there’s been something very strange that has happened and there’s a new boy and a bunch of angst and so the MC calls her friend.

In the original version, she calls. There is witty banter, but it’s mostly one-sided with the friend going on and on about her camp counselor job and teaching archery and the MC thinks some witty things and then the friend says she has to go without asking why the MC has called. Followed by some pages of MC angsting.

Yeah. I know. It reads well technically. It does bring back all the things that are going wrong in the MCs world and all the things she wants but possibly will never have. But yeah. A lot of ruminating.

So I gave it a hard look. Poked around at this friendship and this moment and the myopic-nature of people when their lives are taking unexpected turns. And wondered what would happen if after the friend rattled on about archery and said she had to go, the MC would say no. I need to tell you something. And instead of saying something friend-like, the friend would basically tell her to get lost. What does she think, calling after basically ignoring her all this time. Call her self-centered or whatever. I hate giving away an exact plot so this is the basic gist although not the specifics. The point is, that the MC needs to be totally blindsided here. And then the MC needs to react in a physical way and DO SOMETHING. Then and only then can she think and then and only then will her thoughts have a real, physical world catalyst. And the stakes are raised because in the process one last remaining safety net (the friend) is ripped away rather than just hanging up the phone. (well, pressing end, which is so much less dramatic, but whatever.) 

See what I mean?

What do you do when you realize a scene lacks tension?

Five for Friday

And it's Friday again, after a strange week that was, in turns, upsetting and encouragingly joyful, depending on what day it was. It has been a roller coaster-y few weeks into 2016, and the weather has reflected this here in my piece of the Gulf Coast, with 75 temps one day and 35 the next and frequently in the same day, leaving my head confused and achy. Seriously, we are all complaining that it's hard to keep up.

And so the five things on my mind this week:

1. Possibly today I will sneak away and see Zoolander 2, because the mister does not find the idea hilarious fun and there is nothing worse on date night than sitting next to someone you love who is nonetheless sighing under his breath and counting the minutes until it's over while he eats his popcorn.

In a small side commentary on that, I always find it interesting that I know people who refuse to go to the movies alone. I am totally grand with going to the movies alone. I love the movies. I love sitting in a theater. I love watching something I really wanted to see and why inflict something you love on someone who won't enjoy it?

2. Scandal is back! But I can't discuss it yet because I haven't seen it yet. But soon.

3. The Lumineers are touring again! They have a new album. Hooray!!

4. Went to see ALL THE WAY at The Alley Theater this week and it was truly brilliant. It takes the story of LBJ's presidency from the moment of the assassination of Kennedy to LBJ's own election the following November, with the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement, the growing turmoil in the US and the insidious beginnings of the conflict in Vietnam. It's a long play, close to 3 hours, but you really don't notice. Of course, I have the Hamilton soundtrack running in my head always now because I love it so much, so it's almost hard not to sit there imagining a stage play re-created as a musical. Still, if ALL THE WAY comes your way, go see it!

5. The WIP is in that place where once I get beyond the next chapter, things will start flying and soon it will be a real book and this thrills me to my tired, tired core. And someday, if I'm really good, I will be able to tell you about it. Hooray to that!

In other writing matters, I had a grand time last Saturday teaching 8 writers about "how to find an agent and why you need one." If you are a writer in Houston and haven't discovered Whitespace Houston yet, you need to discover it!

until next time!

To the Lodge!

Twice a year, a group of us kidlit writers head out to the woods, about half-way between Austin and Houston. For three solid days we write, critique, inspire and read. Okay there’s some silliness and wine and a lot of snack food that sneaks in there. A lot of it, actually! (Full disclosure, we ran out of wine last summer, so I guess this time, everyone made sure to compensate.)

But here’s the important thing: 18 women converge in one enormous, ramshackle hunting lodge with crazy amounts of insane taxidermy. (Think tiny deer arranged in a rowboat with flowers. Mounted heads with smiles.) We range in age from 20s to 50s. We write YA, MG, and picture books. Most of us are multi-published. Some of us are not yet published. Some are in between. All of us are dedicated to our craft. All of us are committed to bringing stories to the world.

We cook meals. We respect dietary needs without making a big deal of it. (“Gluten-free folks, those paler muffins are for you!”) We support and amplify and encourage each other’s careers in ways big and small. We laugh. We write. We dream. We get a little raucous in the evenings. Okay maybe a lot. We celebrate HUGELY our successes.

And as my friend Lynne Kelly pointed out after this past weekend’s retreat, there are no fights. No posturing. No table-flipping and honestly, no cliques or sub-grouping or secret whispers. NONE.  Seriously, none. We would make a really boring reality show.

Because we started with a smaller core group and because we’ve been doing this for awhile now, sometimes I forget the true, kick-ass wonder of this. How much I appreciate these retreats, especially after a difficult, transitional year like this past one where—in ways both good and bad—almost nothing turned out the way I expected. But none of that mattered this past weekend. Only the work and the company and the inspiration of fierce, brilliant women who are my tribe, my people, my collective creative force.

And the occasional misguided squirrel crashing into the window.

The End of the Tour

First let me confess: I have not read An Infinite Jest. I know of David Foster Wallace only through articles and reviews.  A gap in my reading, yes. Just so you know.

I have not even watched any live interview clips, so actor Jason Segal's portrayal in The End of the Tour, which I saw yesterday, is the first 'real life' experience I've had with Wallace. But there I was in the almost empty theater yesterday because I had promised myself a break once I finally finished and turned in a revised synopsis to my agent. (Yes, my afternoon work break consisted of going to a 2 PM matinee about an author who was brilliant, famous and ultimately took his own life.)

Since then, I've done a bit of internet reading, but I would hardly call it immersion and I'm still digesting and pondering, and this man's life is now swirling around with the other mammoth novel I'm in the middle of which is A Little Life, which also touches on the nature of art and life and fame (both desired and achieved) and suffering, among other things.

The back and forth between Jesse Eisenberg's David Lipsky, a Rolling Stone writer (and sometimes novelist) who's come along for the last leg of Wallace's book tour and David Wallace, who seems to both embrace and eschew his enormous fame, is what makes the film tick. That and Joan Cusak as the  Midwest media escort, a role she absolutely nailed and which alone makes the film worth seeing.

If you want a fuller review, try this one from the New York Times, which is as good a place to start as any:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/movies/review-the-end-of-the-tour-offers-a-tale-of-two-davids.html?_r=0

Or a review that talks about how the film nails the both important and sometimes icky life of a reporter:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-artificial-intimacy-of-the-magazine-profile

The questions the film raises are the ones I'm struggling with right now and so I have made them today's Friday Five:

• What does it mean to be an author in our culture, so fame-crazed as it is? If you've made it to the top, if you're John Green on press junkets, you have to maintain that somehow and it is a thing beyond the work. If you're in murky middle and such things as media escorts or even regular mileage reimbursements are generally still pie in the sky, you can fantasize -- as David Lipsky does in the film-- about the wondrous thing of being so top tier that you have an expense account and people fawning over you and at least a momentary sense that you are smarter than the pack. The question of how long this remains a desirable thing, is another story entirely.
• No matter who you are, or where your career is, at the end of the day it's still you and the blank screen, creating something out of nothing and hoping it says what you want and that it also says what others want to read, possibly hones into the current zeitgeist in some magical way that makes your career take off or maintain. (Unless you're James Patterson and you have a team of eager writers. That's its own thing, you know?) How do you keep sitting down and doing the work no matter what?
• In the film, David Foster Wallace and David Lipsky both agree that a benefit of writerly fame is the easier possibility of getting laid. So of course I wonder. Is that what Wallace actually thought? How would that conversation have gone and been perceived if Wallace was a woman and had expressed this to Lipsky? Or if Lipsky was a woman? Does, say, Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life, mentioned above, hope for the same fame benefit? And if she does, and she says this in interviews, how is it perceived? Do women artists in general have a different set of goals for fame? Hmm… I say. Hmmm….
• How do we handle the inevitable envy that comes with colleagues and friends getting what we're still striving to achieve? As the film opens, Lipsky is reading a gushing review of Infinite Jest which states that it will definitely win every major literary award and he says, "It's as though Paul Bunyan joined the NFL, orWittgenstein had on Jeopardy!"
• How do we as writers/artists balance the ego needed to write with the ability to still live our life and not let the work consume us or, as was sadly the case with Wallace, who eventually and tragically took his own life, destroy us?

Have you seen The End of The Tour?

What do you think?

Opening Lines part 2

Still thinking about the power of those opening few sentences in a novel and I came upon this, by author Beth Kephart, a writer whose prose I deeply admire.

http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/2015/01/does-entire-book-lie-within-its-first.html

I love this idea that not only do those crucial first lines set the tone, they also encompass the book in miniature.

I think back to what I shared yesterday, the first sentence of my forthcoming FINDING PARIS. "My sister leans over me while I am trying to sleep."  In many ways both large and small, this sentence reflects everything that happens after that. I'll be honest here and say that when I wrote it, I knew it felt like the right place to start, but I didn't think about it as containing the book in miniature. But I read that first chapter aloud at a book event the other night and I thought, hmmm. My subconscious is smarter than I am!

So today in between writing and other work, I am pondering this again.
Would love if you pondered with me!

Opening lines

Reading the brilliant A.S. King's Glory O'Brien's History of the Future. It begins like this: "So we drank it--the two of us. Ellie drank it first and acted like it tasted good. I followed. And it wasn't half bad. / When we woke the next morning everything was different."

There's more on that first page, but those are the first lines we get. Later we find out they've somehow drunk petrified bat and can now see the future-- and a grim one it is. I'm not that far into the novel so I'll talk more about it in a later post, but I love that King gives us SO MUCH in these first few sentences. I don't know how much of this will be the truth later, but I know that I'm pondering.

Let's deconstruct:

• She begins with the act of drinking…. something.
• She uses the pronoun 'we' followed by 'the two of us' and so I think that partnership/friendship/relationship (I'm not sure yet here in paragraph one) is significant. 
• She tells us that Ellie drank first and then 'acted like it tasted good' which probably tells me a lot about Ellie even before I really meet her on the page. 
• And then she writes, "I followed." Which also tells me a lot about the narrator, whose name I don't yet know.

We writers talk and think a lot about openings. It's that first page that I often write and re-write many, many more times than anything else I revise. Because it's everything, really. It's a reader's gateway into the novel, into the characters, into relationships and conflicts and things to come.

So we want to get it just right. It's not just about drawing the reader into the story. It's about telling things without telling them fully, which is sometimes-- many times-- harder than it looks.

The opening line of my forthcoming FINDING PARIS (April 21, Balzer and Bray) reads, "My sister leans over me while I am trying to sleep."

This was not the original first line. Or the second draft first line. Or even the third. In fact, it wasn't even where the book began in its first iteration. But eventually, I knew where the book needed to begin and what it needed to begin with. 

More on that later.

For now, a question: What are some opening lines that have stuck with you/made you wonder? Lines that when you finished and went back to them, you realized what they were doing?

Five Years

Hanging out at Houston Community college

Been doing some events-- Had a lovely time speaking to the reading club at Houston Community College.
And then last Friday, I spent the day at the John Cooper School Signature Series as a local guest author. Keynote was given my the delightful Tyler Florence of Food Network fame, who was quite gracious about photo ops, as you can see here!

At the John Cooper School Signature Series

And it's Tyler Florence!

I'd participated in this event back in '09, when DREAMING ANASTASIA was first out, so it was fun to be back now as book 6 is ready to arrive. And humbling and also fun to have various people come up to me, saying how that's where they first met me and started following my career and reading my books. So much has happened--both professionally and personally-- since then it's kind of crazy, really. Just five years, but holy cow! Books (two more in the DREAMING trilogy, then two SWEET DEAD LIFE books, and now FINDING PARIS in April 2015 and then IT WASN'T ALWAYS LIKE THIS in 2016) and travel and teaching and then deciding to quit teaching full time and building this career… And as many of you know, a scary battle with thyroid cancer that began just as things were taking off. (MD Anderson declared me cancer free in 2013. I hope to stay that way.)

It hasn't always been smooth. In fact, quite often it has not. It's been a wild ride of revolving editors and promises both kept and unkept and amazing mentors who lift me up every single day, and the total thrill of what is truly an entire new world of people and ideas. I know I've found my tribe and I know that makes me lucky beyond words.

Still, I think I'm just one who is destined to work a bit longer and harder. Some days I angst over not sitting at the cool kids' table. Maybe I never will. Most days I get over my bad self and just do the work and enjoy the ride. No good comes in this profession from playing the comparison game.

I've realized along the way that somehow I was writing about all that in the white space between the words in all my stories: about what it means to be human--the good, the bad, and the ugly of it.

And for this I am profoundly grateful--particularly to all of you who buy my books and read my words and love my characters as I do. Even on the days when the words aren't coming easily.

And so!

You guys, FINDING PARIS is up on Edelweiss now, which means that people are requesting it (and YOU can request it!) and if Harper Collins says yes, then you get an early read before it arrives from Balzer and Bray in April! This is of course, both thrilling and nerve wracking -- as it always is.

 People are reading Leo and Max and Paris's story. It is out in the world and no longer mine and I am writing away on other things. This book that I love with all my heart, this story of how far you'd go to protect someone you love, about terrible secrets and what they do to us, about love and loss and very broken families. And road trips and Vegas and LA--both places where people flock to have their dreams come true. It's out there for you now, dear readers, at least in its galley form. It's dark and twisty, and it's my first contemporary without a paranormal element. *shivers with excitement.*

And I've got some really really awesomely cool swag in the works for those who pre-order. Stay tuned for that soon!

Stuff People Say to Authors

So when you become a published author, you discover that people say stuff to you. And while much of it is wonderful and supportive or just curious or whatever, some of it is just, well boggling.

In no particular order:

1. How many copies have you sold?
(answer: I have no idea. I don't sell the books out of the trunk of my car. I do get royalty statements and those give me the specifics, and I can in fact ask my agent and editors but that's not what this question means. This question presumes that I have a running tally in my head.)

2. What do you do all day?
(answer: I sit in dirty yoga pants and type. Sometimes I stare out the window. Then I type some more. I am not sure if this is what you want to hear.)

3. Are your books like Harry Potter/Twilight/The Hunger Games/Fault in Our Stars?
(answer: No. And yes. And no.)

4. How much do you make?
(answer: Do I ask your salary? Perhaps you are really asking how authors get paid. In that case, the answer is that we make an advance when we sell the book and we get half of that on signing the contract and half on completion. And when we earn out that advance through sales -- which is figured, more or less, on the royalty percentage-- we get royalties while the book is in print. If our publisher sells  our books at deep enough discount, this may occur only after a trillion books are sold.)

5. That seems like a lot of work. Why do you want to work so hard? (asked after asking me "How's the writing going?)
(Answer: Seriously? What kind of rain on my joy question is that? Begone with you. Nothing worth having comes without work. I LOVE what I do. It's the best kind of work. People PAY ME for making up stories. And yes, I'm neurotic some days, but seriously! I get paid for making stuff up.)

6. I'm going to write a book when I get the time.
(response: No you're not.)

7. Does anyone read anymore? There aren't even bookstores anymore, are there?
(answer: Yes. Yes they do. Lots of them. And did you know that there's been a revival of indie bookstores -- amazing places that love books and can't wait to put them in the hands of readers? In fact the indie book stores are doing better than ever.)

8. Still writing YA? Do you think you'll ever write an adult book?
(answer: So should I ask my child's pediatrician when she'll start treating adults?)

9. Would I like your books?
(Answer: I hope so. Sure. Why did you ask me that?)

Robin Williams, Making Art, and Other Tuesday Thoughts

I'm not the only one mulling over the terrible sadness of Robin Williams' death yesterday, seemingly from suicide, most likely from depression/addiction. None of which, I would imagine, even begins to touch on all the true causes of this tragedy. We weren't in his head. Not even his family was, I suppose, or if they were, even they-- the people who loved him most-- were able to stop it from occurring.

Making something out of nothing--making art, be it comedy or drama or music or paintings or sculpture or poetry or novels or whatever--is enormously gratifying. It is also often difficult (even when the work itself comes easily) and painful and draining. The muse doesn't always arrive on schedule. Or the muse arrives too often and can't be turned off and all you can think is some version of 'why am I sitting here making small talk when I should be working.' I won't even begin to know what it is like to be so hugely gifted and so enormously talented and keep up with what you presume and in fact know is everyone's expectations. 

Even I, on the barely anyone knows who I am or what I write end of the spectrum, understand that the expectations can be burdensome. You got a huge book deal and now the book better perform. Your book deal was barely enough to buy everyone a Happy Meal and now you better write a bigger, better book to follow it. Your book was high concept and everyone loved it. Better make the next one even higher concept. Anyone who says they never think about these things is either lying or more well-grounded than the rest of us.

When you make art, you dig into the deepest places of yourself and they're not always the pretty places. The fears and dark stuff and the things about the world that make you cringe. You go to the good stuff as well -- what it means to be loved and to love in return, what it means to be a human being in all its messy craziness. But the best art comes from a place of honesty. And that itself can be daunting. Because to write honestly is to see yourself honestly and often it's not a pretty picture in there. 

I was lucky enough to see Robin Williams perform live (from the 1st row!) when he was still doing stand up tours. He sweat buckets and was amazing. I still remember how hard I laughed. And the movies! Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poet's Society, Mrs. Doubtfire, Hook,  Good Will Hunting, and so many more. Such a huge and varied career! It is a huge loss and a huge shame and I am infinitely sorry to hear such sad news.

In other Tuesday musings, I would like the Middle East to calm down. I would like everyone to hold hands and eat cookies and milk and just stop it, okay?

And on this front, I just turned in my dedication and acknowledgement pages for FINDING PARIS (coming April 21, 2015 from Balzer and Bray) In keeping with this post, let me say that this book is darker than some of what I've written before. I'll be talking about it very soon. For now I shall just say that I am both honored and excited to have you read Leo and Paris and Max's story.

And speaking of stories, watched the first episode of STARZ 's new Outlander mini series and I give it just about 2 thumbs up. I think I will always like the books best (I'm in number 6 of 8 right now), but Jamie and Claire are well-cast and I'm excited to see what comes next! Okay, I'll be fully honest. We had an issue with the cable company not coming out for their appt with us cause the cable wasn't working and when they finally got things all working again, they said, "Hey, would you like free Showtime for awhile?" and I was like "NO! Give me Starz." And they were like, "But that isn't as nice of an upgrade and we want to make you feel better." And I was like, "Give me freaking Starz so I can watch Outlander." And so they did. Okay, I didn't say that at all; I just asked. And said please and thank you. And then did the dance of joy because now I could watch Jamie and Claire. At least for a few weeks.

If you want an amazing and different read by one of the most brilliant authors I know, THE UNFINISHED LIFE OF ADDISON STONE is out today, written by Adele Griffin and published by Soho Teen. Adele Griffn's writing has alway simply blown me away. There is just something in her style and word choice and tone that makes me want to hug the pages, that thrills and chills me and consistently makes me aware that I am reading something masterfully constructed. Her command of place and small detail and her exploration of characters who are on the edge, the fringe, the emotional tight wire -- well, yeah. She's freaking brilliant. Truly. And I don't say this lightly. ADDISON STONE is also, like where this post began today, about fragile mental health and art.

More soon, dear readers.