After Long Silence...

...is the name of one of my favorite books by Sherri S. Tepper. It's also an appropriate name for a blog entry after a 2-month absence.

Here's the list of excuses:
The end of May/early June was weird with that diet (see last entry) which took over my entire life. Then I got sick. Very sick. I ended up having three secondary infections from a summer cold and it took about 5 weeks to recover. Not cool. And then it was birthday and vacationing madness.

Whew, okay, excuses out of the way, I am thrilled to be back at the computer. Just in time to gear up for the 2011 SCBWI Summer Conference in LA!

I'm currently studying this list of 71 faculty members in hopes of knowing a thing or two about my manuscript consultant before stepping into the 20 minute one-on-one session. There are some I am not so sure I'd want to get, to be honest. I mean, if I sit down with Lin Oliver, I'm going to be struck speechless. She's the Executive Director and co-founder of SCBWI, plus she writes with Henry Winkler regularly. I'm in awe. But then again, I could get Bruce Coville. I'm in awe of him too, but I've met him before and he's so easy to talk to.

I'm handwriting a list of all 71 faculty members with a few highlights from their bios. Writing things out by hand helps it to stick in my memory, plus I'll take the notebook with me for quick reference. I'm putting stars by the ones I would love to chat up and an exclamation point next to those that are heavy-hitters, like Ms. Oliver.

And of course, I continue to work on my WIP. I'd love to have a few more chapters complete in time for the conference. Other than packing and writing, what are you doing to get ready for the 2011 SCBWI Summer Conference?

The Writing Diet: 30 Minutes Alone with a Notebook

I'm dieting. It's a different sort of diet than any other I've tried. You team up with at least one other person and team up against one other team. And you get points for eating meals according to the diet, exercising, getting 7 hours of sleep and not breaking any of the rules (see the link below to the book). But here's the part that was most intriguing to me: you also get points for adding one good habit and getting rid of one bad habit.

As my new good habit, I chose to spend 30 minutes alone (no TV, no computer, no books, no iPhone) with a pen and a notebook. It's not the only way I write, but I've found it's one of the best ways for me to problem-solve in the middle of a project. I can sort of "talk things out" on paper. So I thought this would be a snap. An easy 10 points every day.

Can I tell you right now how green with envy I am that my sister-in-law chose flossing as her new good habit and gave up Starbucks for her bad habit? I mean, come on, that takes, what, 5 minutes a day and an extra k-cup in her Keurig? I've got to find 30 uninterrupted minutes each day and face a blank page. There have been a couple nights when I sat bleary eyed in the near-dark while my spouse snored softly next to me because I hadn't gotten this done during regular hours.

So, I'll admit, I haven't been perfect. I haven't gotten this done every day. But my manuscript has changed SO MUCH in the last 12 days of dieting. I found out that my main character is going through a major life change - an incredibly humiliating one - that I hadn't known about before. And I found a means of getting her arch rival there to bear witness to the entire embarrassing thing. And best of all, I found my ending (it had been a sort of vague "battle ensues, so-and-so wins" thing in my notes up to that point). And I also found out a whole lot about my villain which will never actually end up in the book (but it will be richer for my knowing it).

Try challenging yourself to 30 minutes alone with a notebook -- or your manuscript if you're at the revision stage. Just like a diet, it's harder than it sounds at first, but it's really rewarding.

Book Mash-Ups

I've had this idea in my head for weeks: what if, instead of mashing up two songs we could mash up two great books?  I keep scribbling ideas down in my notebook. Eventually a couple of them became art:

To Kill a Mockingjay

I can just imagine Scout as a district tribute, can't you? And Haymitch has a certain Boo Radley quality about him, I think.

The Phantom of the Tollbooth Opera

This one's more of a stretch. Could Christina Daae and Meg Giry be Princess Rhyme and Princess Reason? Surely The Humbug has a few things in common with Carlotta.

I found a few more via Google Images:

CBC Book Cover Mash-Up Barbara Bovaird

CBC Book Cover Mash-Up 8

A few more ideas:

• We Have Always Lived in Howl's Moving Castle
• 20,000 Leagues Under a Tuscan Sun
• Diary of a Wimpy Anne Frank
• A Game of Thrones of Fire

Got a mash-up idea? Share it in the comments!

Ticky Boxes for Motivation

When I was a wee child of 4, I didn't like to brush my teeth. Or have my hair brushed. Or any number of other chores and hygiene habits that you'd want a 4 year old to adopt. So my mother created a grid with the items running down the left side and the dates across the top. Every time I completed a chore to my mother's satisfaction she'd place a gold star in the appropriate box. If I got enough gold stars in a week, I got a treat at the end of the week. Usually a small box of Lemonheads or Rootbeer Barrels from the food truck (I lived in a tool & dye shop for a year or so when I was a child... but that's another story). Oh, how I wanted those gold stars!

Apparently, I still do. I am currently reading James Scott Bell's excellent Plot & Structure  and when I came to the part where he suggests setting a word count quota and mentions that he tracks his on a spreadsheet, I knew I'd want to do it on graph paper instead, with ticky boxes that I get to X out as I progress. For those of you not up on the web-lingo:


Tick box. —n. (on a form, questionnaire, or test) a square in which one places a tick to show agreement with the accompanying statement 

A grown-up equivalent of my treasured gold stars!

Now, I'll be honest, when I first saw people on Twitter using the #amwriting hashtag and talking about their word count for the day I rolled my eyes a bit. It reminded me of NaNoWriMo, I guess, and that struck me as amateurish. I thought, "Just write until it's done! Don't hold yourself to some arbitrary number!" Please forgive me, dear readers, I was horribly wrong.

What I didn't realize is that the combination of word quota and ticky boxes would have two effects on my writing. The first one was obvious: having ticky boxes to check off would push me beyond the point where I thought I was done for the day. It was like a personal trainer for writing. But the second one took me by surprise: it curbed my tendency to go back and edit a page right after I'd written it. Oh, I know there are sentences that are too wordy, or awkward, but there they stand, waiting for my red pen. No more taking two steps forward and one step back. All my writing is marching forward.

To find my personal quota of 2,200 words/day, I wrote non-stop for 30 minutes. I took no breaks to brew a fresh cup of coffee, or research some bit of trivia or even glance at my beloved Twitter feed. I took that number and multiplied it by 6, thinking I would like to write for 3 hours each day. I figured with all the interruptions put back into my day, this was a reasonable number to start with. My first day I didn't hit that number, but the drive to keep writing took my manuscript to new places. I'm excited about my new writing motivation system.  I think I'll go buy myself a box of Lemonheads.

But here's a question: do I only count fiction writing, or can I count this blog entry? Hmm, I don't know.

5 Reasons Not to Get Married to a Writer

So you've fallen in love with a writer, and you're wondering if you ought to tie the knot. Consider whether  you can live with the following five things for the rest of your life:

1) Altered States

You saunter up to his office chair, trail your hand along his shoulder and place a few meaningful kisses in the fine hairs on the back of his neck. He pulls away from you and mumbles "What do you want?" What the heck just happened? He loved you madly a few hours ago. You have caught your lover in an altered state - the state of writing. When you read a book - a good book - you are transported to another time and place. If your lover were to walk in the room naked while you were reading, say, the penultimate chapter of Mockingjay, you might not notice. Not right away. Similarly, the writer is transported to another time and place when he writes. In fact, the writer might even be temporarily wearing the skin of a twelve year old boy who's having an intense argument with his mortal enemy.

2) Long Hours

Workaholic, schmeraholic. A writer's work is never done. Not ever. There's no nice, convenient 9-5 hours. The writer is always noticing small details to weave into her next scene, or thinking about the revising she did that morning and wondering if that one line is really strong enough for the end of a chapter. You might be having a romantic dinner, or watching reality TV or even getting frisky, but your writer is still writing. Always. And she might dart away from the dinner table (or worse, jump out of bed in the middle of the night) because she just figured out how to get those two characters into the same room at the same time.

3) Conversations With Thin Air

Both writers and psychotics hear voices. The difference is the writer responds to them. Wait, so does the psychotic. Okay, so the difference between writers and psychotics is.... Oh, I know! The writer gets paid to hear voices. And talk back to them. And then type all of it up.

4) Secrets & Lies

Your writer-spouse lies. Professionally. And she can be incredibly secretive about those lies. You might be walking past the office and hear her saying something conversationally (see #3, above). So you say, "What's going on with your characters now?" You might even add a small, patient smile. "Oh, it's complicated," she'll reply and click the power button on her monitor so you can't read what she's been writing. And getting to read a first draft? Forget about it. She'll show her motley crew of critique partners, but she won't show you, her beloved. No way. You'll be lucky if she lets you read the ARC.

5) Sharing  

You think that wedding ceremony means your writer is now all yours? Think again. Writers belong to a whole host of other people, both real and imagined. There are the characters, of course. He's madly in love with them. He has to be, considering how many hours he spends with them. And then there's the agent who really, really gets him. And then there's the editor who makes him feel like he's one in a million. Oh, and don't forget his adoring fans! The ones who tweet him and leave earnest messages on his Facebook page.

The truth is, it will all be worth it. It really will. Your writer will charm and entertain you. Your writer will be empathetic to your struggles and strife like it was an Olympic sport. Your writer will gladly listen when you want to whine, will laugh when she finds out the puppy has shredded her favorite bathrobe and will happily go on that ill-advised camping trip in the pouring rain because it will all be good fodder for the novel.

She's a Real Character

Sometimes you create a character from the ground up. You have a vague idea that you want a sidekick or a foil and you start trying on different bits and pieces until you find the mix that feels right - sorta like those board books where you can flip a third of the page at a time and mix and match different foreheads, eyes and chins until you make up some silly face.

Sometimes a character surprises you by jumping from your head onto the page, fully formed and full of attitude. Those are the ones that wake me up in the morning and tell me, "Come on, it's time to write more about my encounter with that character I loathe! Don't leave me with her. You gotta write me out of that scene!"

But then there are other characters. Ones that accost you on the street. Yesterday I ran to the store for lunch and, as usual when I go to the store hungry, ended up with four large bags of food. My trunk is full with stuff I'm donating to charity, so I went to put my groceries into my back seat. The space I had between me and the minivan next to me was cramped and I was trying very hard to get my groceries in without my door hitting their door. Then I heard the passenger window roll down and a raspy voice say "Excuse me!"

I thought, oh no, I've accidentally bumped their car. I turned around slowly, planting a grin on my face. "Yes?"

"I see you bought the green grapes. Are they any good?" Her accent was from the Old World, maybe a Mediterranean country. Her fingers were curled up like Autumn leaves.

"I dunno, I haven't had any."

"I like them when they are firm, you know? When they burst in your mouth."

I nodded.

"Can I try one of yours? If they're any good I'll ask my daughter to get me some."

"Sure," I said, wondering how often this woman scams snacks off unwary strangers. I fumbled to open the ziplocked bag, my own hands full of car keys and a cell phone.

Her daughter approached the car. "What are you doing, mom? Are you bugging this lady?"

"Nah, I'm just giving her a grape," I said, still struggling with the bag.

"Help her!" the woman demanded of her daughter, impatience driving her voice higher.

"I think this is kind of a one person job, Mom," her daughter said, shifting back and forth on her feet.

Finally I opened the bag and held it out to the woman. She plucked a grape and said "firm!" approvingly. Then she bit into it. And spit it back into her hand.

"Any good?" her daughter asked.

"Eh, so-so," the woman replied, clearly lying.

"Oh well," I said, and proceeded to put the bags in the car, and put the cart away.

As I climbed into my car to leave, I heard the woman cry out, "I hope you like sour grapes!"

Sour grapes were a small price to pay for the gift of this character.

What's in The Box?

My main character, Rose, has a cigar box - one of the larger ones - in which she keeps mementos. Mementos both of her mom and for her mom.


You see, this kid is not 100% convinced that mom is dead, even though that's what her father presumes. She disappeared on the same day that Rose was turned into a werewolf.

So some of what's in the box are things like Rose's own plastic hospital wristband from that day and the blood-stained stuffed animal she'd been holding. But some are things that Rose wishes she could have shown her mom over the years, or things she is saving to give her mom when she returns. Like the first tooth she lost -- the one she left under the pillow that the Tooth Fairy forgot to exchange for a shiny silver dollar.

I'm filling the box, bit by bit. But I thought it would be fun to hear your ideas. If I like it, it might end up in my manuscript. If I get published, I'll be sure to include you in my thank yous. So, tell me, what's in The Box?