Dog Days of Summer

Just when I was getting my writing groove on, I've got to dive back into my real life. Friend just had a baby, mom's coming to stay, work threw up on me. This is a long way of saying I've got a ramshackle post today!


YA Fest
Last Saturday, my writing pal Laura Campbell and I took a road trip to Easton PA for the first annual YA Fest. All I'm saying is that it better not be the last annual - because it was awesomesauce. Want proof? See this picture? I will be plastering this sucker all over the place.

Laura Campbell, Jonathan Maberry, me, Charles Benoit at YA Fest

I'll soon be posting more about the fest and the amazing writers who attended (in addition to Jonathan and Charles, Cyn Balog, Eve Marie Mont, Jennifer Hubbard, Michelle Zink - so many!) but for now I want you to know two things:
ONE: Bucks County Writers Group will be holding a contest at the end of the month to give away SWAG - signed copies of awesome books from some of the YA Fest writers. Details will go up this Monday here - so stay tuned.
TWO: You don't know how much of a fangirl you are until you stand in front of your fan-girl object munching (candy) zombie fingers. Just saying.

WriteOnCon is NEXT WEEK!
It's awesome. It's free. Last year when I participated, I got a partial and a full request. It's chock full of useful information and the faculty this year features the amazing Gennifer Albin. Did I mention the nija agents? I didn't? These are stealth agents that rummage around the forums looking for gold. Then when they find it, they direct message you for more pages/info. It's happened to me and it's a lovely, shivery feeling. RUN, don't walk to WriteOnCon. Oh, and even though it's free, I found the con so frigging useful, I donated money. You may be moved to do the same.

Girl Of Nightmares
I've been waiting for this book. The second I closed ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD by Kendare Blake I realized I needed another fix. It's finally here. It's YA Horror, YA romance, YA How's-this gonna-end-happy-when-one-of-the-star-crossed-lovers-is-a-ghost? I don't really care, I just have to be along for the ride. Happy (belated) Pub Day, GIRL OF NIGHTMARES.

Why Lie?

I'm currently reading two non-fiction books:

You are perhaps familiar with how the author of IMAGINE, Jonah Lehrer has recently executed a literary belly flop? Yeah, he's admitted to making up some of the quotes in his book attributed to Bob Dylan. He's resigned from The New Yorker. He's probably drinking scotch and eating too many Pringles (yes, I'm projecting.)

I'm trying to use the second book, THE STORYTELLING ANIMAL, by Jonathan Gottschall, to understand Jonah Lehrer's actions. Frankly I don't really understand how someone who has so much, is so smart and successful can make such a stupid mistake. Yes, I know about deadlines and pressure and confusion and "I must have done it without realizing it." And I do understand the temptation to lie. Of course I do. I lie all the time.

Because I am (mostly) human I have an instinct to tell stories, to myself and to others. Even in my own life, in my own memories, I edit, clean up, modify, make myself look better, other's worse. Jonathan Gottschall talks about the history of mankind's storytelling impulse and looks at it evolutionarily - is there a reason we tell stories? Or is it a remnant of prehistory, a left over like a tail or an appendix that we don't need any longer?  Whatever the reason, the impulse to make things up is strong in us.

But telling a story is not the same as lying, right? It's close, it can be a blurry line, but there's a moment when you know, deep in your heart, that the thing you are saying happened, didn't.

I imagine (after all, that's what Jonah Lehrer has invited us to do) it went down something like this:

I should have a quote about creativity here.
That story about Bob Dylan's early touring would be really good in the beginning.
Hmm. It's not saying exactly what I want it to say. It's close, but not exactly.
You know what he should have said, old Bob? He should have said this. That would be perfect if he had said that. It would make my point perfectly.
I think he said that. I'm pretty sure I read him say that somewhere. 
I bet, even if he didn't say that, he meant to say that. 
He said that.


So it's not that I'm without sympathy to the writer who lies. It's our bread and butter, lying and we constantly take real things and apply 'what if?' to them. But since we do sail so close to the windy truth, we need to be more careful. We need to keep the truth as North on the compass. And for anyone thinking, I write fiction, I can make up anything I want! Truth is my plaything! I have one word for you: plagiarism.

So truth is elastic, subjective, open to interpretation as any PR person knows. But it's real. It exists. And once your foot crosses over it, you know. I believe you know.

If I'm ever in the position where I come up against a wall of truth and I want to jump over it. I hope I don't. I hope I realize the difference between artistic license and out right lying. But I may not. I'm only human after all.

Second Chance Books

I love to read, that's a no brainer. If I didn't love it so, I'd be in the wrong profession  obsession vocation.

But I do sometimes feel fatigued. Especially when I'm concentrating on my genre (say the mantra with me now - read 3000 words in your genre for every 1000 words you write.)

Some books, even highly popular and praised books just make me feel tired, especially if it's a theme I've read before (a lot.) I admit. I've made mistakes. I've put down books, unfinished that I should have stuck with.

Some books come to you at the wrong time. Others are a slower burn that need a smidge more of your attention to get you hooked. I know everyone talks about the immediate hook being so important, but there are books that reward more than cursory effort.

I put down Wuthering Heights about two chapters in. I was so frustrated. Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books and, as a teen, I thought "sister-writer of my fave book? I will LOVE it." Then I started to read. YAWN. It took me years to pick it up again. In the interim, I talked smack about that book, called it boring and annoying. In my 20's I finally got past the slow beginning and fell, quickly and completely in love with it. It's up there as another of my favorites. I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't stuck with it.

Another example of a book that initially didn't grab me is Ally Condie's MATCHED. I know, a gazillion people loved it. A gazillion people raved about it. That might have been part of the problem. Coupled with the fact that, when I got it from the library, I had just come off a dystopian/sci fi jag - reading Beth Revis' ACROSS THE UNIVERSE and A MILLION SUNS, followed by Scott Westerfield's UGLIES series. I was tapped out on the future controlling society theme. I read 15 pages of MATCHED and said, meh. Later when I passed the new entry of the trilogy in the bookstore, CROSSED, I said meh again to myself. I would have gone on 'mehing' ad naseaum if it hadn't been for my sainted library. They always pull popular books that have been loved too much (ie coming to pieces) order new ones and put the old ones for sale. 25 cents. I saw MATCHED again and instead of saying 'meh' I bought it.

I'm so glad I did. It is a slower burn. Despite a lot of menace and internal turmoil not a ton happens. But that allows for more emotion and introspection and poetry. It's actually lovely.

What books have you abandoned only to later find out it's a gem? What hidden gems lurk in your 'discard' pile as we speak?

Happiness is...

Pretty much overrated.

I'm taking my eight year old to DC this weekend, just girls. She's practically floating, giddy with anticipation. She talks about what she's packing, what she'll wear, what we'll see and how much of her saved money she should bring. She's anticipating her happiness and I have to clamp my mouth shut not to say "It's just one day, one night. It will be over in a blink."

Because for me, it's already Monday morning. I'm on to the next thing. I've always been this way, living in the future instead of the past or, as is extremely difficult, the present. I have trouble enjoying anything because I know how short lived it is. I think of it as disaster-preparedness. If I'm always anticipating the end, then I won't be disappointed.

The downside, of course is that by anticipating the end, by fast forwarding beyond the thing that might be fleeting or difficult, I've missed the bloody thing. 


I've been having dreams about my submissions. They're always weird (all my dreams are weird. I'm not able to have a dream where something surreal doesn't happen.) Sometimes they're rejections and sometimes they're requests for edits that are so ridiculous and impossible that it's worse than a rejection (or pass.) And all the time I'm churning, churning, trying to figure out how to triage the damage.

The thing that I'm missing by concentrating on what could be happening with my submissions (and what I have ABSOLUTELY NO control over) is the pretty damn good WIP I'm working on now. I showed it to my group and they were excited and hooked. They both said how much the writing has grown. This made me happy for about 10 seconds before thoughts (or dreams) of my submission process came in and made it rain.

Why is happiness so short lived? What do we expect to feel over our accomplishments? And why are we so quick to dismiss good feelings while lingering over bad ones? Easy to say human nature, but I think it's something else. I think we're conditioned to be fearful - at least I am.

There's a really interesting TED video on happiness by Dan Gilbert below. I think it's pretty savvy on how you could (but often don't) make your own happiness.

Fiction is Larger Than Life

First, a programming note:

Summer might mean taking it easy for most people and the CountryTime Lemonade dude who seems to think that powdered lemon drink makes the summer an exercise in olde-timey relaxation, but for me, it's hard work.

 I'm my kids one stop entertainment center. the entire day is filled with things I need to give them and boredom I have to vanquish.

It's hard to write. 

So I'm going to pare down to blogging once a week - just Thursdays until the little lovable rug rats go back to school in September.

Would you sacrifice your life for your sister?

Would you kill someone in cold blood?

Would you sleep with your best friend's boyfriend?

Would you lie, cheat steal?

What wouldn't you do, in the right situation?

Over the past month, I've been using Donald Maass's amazing book, Breakout Novel Workbook as a compass as I write the first draft of my current WIP. It's an amazing diagnostic tool - it just gets me thinking deeply about who I'm writing about. Today I'm going to be talking about ways to give your MC larger than life (LTL) qualities. 

I always start my MC as someone like me, someone normal. That's okay, as long as they don't stay that way. If your MC starts normal you have to have her go abby-normal pretty damn sharpish. Have her make a colossal mistake where the stakes are unbelievably high, pile drama after drama on top of her. And it doesn't only have it be external forces that make her LTL, make her decisions LTL. How? Start by making a list:

• What is the one thing your MC would never, ever do?
• What would she never say? 
• When you think of your MC, think about what her limits are. 
• What's a line that she would not cross?

Then? You guessed it. Find a place in the manuscript where she can cross that line, do that thing, say the one thing she promised she'd never say. I'm not saying she has to be some uber confrontational, transgressive mess (though those are interesting,) she just has to go somewhere she never thought she would go. And it also depends on what's LTL for your character. If she's a wallflower with a painful stutter, asking a crush out on a date is HUGE. In my case, I'm thinking about Mop's mom and how they've only had each other, depended on each other almost unhealthily for five years. They're going to betray each other - irrevocably. And Mop is going to do something that she never dreamed herself capable of.

How do you make your characters Larger than Life?