P is for Patience

Do I even need to explain this one?

There is no end to the waiting in the publishing game.  I don't care if you're self-published, traditionally published, or just putting things up on a display site.  The fact is, once you put your baby out into the world, you're going to spend a lot of time waiting to hear from other people on it.  That's the nature of writing.  We create, but we cannot create the audience.

At every stage of the game, you will be waiting for something.  In one of my son's favorite Dr. Seuss books, Oh the Places You'll Go, the great man himself wrote all about waiting:

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. 

The Waiting Place... 

...for people just waiting. 

Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting. 

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting. 

NO!
That's not for you! 

Somehow you'll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You'll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.
With banner flip-flapping,
once more you'll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you're that kind of a guy!

So, how do you cope with all that waiting?  I am not the first person to say this, nor will I be the last.  It will sound simplistic if you haven't heard it before, but I am telling you, it is the one and only thing under your control:

WRITE YOUR NEXT BOOK.

Don't wait around for answers to your queries, don't think about what people will think of what you've already written, or what you'll write in the future.  Just...

WRITE YOUR NEXT BOOK.

Do it.  Do it now.  No excuses.

What are you still doing here?  Go WRITE IT ALREADY!!!

O is for Overheard at RT

As I've mentioned a couple of times now, I spent five days in Chicago last week for the Romantic Times Convention (RT).  It is the most intense conference I've ever been to.  It's long, I'm not going to lie, but it's pretty darn fun, too.  There's a complete schedule of YA-focused events, and more authors than you can shake a stick at.  Seriously, I tried, but the entire ballroom was full of authors for the book fair at one point, and no matter how hard I shook my stick, I just could not encompass all of them.

I returned with spoils of war.  Books, swag, new friends, and memories.

I also returned with a collection of quotes.  Things Overheard at RT.  Some of it is great writing advice, some of it is probably only funny if you were there, and some of it is downright inappropriate.  For that reason, I'm not giving attributions to any of them.  No infringement intended to the fabulous authors who shared their time and wisdom with us.  If you really want you name put next to your quote, please let me know.  Otherwise, all will remain anonymous to protect the not-so-innocent.  You know who you are.


The Good

"Set out to write the worst book you possibly can."

"You're going to have to edit it, like, a million times until you wanna throw up."

Q: "What's your greatest strength as a writer?"
A:  "It's really so hard to pick just one, but I'd have to say my incredible beauty."

"A hundred pages and all they did was go down the road."

"You have to be willing to sacrifice anything for the good of the story."

"Your character in Act 1 should not be ready for the events of Act 3."

"My feelings on the editorial letter can best be summed up by the two-word Bible verse, 'Jesus wept.'"

[On procrastination] "I let it overwhelm me until my guilt becomes unbearable."

"The only thing worse than being a writer for me is not being a writer."

"You must put your butt in the chair and sweat."

"If you're meant to be a writer, you'll make it happen.  If you're not, you'll make excuses."

1:  "In YA, you characters don't have to stay together forever."
2:  "Mine do."

[On the age difference between immortal men and the teen girls who love them in YA] "It is in inherently creepy."


The Random

"I'm off like a crazy sloth."

"It's no spoiler that I kill."

"Did he just say bag of weed?"

"We're way more immature than any of the teens here."

"You kiss like a Barbie doll."

"There's something very soothing about chopping things up."

"I strongly recommend a snorkle."

"I have a lot of nightmares...and I cherish everyone of them."

"You could have worn a costume, like, Steampunk...or Scottish with squirrels."

1: "I should have had you get me one."
2: "What?  A squirrel?"

"Maybe we should run away."

"That depends.  How badly you want to play Spoons and eat candy?"

"When you're on your deathbed, you'll be thinking, 'Damn, I wish I would have danced with Cole--and now I'm dying!'"

"Is that a squirrel in your pants or are you just happy to see us?"

"If you can't work Poor Dead Mr. Pamuk into your next manuscript, you're just not trying."

"Could you maybe get one picture of yourself somewhere other than at that bar?"

"I think I have to run some of the alcohol out of my system."

"I want to tell her I like her costume, but I'm afraid it's not a costume."

"Are you Russian?  You look Russian."

"I told you I married a tycoon."


"Come find us. We're breaking into parties and stealing booze."


The Naughty

"Five penises in the hand is worth...oh, it would be bad if I finished that!"

"Heh-heh.  You said moist."

"I will not grope myself in public."

"If it's coming out of your panties, you keep it."

"Sometimes, I open my mouth, and bad things come out."

"I like the Butt Game."

"No boob dollars."

"Hmm, I don't understand this pony play thing, perhaps I will in another year when I am nine."

"I read Flowers in the Attic and so far, my feelings toward my brothers have not changed."

N is for Nothing

Okay, I'll be honest.  I'm mostly posting this because I want to be caught up again.  Don't worry, I have a great post for the letter O, just you wait.

On the other hand, I do believe in the power of nothing.  As writers it's easy to work ourselves into a froth.  If you're working a full-time job, you have to force time for writing into your schedule.  If you write full-time, you've got deadlines to meet.  If you've got kids...well, I don't even have to finish that statement, do I?  If you've sent something off to your agent or editor, it's almost impossible to stop yourself from refreshing your inbox into oblivion and stalking them on Twitter.

But there is great power in doing nothing.  Give yourself permission not to be writer sometimes.  Be frivolous and watch TV.  Play outside with your kids.  Pay attention to your significant other, your family, your friends.  You know...those pesky two-dimensional people in your life that require actual human interaction and love to survive.

Nothing recharges your batteries like nothing.  It's in the moments when my mind is most clear that I tend to get brainstorms anyway, so it's not like the nothing lasts very long.  Still, the point is, it's valuable.

So, get to it.  Go do some nothing.

M is for Maps

Maybe it's because I write contemporary, so my stories are set in the real world, but I spend a lot of time looking at maps.  I like to browse the neighborhoods where I imagine my stories taking place.  I route out travel times between sites, so I don't make my journeys too short or too long.

It could be that realism matters to me, or it could be that I've come up with a great way to procrastinate.  Either way I say upon you:

Hail, Google Maps!


And now a map for your viewing pleasure:

L is for Likability

The indomnitable Chuck Wendig may have said it best: "The audience will do anything to spend time with a great character. We’re junkies for it. We’ll gnaw our own arms off to hang out once more with a killer character."  (By the way, you should definitely read the rest of his 25 Things You Should Know About Character post, though not if you're sensitive to profanity.)

I know a great character will make me hike through miles of an otherwise bleh landscape.  There is a certain long-running series which will remain nameless that I only stick with because of the main character.  It was great in the beginning, predictable in the middle, and now as it's gotten old enough to vote, it's almost painful.  Yet, there I am, year after year, looking forward to another romp with my old friend, the main character.

I may be kidding myself, but I hear tell I'm pretty good at creating a likable character.  I've spent some time trying to figure out what exactly makes certain characters leap off the page for me, and what it is that I do to create lovable characters myself.  My answers aren't perfect, or complete, but here's what I've got for your reading pleasure.

1. Know who they are.  Even secondary characters deserve a bit of a backstory.  Most of it will never make it to the page, but it makes all the difference for me as a writer to know a little history on anyone who has more than a cameo role.  It informs how they speak, what their priorities are, how they dress, how they relate to others...everything.
   
   
2. Know what they look like.  I am a firm believer in leaving as much description as possible OFF the page.  I like a reader to be able to construct whatever appearance they like for a character, assign any race, make them any size they like in their minds.  But when I write, I see scenes in my mind like a movie, so I need to know who's playing the parts.  It helps me imagine how a character moves through the world if I know what they look like.
   
   
3. Bring some personality to the page.  I'm more than a little obsessed with people's speech and body tics.  Every professor I ever had in college had at least one verbal tic.  One was obsessed with adverbs.  By the end of the semester, I had a tally sheet for every time she said actually, really, definitely, probably, and so on. (In one three-hour lecture, she said actually 92 times.  NINETY-TWO!!!)  So, every one of my characters has some little habit that identifies them as a person.  One rubs her thumbnail on her lower lip, another can't keep his hands still when he's nervous, another is addicted to ice.  It makes them feel familiar and human.
   
   
4. Speech patterns.  I'm not talking dialect here, but everyone has a unique way of speaking.  In writing, it's not always good practice to write truly natural dialogue, because the way people talk in real life is, frankly, dull.  But even with spicy, snappy dialogue that keeps the pace moving, you should be able to identify who is speaking most of the time.  Some characters make liberal use of profanity, others never use it.  Some speak formally, while others can barely stand to use a complete sentence.  And you know you've met at least one person who has exclamation points at the end of every sentence.  You never want to go overboard with a verbal tic, but if you know a character's backstory, and a little bit of their personality, you should be able to predict how they'd answer a question.
   
   Just for funsies, let's see how a few different characters I've created would answer a simple question.  (By the way, this is pretty much exactly what we're talking about when we talk about 'voice' in a story.)
   
   Question:  How did you math test go?
   
   Jack:  "Could have been better, I guess." (Maybe if I'd actually studied...)
   Gwen:  "Who cares?  I refuse to learn calculus on moral grounds."
   Mike:  "I made that test my bitch.  It actually cried a little when I was done with it."
   Levi:  Shrugs, looking down.  "Fine."
   Jemimah:  "It was fun!  What did you think of it?"
   Caine:  "If I told you, I'd have to kill you."
   Mariska:  "It's possible I just achieved the first negative score in the history of math."
   Sun:  "Shh.  We're not talking about that."
   
   
5. Save some cats.  Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! book on screenwriting is invaluable if you want to learn about the mechanics of Hollywood storytelling.  I know there are others out there, but that's the one that really helped cement it for me, so naysayers can just keep their nays to themselves.  In it, he says that the key to making any character likable in the first few minutes of a movie is to give them a save the cat moment.  This is the time when a character, even one you shouldn't expect to root for (like the criminal hero of Ocean's Eleven, for example) shows their humanity, their heart of gold.  I'm not saying a boring, or two-dimensional character can be made workable by showing him rescuing orphans from a burning building in chapter one, but it certainly wouldn't hurt would it?  So give your characters an opportunity to do the right thing in some small way, even if they procede to be insufferable assholes for the rest of the story.  Even if it's simply being kind to the store clerk at the gun shop where he's restocking on ammo to go on a killing spree, you need to show us a touch of humanity to give us a glimmer of hope for this character's journey.

Okay, I think I've about worn out my soapbox on this issue, so I'm going to go ahead and dismount.  *curtsies*  Thank you for your attention.

K is for Kissing

YA writers are obsessed with kissing.  Seriously, ask any of them.

Last week at RT, I spent a lot of time with YA writers at all stages of their careers.  Some were multi-published, some were just getting started.  But we all love the kissing.

But why?

Some of it came home to me while sitting around with a group of those YA writers at conference.  One of them had been given a copy of an adult erotic romance at one of the events.  Demonstrating our usual level of maturity, we decided to do some dramatic readings of those scenes.  The reactions from the group were about on par with a group of 12 year-old girls.  Squealing, covering our ears, even a few "Ewwws!"

Now don't get me wrong.  I'm totally okay with the existence of erotic romance.  In fact, I know some really great people who write it.  But for a group of people who write about teenagers, it was all a bit much.  Too much anatomy.  And it was lacking in exactly the things we love about kissing scenes in YA.

Is there anything better than anticipation?  Not anxiety or fear, but anticipation.  Like when you're standing in line for a roller-coaster and your stomach is fluttering with nerves, but you want to get on that ride so bad.  Or the moment when a waiter sets your favorite dish in front of you and your mouth starts watering.

And is there any moment of anticipation better than that is-he-going-to-kiss-me? moment?  I submit there is not.  YA stories are filled with those moments.  No matter how intense a relationship gets between two characters, it's still relatively new when you're a teenager.  First kiss, first love, first lover (and yes, I am childish enough that the word lover makes me snicker).  It's all got that shiny, anticipation-filled, butterflies-in-the-stomach, sweaty-palms newness.

I love that.

Maybe at heart, all YA writers are adrenaline junkies.  I, for one, am glad that I'm able to find those feelings of wonder over and over again.  Cheap thrills, and natural highs.  What could be better?

J is for Just Do It

I know, the title is tres lame.  But Nike was onto something when they wrote that slogan.  It's about bravery, and commitment, and follow-through.

Want to be a writer?  Just do it.
Want to finish your first book?  Just do it.
Want someone's autograph?  Just go up to them and ask.

I was supposed to post my entry for J on Wednesday last week, but here's what happened:  I WENT TO MY FIRST RT CONVENTION!  It was in Chicago, it was exhausting, and it was awesome.  And there were a lot of opportunities to just do it.

The first was even going.  It meant meeting my crit partner (Hi, Jessie!) in person for the first time.  Not just that, but sharing a room with her for four nights.  I was nervous, I'm not going to lie, but I did it, and we got along great, and I already miss her! (Hi again, Jessie!)

The next was being bold and introducing myself to as many people as I could.  Some I knew from Twitter; some I only knew from the covers of books.  As a typical writer introvert, it's not the easiest thing for me meeting new people, but I did it.  Now I have new friends all over the country and a ton of great memories.

As tempting as it was to hang back when I was in the presence of some of my favorite authors--especially after I got laryngitis on the second day--I decided to go for it and introduce myself.  I may have fangirled all over a few of them (*cough, cough* Stephanie Perkins, Franny Billingsley, Veronica Roth, Francine Pascal *cough, cough*) but they were all super nice.  Writers are the best.

So whatever fears are holding you back aren't worth it.  Put your butt in the chair and write.  Don't be afraid to suck, just get through the first draft.  Go to a conference.  Go to a book signing.  Introduce yourself to people.  Be brave.  Commit.  Follow through.

Just do it.